Is Denethor a villain? I think so.Certainly he's not your typical evil lord lurking in a tower. But let's look at the facts.
Sacrifice your son for no reason at all by sending him into a pointless battle just to prove that you can? Then try to cremate him alive? Check.
Refuse to acknowledge the rightful heir to Gondor? Check.
Just plain creepy? Double check.
Of course, what makes the ignition of Denethor so tragic is that the reader realizes, right before the end, his creepiness wasn't entirely his fault. Turns out, Denethor had been watching Sauron News all along.
Of course, while Denethor would not be a man I would like to spend time around in real life, as literary fiction, he's one of LOTR's best characters. The reader can tell he WANTS to be good. He does try. After all, he's the last bulwark between the free world and ultimate tyranny. His cause is righteous.
The real tragedy is that the enigma is unanswerable. We have no pre-palantir Denethor and post-palantir Denethor to compare. Alas, the reader is only left to wonder what kind of man he might have been if circumstances were different.
If only Denethor had watched more of the Middle-Earth version of MSNBC, to get a more balanced world-view than he got from Sauron News alone.
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