[VanimaEdhel]

stone of vision: I agree completely.

I do not see Boromir as any sort of "evil" character. He acted as most mortal men would have reacted to the power of the ring. Faramir, his brother, was more noble than most men, in that he did not succumb to the power of the ring (Aragorn obviously did not either).

Morgoth/Melkor/The Dark Lord/Bauglir/The Enemy/etc., on the other hand, was evil.

The aspect of "nine", as was said earlier, was used a lot in Tolkien's novels, as were other "key" numbers. Also, the number twelve was used a lot in the Elvish calendar, for they liked multiples of six/twelve. An Elvish "year" of sorts (a "yen") was 144 years, if I remember correctly, so, yes, there is a lot of numerical play in Tolkien's books. I would not, however, say that Boromir's story could be at all parallelled with Morgoth.

Good thought though! I had to think about it for a while!