[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Kransha! I'm shocked! Nay dismayed!! Given your predeliction for the Bard and obvious admiration for Denethor, how could you have failed to note the ways in which he is a tragic hero?? Like all really great tragic heroes he is both someone we admire and someone we fear or even dislike (I love Hamlet, but would not want to be trapped in a castle with him; Lear is monumental but terrifies me; Othello and Macbeth are both twerps, but greatly so).

For me, the hallmark of a tragic hero is somebody trapped by his own greatness -- that is, the very qualities that make him admirable are what ensure his downfall (again, to cite from Shakespeare: Hamlet's intelligence is what makes his situation so difficult -- a stupid person would just kill Claudius without bothering to consider the consequences; Othello's abilities as a soldier make him unable to understand women): what could be more true of Denethor. He is the Steward of Gondor in every way, and as you have shown he is the greatest of all Stewards -- at least for a very long time. But that is a tragic position: the fulfilment of his role in this world is to forsake that role; the moment of apotheosis for the Steward is the moment at which he lays aside that role for someone else. Can you imagine Denethor as a gentleman of arms and not the Steward? Of course not -- that role, be necessity (historical, providential, personal) is his identity, without it he is nobody.

I think that this helps explain why he is like everybody (brilliant point Kr): he is the summation and embodiment of all that is great in Men; in fact, he is the absolute Man -- which means in him we find our own natures expressed in the most wonderful, and in their most horrible, form. He is not Aragorn, the Man who is more than men, and thus the only one capable of defeating Sauron. Denethor is, however, the Man who is the best of men, but within the limited abilities of men: like Hamlet, he is smarter and more noble than any other in his world, but this intelligence puts him at odds with the powers about him; like Othello and Macbeth he is the greatest soldier, but as a consequence he is unable to form lasting or healthy family relationships; like Lear he is the only one in his world whose eyes are capable of looking the full nature of reality in the eye, but doing so drives him to despair and madness.

It's hard for us to see the full tragic sweep of Denethor because we come in only near the end of his story: he's already had his fall, and is concluding the final cathartic sweep of his action. The story is not, after all, his story. Thanks to the kind of work that Kransha has done for us here, we can see his whole story and appreciate Tolkien's achievement.

I think the real function of Denethor is that he demonstrates how Aragorn is a hero beyond tragedy: Aragorn is a Man for whom his greatness is not a burden, nor is it dangerous, or he is guided by a faith and a light that transcends the limits of the world; Frodo is not capable of tragedy, not posessing the requisite greatness from which to fall (he himself admits that he does not possess wisdom or strenght, both of which Aragorn has in spades).

Denethor is, oddly enough, the clearest mirror we have of ourselves in Middle-Earth -- expanded in our capacities to the greatness of the greatest Men, and warped in our desires to the most despairing vision of our insignificance. Our reaction to him is thus appropriately mixed: we love him for what he is, hate him for what he does, and are terrified by how much he reminds us of ourselves.