[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by Fordim Hedgethistle

I made the point above the "peril" pertains to risk more than to danger, but I did not really approach the question of what this risk might be. I think that it's got to do with the risk of bringing the One into contact with the Lady -- you might just get the help you are going to require for the success of your quest (counsel, the Phial, the Cloaks, lembas, etc), but at the risk of the quest's eternal failure.

I take your point, but is there really any less danger in bringing the Ring into contact with Elrond? If the possibility exists that Galadriel might fail the test and succumb to the Ring (the peril to the Quest that you refer to), wasn’t there an equal, or even greater possibility, that Elrond would have succumbed to it – that, had it been offered to him freely at the Council, he would have taken it? Or are you assuming that Elrond passed his “test” when he counselled Isildur to cast it into Orodruin?

Another question comes to mind in this regard. Are you supposing that Aragorn had this peril in mind when he responded to Boromir’s concerns over entering Lothlorien? Was he aware that Galadriel might be tempted by the Ring? If he did, then this would call into question whether he should have been leading the Fellowship into Lothlorien, since it would surely be folly to risk the Ring falling into the hands of one as powerful of Galadriel. Or did he have faith that Galadriel would pass the test, should the Ring be offered to her?

Indeed, is there any direct applicability to the Fellowship in this comment, as far as Aragorn is concerned, or is he simply making a general statement concerning the nature of Lothlorien? If the former, was he aware that Boromir was vulnerable to the wiles of the Ring and that he might attempt to seize it at some point? There is little evidence to this effect as far as I am aware, but Boromir's comments at the Council of Elrond might well have alerted him. If so, and his comment was pointedly directed at Boromir, then could he, or should he, have done more to protect Frodo from this eventuality?

Which brings me back to Boromir. Funny how he has become one of the major topics of discussion on this thread when, as Bêthberry points out, he hardly features in it.

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

This strikes me as being one of your prime criteria Sauce--and a thoroughly respectable criteron it is--for determining quality in writing (sympathy for or with a character), but I am not sure it is a criterion which is justified in the book at this point.

Well, first off I wouldn't say that I necessarily judge the quality of the presentation of a character on a page by the extent to which that character engenders sympathy in the reader. I have read and enjoyed many books where the central characters are not a wholly sympathetic. I do, however, respond more positively to a character the more credibly that they are presented. The point that I was trying to make is that, to my mind, Boromir's flaws make him a more credible character than Aragorn.

Having said that, however, and given that there is much to sympathise with within Boromir's character, I would question whether Tolkien lets us see enough of Boromir's positive qualities, whether he engenders sufficient sympathy for him as a character, before killing him off. Certainly, the film does engender more audience sympathy for Boromir. His concern for the Hobbits on Caradhras is emphasised, and a specific connection with Merry and Pippin (the characters who he lays his life down for) is established in the mock swordplay scene.

I do agree that comparative judgements between the book and the films are not always helpful in discussions such as this. One of the shortcomings in comparing how Tolkien wrote the story with how Jackson presented it on film is that they had some very different purposes in mind and were working with entirely different media (Jackson, for example, was most certainly not experimenting with the Heroic Northern ideal ). It made sense for Jackson to portray Boromir in a more sympathetic light earlier on (ie in the first film), since otherwise we would not learn of his more positive qualities until the later films. Also, the immediacy of film means that an audience will perhaps form a quicker impression of a character on the screen than they will of a character in a book.

However, I do wonder whether the fact that Boromir's sympathetic qualities are not brought out earlier in the book (as they are in the first film) risks having readers miss these aspects of his character. As I said, I was initially left with the feeling that Boromir was a negative character and it took a few readings before his positive qualities came through to me. And my impression from past threads concerning him on this forum is that I am not alone in this.

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Of course as you say, later we may understand Boromir much better after 'meeting' Denethor and Faramir, but for this discussion I thought we were limiting ourselves to 'the plot so far'.

That is my very point. Limiting ourselves to the plot thus far means that we miss many of Boromir's positive qualities. My concern is that, since we do not learn of these qualities until after his death, Tolkien risks leaving the reader with a negative impression of Boromir overall, as it did with me at first.