[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Seems to me, having gone through so much intelligent discussion, that what's really at stake with Boromir, Eowyn and Gollum (BEG?) is the tense relation between self-love and love directed toward the other.

Boromir is consumed with his own opinion of himself and of his role in the world -- he loves other people, but when it comes right down to it, I think that he's a vain person who loves himself before all others: or, at least, his love of himself motivates him to put himself forward, before anyone else ("Faramir, you've had that dream a dozen times, but I've had it once so I should go to Rivendell!"; "I don't see why Aragorn should lead the Fellowship!"). This is a trait that he definitely shares with his father. I think at the end of his life he does manage to move out of his self love and love Aragorn as is his due.

Eoywn is also afflicted with self-love, but she doesn't even really know it. She thinks she loves Aragorn, but what she loves is a "shadow and a dream" -- that is, she has projected onto him her own desires and needs, her own values, and she loves him for the sake of those. They are noble desires, and he is a worthy recipient of her love, but she does not truly love Aragorn-as-other, but Aragorn-as-Eowyn-wants. Her move away from this stance begins with her defense of Theoden, whom she loves, but there is still a real strain of self-love in her actions insofar as she announces her name like some all conquering hero and makes a boast about her abilities: she really does sound like Boromir in that moment. I'm not saying that she is vain or proud, or that her act is not heroic, only that she is at least in part (I think a good part) motivated by her own desires and needs as mush as she is by selfless love for Theoden.

Eowyn then has two important things happen. She falls in love with Faramir, that is, she loves someone else more than she loves herself, and simultaneously sees Aragorn for who he really is: that is, she is able to see past her-self, and the love that she has for others surpasses the love of self.

Gollum loves only his-self, his "precious". His one hope of redemption comes in the form of the love that he might feel for Frodo, but it is finally defeated. It is the consumation of his self-love that leads to his destruction: when he gets the Ring, he dies. This is probably the happiest ending possible for Gollum. If Frodo had been able to throw the Ring into the fire of his own accord, I have no doubt whatsoever that Gollum would have leapt after it, rather than live without it.

Every other character, I think, charts some way through this love of other: Gimli and Legolas, perhaps most obviously, as they learn to love one another; Merry and Pippin love one another; Sam loves Frodo and Rose; Faramir loves Aragorn; and on and on. . .people are saved, are given hope, by the love that they feel for others.

I think that as with so many other things, Frodo and Aragorn are the two most interesting characters in light of this. They are the two people most heinously betrayed by Boromir, and they are the ones who become the givers and receivers of love from Eowyn and Gollum. Aragorn loves the people who need him, and in particular Arwen and Frodo, far more than he loves himself. He is proud and noble, like Boromir, but he is not vain: his own love for his self is never stronger than what he feels for others.

Frodo is the same as Aragorn, but I think he is on a learning curve as the tale unfolds. At the outset he loves the Shire more than himself, but as he goes along he comes to love other things, higher things, as well: Lorien, Aragorn. He also learns to love a creature as loathesome as Gollum, and his love of Sam grows and deepens in tandem with his love of the corrupted Smeagol. By the end of his journey, I think that the only things that keep him going are Sam's love for him, and Frodo's love of Middle-earth -- of all that is created and good that is threatened by the Ring he bears.

So even though, in the end, his will fails and he takes the Ring, his love triumphs. In the moment in which his love of self/the Ring overtakes everything else, he is saved by the love that he has shown earlier to Gollum, the love that he has shared with Sam, and the love that he has learned for the whole of Middle-earth.

So the Beatles were right, it seems. . .all you need is love!

The interesting wrinkle from this would appear to be that the road of self-love is one that leads, specifically, to despair. To love the self over the other is a dead-end insofar as individual effort of will is not enough to succeed in this world, or to do good. It's only by loving others more than oneself that one can have hope, since it's only with and through others that we can hope to do any good in and for the world -- or for ourselves.

What a lovely idea. What a great story.