Quote:
Originally Posted by Inziladun
Thinking on this, maybe it's possible Galadriel didn't know exactly what was on Boromir's mind. When Gandalf the White meets Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, he says Galadriel warned him Boromir was in peril. That's fairly vague.
Boromir himself said of his experience with Galadriel's "trial", that
FOTR The Mirror of Galadriel
Why would Galadriel be "offering" the Ring? It was not in her possession, and Boromir would not have felt her permission to use it necessary. And what word would Boromir have been breaking by taking the Ring? Elrond specifically said at Rivendell that only Frodo was held to an oath in relation to the Quest. Perhaps Galadriel divined a more general lust for power to defeat Sauron, coupled with a desire to have Aragorn out of the way and rule Gondor himself. After all, I doubt Galadriel could literally read minds. The test of the Fellowship seems more like a overall sensing of the target's emotional state, in response to Galadriel's selective "temptations".
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Yes. I suspect, exactly, that probing others for Sauronic perversion meant probes for detecting lust, greed and power in the motivational architecture of the being she was reading. There was a particular constellation of mental artefacts--a subset of overall cognition--that Tolkien imputed were 'Sauronic'. Domination, callous sadism, corruption (of Elvish beauty--though he saw beauty in his own realm, no doubt), violation of will, enslavement. And, especially, lust and greed.
I wish I could find the quote from LotR, but I forget where I saw it. Sauron had some kind of partial win, or there was reference to that, in LotR, or Silmarillion about how his mind worked. Tolkien actually wrote "...and his lust and greed were increased...".
Tolkien tended to use the word 'lust', and I think with somewhat non-sexual connotations. Some sexual emphasis was also apparent in Tolkien's 'Dark Lord' motifs though also in his use of lust for power. E.g. Morgoth coupling with a troll to birth Gothmog (FA Gothmog), and Maeglin's perversion through the promise of (oh god, I forget, was it Idril or Aredhel!).