[Bêthberry]

Oh, indeed Encaitare! Isn't that part wonderful, particularly the part about "he felt a delight in the wood, and the touch of it, neither as forester nor as carpenter; it was the delight of the living tree itself." There's something of Bombadil there, isn't there?

At risk of belabouring a point, I would like to address some points of Sauce's.

And, to buck against the trend of pointing out the perceived shortcomings of the films in these discussions ( ), I would make the point that engendering reader/audience sympathy for Boromir is something that the films perhaps handled better than Tolkien himself.

Two things about this come to mind. First, I agree that the movie made Boromir's death more poignant than the book, particularly in the way it was used to conclude the first movie, rather than, as in the novel, open the second book. Yet I am not so sure we need to make an evaluative or comparative judgement here, at least not quickly. Given Jackson's adherance to action movie techniques, the Star Wars allusion, the entire forefronting of battles with spectacular effects, it does not surprise me that Jackson would give a higher priority to Boromir than Tolkien does. It is consistent within the context of Jackon's entire interpretation of Tolkien for a movie-going public. We see, for example, how Jackson has Aragorn say, "Let's go hunt some orcs"--now there is a statement rather out of sympathy with several aspects of Book-Aragorn. In short, I don't think Jackson's movie shows great familiarity with Tolkien's concept of Heroic Northern Ideal.

Second, is it safe to assume that Tolkein wanted, at this point in the book, to engender sympathy for Boromir in the reader? 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. 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'.

It was this 'plot so far' which led me to wonder what Tolkien was doing with the Boromir character in this section. I noted first the relative absence of much reference to Boromir in this chapter. The main mention of him concerns his deep mistrust of Lothlorien and we are thus able to see, with Aragorn's (aka Tolkien the writer's ) prompting how this suggests Boromir and Gondor have not kept faith with the ancient lore--something the elves have done. Then I went back and looked at the previous chapter, to see how successful Boromir's actions as a warrior were. Sam kills his first orc and Aragorn kills an orc, but Boromir is thrown down and back despite his courage. I then went back to our first meeting with Boromir at the Council with Elrond. (Yes, I am skipping, I realise.) I won't repeat here our discussions of that chapter save to say that, for me, I saw and still see a very arrogant, self-centered diplomat. He even at one point almost suggests that he would like to have Anduril back for Gondor's sake.

Then I began to wonder why Tolkien was presenting Boromir like this to us at this point. My post read:

The point which struck me forcibly on rereading this chapter is the relative absence of Boromir. ... However, I am getting very much the sense that Tolkien has marked Boromir from the start, so to speak, for failure; he is in fact a foil who helps us see better Aragorn's honour.

I realise that I might be treading on well-loved favourite characters here, but what I have been trying to suggest is a way of reading the book which is a little bit different from finding one's sympathy for a particular character. This is of course the starting point for all good writing: it must catch us somehow and most often that will be through our sympathy for or identification with or admiration of certain characters. Yet, yet, sometimes writers chose a different tactic. Sometimes they might want to 'hook the reader' by a reverse tactic. Or sometimes they might want to make a character initially appear questionable. Or sometimes they might want to use the character, as I suggest here, as a foil for another character.

What our different perspectives on Boromir boil down to, I think Sauce, is something that has *cough* *ahem* came out in our discussions on other threads, which shall here be nameless. Your admiration rests on your desire to read for the point of 'click' between you as a reader and a character. And this admiration has developed over extended readings and great familiarity with latter parts of the novel. Please note I am not saying this is wrong. Our own enjoyment is a prime motivator in any reading, and particularly here on the Downs we love to share those parts which click for us (as I have done at the start of my post here).

My less-than-stellar-admiration derives in part from my (female) lack of sympathy for a male whose first appearance shows him to be not a concensus-maker. His argument is based on the needs of Gondor and he is not diplomatically able to make his pitch, so to speak, to the interests of other members. Here is my "empathy issue". Even though Boromir is noble, courageous, valiant, this egotism stands in my way of finding him appealing. Then, on top of this, I ask not how I feel about the character, but what are the ways that Tolkien uses to depict the character.

To my mind, it is a greater test of mercy to keen for Boromir's loss if we first had little sympathy for him than if we really admired him. It is--at least to my mind and of course others will have very different responses--a more poignant experience of the Ring's power.

Well now, I return you all to the more fascinating discussion of the nature of Lothlorien and Rivendell. Lothlorien is under seige and here the last vestiges of elvendom are held together by the power of one woman. What is Boromir to learn from Galadriel's test? Oh,sorry, jumping ahead. *slaps hand*