LotR -- Book 5 - Chapter 01 - Minas Tirith

[davem]

'Dark indeed is the hour,' said the old man, 'and at such times you are wont to come, Mithrandir. But though all the signs forebode that the doom of Gondor is drawing nigh, less now to me is that darkness than my own darkness. It has been told to me that you bring with you one who saw my son die. Is this he?'

This is very similar to the welcome Gandalf got in Meduseld, & on the surface is motivated by similar feelings of grief, yet as Gandalf has said, Denethor can use his grief as a cloak. He is ‘wiser’ than Theoden, yet perhaps that should be ‘cleverer’. Theoden has succumbed to hopelessness for many of the same reasons as Denethor (Shippey points out the similarity of their names, which could almost be anagrams of each other), yet Theoden is still capable of listening to council. Denethor is closed off from all external influence - or so he believes. What we actually see is that while Theoden is capable, through his innate humility, of willingly listening to the words of Gandalf, Denethor has succumbed unwillingly to the words of Sauron. His vision has been corrupted by the Dark Lord till he can only see things as Sauron wishes him to see them, while Theoden still retains his capacity to see true & only requires to be shown the truth to recognise & accept it. Theoden, it seems, has accepted the death of his son as part of the evil of the times,

Denethor seems to see the loss of Boromir as a personal assault on him. Theoden as a result can grieve his loss & move on, Denethor is broken by it, because he sees it as fate being out to get him - everyone is against him, out to destroy him. He is embattled, cut off, waiting for the inevitable end - why bother fighting? He does continue organising the defence of Gondor, but soon he will decide there is no point in that. When we first meet them Theoden seems a worse case than Denethor. The Steward seems more in control of himself, more powerful, more aware & defiant. In actual fact he only seems stronger. The reality is that he is brittle & ready to shatter. What he lacks is Theoden’s inner strength, which is only sleeping.

His words to Gandalf later seem to show his wisdom in conflict with his pride:

'Pride would be folly that disdained help and counsel at need; but you deal out such gifts according to your own designs.

It would be foolish to reject help & counsel, he claims, yet he will only have the ‘help & counsel’ that suits him. He’s talking contradictory nonsense - which he quite possibly has been doing for a good while, but nobody, we assume, would dare to point this out. Gandalf does, & gets short shrift.

Another thing that struck me was his statement

Bring wine and food and seats for the guests,' said Denethor, 'and see that none trouble us for one hour.'
'It is all that I have to spare, for there is much else to heed,' he said to Gandalf.

He can, apparently, only spare an hour - yet how long has he spent staring at the broken horn on his lap?

'That is the horn that Boromir always wore!' cried Pippin.
'Verily,' said Denethor. 'And in my turn I bore it, and so did each eldest son of our house, far back into the vanished years before the failing of the kings, since Vorondil father of Mardil hunted the wild kine of Araw in the far fields of Rhun.

This is an appeal to past glory, by a man who has abandoned himself to his fear of total loss. He is conflating history with ‘mythology’. Araw is Orome, & it was believed that the cattle Vorondil hunted had originally belonged to the Valar. It is an appeal to the dead, to those who have gone West. To Denethor the broken horn is a symbol of the breaking of his & Gondor’s link not just with its history but with its glory, & ultimately with the Valar themselves. The future is shrouded in a black cloud & offers nothing, the past has been taken away. In this context, I wonder about his reaction to Pippin’s sword:

A pale smile, like a gleam of cold sun on a winter's evening, passed over the old man's face; but he bent his head and held out his hand, laying the shards of the horn aside. 'Give me the weapon!' he said.
Pippin lifted it and presented the hilt to him. 'Whence came this?' said Denethor. 'Many, many years lie on it. Surely this is a blade wrought by our own kindred in the North in the deep past?'

In an early draft he calls the blade a ‘sax’, which Tolkien changed, probably because of the ‘primary world’ connections it would conjure up, but its interesting that he should use that term. Denethor’s reaction perhaps implies that he sees in Pippin’s blade a whole & solid connection with the past glories of Gondor, but more importantly, his use of the phrase ‘our kindred’ seems to conflict with his later dismissal of Aragorn as ‘last of a ragged house long bereft of lordship & dignity.’ The ones who made the barrow blade,’in the deep past’, were his (taking ‘our’ to be a use of the ‘Royal We) own kindred, their decendents are ‘a ragged house long bereft of lordship & dignity - when did that particular break happen?

The chapter ends with the (as I think Tolkien called it) ‘Homeric procession’ of forces from outlying parts of the Realm. Their appearance is greeted with joy, yet their passing into the city perhaps deepens the inhabitants’ sense of despair. They hoped for thousands & got hundreds. They need Rohan. The great Darkness sweeps over them in the night, & all the lights in the city have been dimmed. Even Gandalf states ‘There will be no dawn.’ On a first reading we feel their despair, on subsequent readings we know it is mistaken, & that a dawn will come, with the crowing of a cock, the departure of the Lord of the Nazgul - never to return - & the horns of Rohan. Another eucatasptrophe. It is always darkest before the dawn - even when we know the dawn is inevitable. This chapter, as much as it is about Pippin, is about Denethor. We may see the events through Pippin’s eyes, but on another level we see things from Denethor’s perspective: we adopt, without realising it, Denethor’s point of view. Its as if he truly is Gondor. His spirit has settled on the city & on us.

Yet the words of Beregond also echo through this chapter:

'Nay, though all things must come utterly to an end in time, Gondor shall not perish yet. Not though the walls be taken by a reckless foe that will build a hill of carrion before them. There are still other fastnesses, and secret ways of escape into the mountains. Hope and memory shall live still in some hidden valley where the grass is green.'

[Hilde Bracegirdle]

The idea that Denethor has begun seeing himself as Gondor by this point rings very true and explains some of the Steward’s more mystifying behavior very well. But as for his seeming inconsistency of thought regarding lordship and dignity of his northern kindred, I would hazard to say that he probably thought them less worthy since Arvedui's time, when they had lost all the northern kingdoms. Though I doubt Denethor would have accepted Arvedui himself as king of Gondor viewing the traditional line held by Gondor regarding them.

To be a bit charitable to him on how he was spending his time, it is possible that Denethor only found time to meditate deeply on the broken horn while waiting for Gandalf and Pippin to arrive. And it appears that he was sharp at this point, not off in the deep end at all, even in Gandalf's eyes. So this 'prop' might have been chosen for it's effect in supporting the steward's show of real grief.

”Folly?” said Gandalf. “Nay, my lord, when you are a dotard you will die.”

Gandalf says this after he stared down Denethor. Could they have been engaging in some form of osanwe? Tolkien hints, and it seems as though Gandalf contented himself that Denthor’s knowledge was due do the keen sight of Gondorian lords, perhaps a lesser form of osanwe, but it seems as though this display may have served a purpose for Denethor. Perhaps to help screen from Gandalf the knowledge gained via palantír rather than from his messengers. As as for the folly, perhaps Denethor truely recognized his error before his demise.

Also surprising was Pippin's notice of the joy under Gandalf's sorrow. It seems a very Christian concept.

Ah yes, can't forget to mention this little quote, seeing where we are discussing this!

'It came out of the mounds that lie on the borders of my country,' said Pippin. "but only evil wights dwell there now, and I will not willingly tell more of them."

Sound advice from Pippin? Come now, not all of us are evil!

[Firefoot]

"Folly?” said Gandalf. “Nay, my lord, when you are a dotard you will die.”

Another interesting thing about this quote is that it is a nice bit of foreshadowing/foretelling. Dotage is defined as (dictionary.com):

The loss of previously intact mental powers; senility.

I'd say this certainly applies to the despair and death of Denethor, not to be getting ahead of myself to much. The palantir certainly destroys Denethor's hope and sanity enough that he loses his mental powers; he truly does fall into dotage, and guess what? He kills himself, fulfilling Gandalf's words. I had never really noticed this quote before, instead focusing on what followed it, but it really is an interesting line.