Boromir, Gollum and Eowyn

[davem]

I think Fordim's point about love is well made. These characters all grow in their capacity to love. They begin, as Merry says, with the capacity to love what they are 'fitted to love', because they 'must start somewhere'. Their experiences enable them to love more deeply, & specifically to love 'higher' things. This is mot to say that 'higher things' are beyond thair knowledge from the start. Boromir loves his ideal 'Gondor' in much the same way as his brother - even if their concepts of that ideal differ. Eowyn loves Aragorn for the same reason - he represents an ideal. But these ideals are 'gropings' for something 'other', so to an extent they are fantasies & have little grounding in reality.

Boromir in the end discovers a higher love - not one that he could have concieved of at the start of his journey. He discovers that to die an ugly death, not on some great field of battle, with banners flying, surrounded by knights in shining armour, but on a lonely hilside, protecting two helpless hobbits, is a true sacrifice, & he is ennobled by it in a way that falling on the battlefield & being carried in state to Rath Dinen would not do. His self sacrifice there is what enables him to rise above his former state.

Eowyn discovers the same thing - she had sought a glorious death on the field, but in the end she stands against the WitchKing, not wishing for a glorious death which would bring her renown as well as peace, but only to protect Theoden.

It is this humbling that enables them to rise above their former state & gives them the capacity to transcend what they had been.

What they all discover is that these high dreams to which they had commited themsleves are not true. They are fantasies of which they need to be broken if they are to become fully & truly human.

We see the same with Frodo, who sets out to 'save the Shire' - not the real Shire, but his fantasy ideal of it. His journey will break him, but that very breaking will enable him to be remade.

They may all only be capable of 'loving what they are fitted to love' at the start, the simple everyday things - but each character's journey will enable them (through breaking them) to become fitted to love greater things.

What I find interesting is that these characters at the start love things which they are not 'fitted to love', so what they feel is not truly 'love' but rather desire. It is an ideal they yearn for. Yet it is this desire for an ideal which inspires them. The ideal exists to motivate them into action, to inspire them. Its what makes them set foot upon the Road which they believe will lead them to that ideal. Yet the journey breaks them & they end up, reborn, at a totally different location. Not where they expected to be, but in the place they should be.

Arwen is broken by the loss of Aragorn - actually, by the simple fact of death. She is broken by what we may think of as a simple 'fact'. Yet it is only a simple fact to mortals like us. To her, it is 'wrong'. She is confronted by a cosmic wrong. Its the inescapable inevitability of it which is too much for her. I suppose its the same for all the characters - for Frodo perhaps most intensely - or maybe we just see it expressed most intensely in his experience.

Love for the 'ideal' inspires & the quest to attain it breaks the questor - & that in itself is a kind of death - even if the individual doesn't actually die. That death, that breaking, is what allows transcendence, & enables the individual not only to love higher things, but to love them truly.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Some nice points davem (as always) but I think that you are shifting my point a bit. I was not arguing that E, G, and B are in love with (or desire) the 'wrong' things, or simple things and that they then learn to love the 'right' things: what I'm saying is that their journey is one specifically from self-love to love of the other.

I point this out because in your post you seem to be aligning BEG with characters like Frodo and Merry. The way in which you are putting them all together works well with your formulation of growing love, but I would resist putting Merry or Frodo into the same 'camp' with BEG in terms of the self-love I am working through. I simply do not see the other 'heroes' as suffering from self love. I think that the story is really quite clear: any form of loving the self before or more than the other is extremely dangerous -- Sauron springs to mind, here. . .

I want to retain a very special sense of the role of Boromir, Eowyn and Gollum that excludes the other characters (their growth from self-love to other-love). Of course, I think that these characters must work in comparison or relation with others, but I really do want to figure out how they are unique in the story.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Fordim

but I really do want to figure out how they are unique in the story

.

I suppose I must ask to what extent they actually are 'unique' - as opposed to simply being 'extremes'. Many characters display this kind of self love, so we should perhaps beware of making it the be-all & end all of what motivates these three.

To what extent is their self love their defining characteristic? Actually, I don't seeEowyn displaying self love so much as self loathing. While Boromir & Smeagol wish to live she wishes rather to die. They wish to acheive some kind of worldly success & live to experience the fruits of it; she wishes for an end of what she sees as worldly toil & suffering.

This perhaps separates her out from them, rather than binding her in with them. Of course there is her love for Aragorn, which awakens the possibility of escape from her death wish, but as soon as she realises that he is beyond her she slips instantly back into it. So her natural mind set is not the same as theirs. Boromir, as far as we know, has never desired to die as Eowyn does. He wishes to live & lead. Of course, a glorious death in battle ould not be anathema to him - its perhaps (as far as he's concerned) the right way to go down - in the proverbial 'blaze of glory' - but its not something he would look for in order to escape from the burden of living. In fact he seems rather to relish life. He perhaps includes his dying as part of his 'failure'. Eowyn on the other hand seems to consider death merely as a way out. 'Living' is her failure.

And Smeagol never, as far as we know, wishes for death. Like Boromir he wants success - to live forever with his precious. Eowyn may opt for death in battle - but that's natural in a scion of the House of Eorl, but I suspect that if she had succumbed to some serious illness she would not have fought it. She had no desire to live.

This is why I'm uncertain about linking them together merely through 'self-love'. Boromir & Smeagol, perhaps, but not Eowyn. We could connect her despair with Frodo's final state. They both despair of finding peace within the world, & seek to leave it. Frodo seeks healing, yes, but mainly an end of his despair & pain. He goes in the the West because of a promise of such healing. Eowyn seems to see Aragorn as a 'symbol' of such healing for herself, so when that chance is snatched away she reverts to her original state of hopelessness & wishes to end it all. How different would Frodo's state be if he had not had the option of passing West?

[Mithalwen]

This is well worth HerenIstarion-ing