Matter of choice

[Boromir88]

I'm Boromir's #1 supporter

Is that a challenge?

Honestly though, excellent post (I wish there was a thumbs up smilie )

He questioned their wisdom over what seemed to be the right choice---take the Ring and use it through strength of arms.

And being a warrior and a commander this reaction to finding out about the Ring isn't unusual.

if Frodo and Sam had gone into Mordor openly without Gollum's "secret way" there's no doubt they would have failed. I see it as all about fate in Tolkien's world, and in ours.

In more ways than just that considering Tolkien said no one had the strength to destroy the Ring:

Also, so great was the Ring's power of lust, that anyone who used it became mastered by it; it was beyond the strength of any will (even his own) to injure it, cast it away, or neglect it. So he thought.~Letter to Milton Waldman

The so he thought adds a bit of ambiguity but this is something Tolkien backs up with in Letter 246:

At the last moment the pressure of the Ring would reach its maximum - impossible, I should have said, for any one to resist,...

So, Frodo embarked on a quest that he could not accomplish. And you are right in the fact that Boromir was actually logically right. I say logically because Boromir not have hope, or maybe just didn't invision, the higher powers (in this case Eru) getting involved:

Frodo deserved all honour because he spend every last drop of his power of will and body, and that was just sufficient to bring him to the destined point, and no further. Few others, possibly no others of his time, would have got so far. The Other Power then took over: the Writer of the Story (by which I do not mean myself), 'that one ever-present Person who is never absent and never named'~Letter 192

And this causes Boromir's ultimate downfall to the Ring. His narrow-mindedness in seeing a short term solution, believing that only through strength can Gondor win. He did not have the knowledge, or trust to hope in the way that those silly wise people did.

[MatthewM]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

Is that a challenge?

haha, indeed

Originally Posted by Boromir88

Honestly though, excellent post (I wish there was a thumbs up smilie)

Thanks!

Originally Posted by Boromir88

And this causes Boromir's ultimate downfall to the Ring. His narrow-mindedness in seeing a short term solution, believing that only through strength can Gondor win. He did not have the knowledge, or trust to hope in the way that those silly wise people did.

Silly wise people...

Oh and that quote from the Letter #192 is very interesting. I've read it before, but that just refreshed my memory, and when I read it I immediately made the connection Frodo = Mercy, in which he had all along, as did Faramir, two of the story's chief heroes.