Humility & Heroes

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

What's really interesting is White ends up mightier in the end anyway...or does it really?

An interesting thought (as were those in the rest of the post ). But this, I think, is an intriguing indication of Tolkien's notions of humility, in particular humility vs hubris. The proud crow about their achievements; the humble do not. Frodo discounts his own part in destroying the Ring, thinking Sam the true hero. Aragorn does not follow the Numenorean tradition of putting the crown on his own head, but humbly acknowledges that many others, Gandalf in particular, were responsible for this victory. And for Gandalf, while there appears to be satisfaction in what was achieved, he never gives the impression that he feels his White triumphed over Sauron's Black. It was an end achieved by many, and he played a part in it, but he never treats it as a personal victory (not that we see, at any rate). One can just bet that the bad guys would have been quite personal in their moment of triumph, just as we see that Saruman is equally personal in his defeat, carrying grudges and bitterness to the very end. The heroes instead take defeat in a different "personal" sense; they accept that they, personally, failed. They don't push the blame for it off on others, even when others have a lot of share in that blame. Gandalf kicks himself for being foolish enough to fall into Saruman's trap; he pities Saruman for having fallen so far into evil. Saruman, conversely, blames Gandalf for his inability to achieve his goal of getting the Ring, as well as anyone who helped his adversary, so he has to go ruin the Shire just to get even with those he blames for his defeat (not failure; defeat).

Given that I'm in the middle of therapy trying to recover from the post-traumatic shock of being raised by a narcissitic alcoholic mother, I'm finding the narcissism of Tolkien's villains rather intriguing. Thank goodness it was Gandalf I decided to pick as my role model when I was a kid.