XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien
From: Troels@ThisIsFake.invalid
In message
Stan Brown spoke these staves:
>
> On Fri, 14 Oct 2011 20:48:32 +0200, Troels Forchhammer wrote:
>>
>> The corrupting influence of knowing about the power of the Ring
>> obviously doesn't depend on seeing the Ring.
>>
> [snip]
>>
>> Saruman and Galadriel are tempted by their own knowledge of the
>> power that the One Ring can give them while Gollum is attracted
>> by he doesn't know what -- in between there is a range of
>> possible reactions including Boromir's.
>
> I think there's a difference there, though. Saruman was not
> corrupted by the Ring.
I don't really think that anyone is corrupted /by/ the Ring, meaning
that the Ring is no an active agent in the corruption as such. The
corruption is due to the desire for the Ring, but it comes from within,
from the person him- or herself.
> He became corrupt, and then when he found out about the Ring he
> desired it as a means to the power he already wanted. The
> difference is subtle, but I think important.
I think it's a bit more complex than that: the desire for power was the
nature of the corruption, and the desire for the Ring and the desire
for its power cannot, I think, be separated in the way that you
suggest. Gandalf strongly suggests that the corruption of Saruman was
due to his long study of Ring-lore, and I think it was the very study
of the powers of the great Rings, and of the Master Ring in particular,
that aroused the desire for power in Saruman (and in particular the
desire for the One Ring). In other words, I believe that the desire for
power, the corruption, and particularly the slow surrender to the
Ring's lure to power, are all coeval, and it is, as I read it, indeed
his knowledge of the Rings of Power that corrupts Saruman.
> Boromir, on the other hand, *was* corrupted by the Ring. An
> honorable man who didn't seek power beyond his position as heir to
> Gondor, he fell under its influence without realizing that he was
> doing so.
I can't subscribe to your description of Boromir -- if I didn't know
better, I'd think you were describing Jackson's Boromir ;) Tolkien's
Boromir is extremely proud and seeks his own glory. Remember Faramir's
description of his own brother, whom he loved, and how Boromir would
have reacted to /Isildur's Bane/:
If it were a thing that gave advantage in battle. I can
well believe that Boromir, the proud and fearless, often
rash, ever anxious for the victory of Minas Tirith (and
his own glory therein), might desire such a thing and be
allured by it. (/LotR/, IV, 5 'The Window on the West')
Again, it is, in my view, /not/ the Ring that corrupts Boromir: it is
Boromir that corrupts Boromir because he becomes enamoured with the
vision of himself as the powerful ruler, the Ringlord Boromir.
> Boromir's motives were good, in a sense: not dominion for its own
> sake, but victory over Gondor's enemies so that Gondor could have
> peace and prosperity.
That was Faramir -- Boromir's motive was glory, power and dominion for
Boromir. It always 'displeased him that his father was not king' and so
he asked Denethor 'How many hundreds of years needs it to make a
steward a king, if the king returns not?' -- ultimately, however,
Boromir wanted /himself/ to become the king of Gondor.
In the end Boromir realizes where his pride and his quest for glory has
taken him, but before that his pride leads to him through desire for
power to the madness for domination.
> Of course, that was a cheat of the Ring:
I don't think so -- I think it was a cheat of Boromir. It was Boromir
himself who was proud enough to believe that /he/ could control the
Master Ring against the advice of Gandalf and Elrond, that didn't come
from the Ring.
All of this is, I know, more or less the direct opposite of what I have
said earlier. I know that I have more or less made a complete about-
turn on this issue, but I have come to believe that my earlier
assessment of the level of direct agency by the One Ring was wrong: I
now advocate a far less directly active Ring.
The visions of grandeur that we see in Boromir, Gollum and Sam are not,
as I now believe, in any way induced by the Ring. The Ring never works
on the 'good side' of anyone -- a desire for greater power is /never/
in itself good, even when, as with Gandalf, it is a desire for power to
do good: Gandalf realizes that this desire should be rejected, Sam
realizes that he doesn't need all that power, and Boromir ultimately
realizes that his desire was evil, but in no case did the Ring /create/
the desire as such, nor did it work on what was good in the person, but
with where the person was found lacking -- in pride, thievery and
foremost in lust for power.
I imagine that encountering the Ring is rather like meeting with some
top people from the mafia that offer you the presidency of the USA and
a suitcase with a trillion dollars (rather a large suitcase, but you
know what I mean) -- they assure you that it is completely without any
obligations and all you have to do is to is to reach out for it. In a
normal life, this would be so incredibly unrealistic as to not matter
at all, but if you suddenly find yourself in the situation and you
become completely convinced that this is so, then the desire will seem
increased because the temptation is so much more acute.
In the same way it is a part of the power to temptation of the One Ring
that the person becomes convinced that it will give them an even
greater power than it really could -- /The/ Gollum or the victorious
Captain of the West.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo
- /The Fellowship of the Ring/ (J.R.R. Tolkien)
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
|
