Re-reading the Lord of the Rings, Chapter 23
Only indirectly does Aragorn get on his path, for still obligation binds him. Obligation being of course most natural for a king, but not really the obligation that Aragorn honours here, although it always pays to prove one's worth in small things.
There is not much to be said about this chapter, sadness dominates it, sadness over all the hopes that are being disappointed, lying somewhere at the bottom of the sea of forgetfulness.
And Aragorn is as much to blame for the mess as Boromir, since he failed to maintain order.
But then again, only loss teaches necessity, a king can't go sightseeing on a whim.
And a conspirator can't break the understanding, on which the conspiracy relies. It causes upheaval, for which the company might not be prepared.
Yet... the Company wasn't prepared either way and Boromir certainly paid his debt. It is ill to think otherwise. What of Frodo finally succumbing to The Ring? If there is mercy for Gollum, there's also mercy for Boromir.
One of the many things that the film does badly, one for which Tolkien is partly to blame himself, for he introduced the notion that evil loses over time the ability to disguise itself, which works as a metaphor for a particular nuisance or holds true as a comment on the effect of repeated frustration, but is itself a nuisance and a cause for repeated frustration, when taken as a law that dictates that by the Third Age evil and ugly have become the same, is to cast Boromir as a man who just can't be trusted and thus evoking first: Told you so! and then: See what you got for it!, which is of course pretty Orc-like itself.
And while I'm at it... Tolkien really did a good job on the Elves, I've been through all the subtleties already, but as a narrator he made a major blunder, when he introduced the Elves as the good guys. After that the average reader simply will pay no attention whatsoever to the problems that the Elves may have. They are the good guys, who have been rewarded with immortality, nimbleness and beauty for their virtue. An ideal that we humans should strive to emulate. This is not Tolkien's conception of the Elves and not his intent. But against his intention Tolkien created Sirens, which have led many astray, despite the fact that he has meticulously pointed out the right path.
Actually, he broke the rules. Fantasy creatures are allowed in epics, but they must represent imbalances in human nature and do so intuitively, like it is the case with Dwarves and Giants, for instance, but not with Elves, though the latter might change, if everybody will feel in the face of Hipsters as John Boorman felt, when he made Zardoz, for only then does the epic pull its audience towards balance in human nature.
There is not much to be said about this chapter, sadness dominates it, sadness over all the hopes that are being disappointed, lying somewhere at the bottom of the sea of forgetfulness.
And Aragorn is as much to blame for the mess as Boromir, since he failed to maintain order.
But then again, only loss teaches necessity, a king can't go sightseeing on a whim.
And a conspirator can't break the understanding, on which the conspiracy relies. It causes upheaval, for which the company might not be prepared.
Yet... the Company wasn't prepared either way and Boromir certainly paid his debt. It is ill to think otherwise. What of Frodo finally succumbing to The Ring? If there is mercy for Gollum, there's also mercy for Boromir.
One of the many things that the film does badly, one for which Tolkien is partly to blame himself, for he introduced the notion that evil loses over time the ability to disguise itself, which works as a metaphor for a particular nuisance or holds true as a comment on the effect of repeated frustration, but is itself a nuisance and a cause for repeated frustration, when taken as a law that dictates that by the Third Age evil and ugly have become the same, is to cast Boromir as a man who just can't be trusted and thus evoking first: Told you so! and then: See what you got for it!, which is of course pretty Orc-like itself.
And while I'm at it... Tolkien really did a good job on the Elves, I've been through all the subtleties already, but as a narrator he made a major blunder, when he introduced the Elves as the good guys. After that the average reader simply will pay no attention whatsoever to the problems that the Elves may have. They are the good guys, who have been rewarded with immortality, nimbleness and beauty for their virtue. An ideal that we humans should strive to emulate. This is not Tolkien's conception of the Elves and not his intent. But against his intention Tolkien created Sirens, which have led many astray, despite the fact that he has meticulously pointed out the right path.
Actually, he broke the rules. Fantasy creatures are allowed in epics, but they must represent imbalances in human nature and do so intuitively, like it is the case with Dwarves and Giants, for instance, but not with Elves, though the latter might change, if everybody will feel in the face of Hipsters as John Boorman felt, when he made Zardoz, for only then does the epic pull its audience towards balance in human nature.
Eingetragen Am/um
11:14
