📖👀 Chapter 7 (📔Book V): The Pyre of Denethor

[Rivendell_librarian]

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us
There are a lot of decisions in The Lord of the Rings. Gandalf and Galadriel choose not to take the Ring, Saruman decides to throw his lot in with Sauron, Frodo decides to take the Ring to Mordor even though he doesn't know the way, Frodo and the Fellowship decide to go through Moria, Boromir decides to try to take the Ring from Frodo, Frodo decided to cross the Anduin and go on alone, Aragorn decides to follow after Merry and Pippin, Theoden decides to answer Gondor's call for aid.

Here Denethor decides to immolate himself and his wounded son Faramir having been deluded by what Sauron let him see in his precious palantir. Pippin decides to find Gandalf to ask him to stop the madness of Denethor and save Faramir. Beregond, the soldier in the third company of the citadel decides to try to save Faramir and so defy Denethor. He even kills the porter of the gate leading to the House of the Stewards

And so Gandalf decides to save Faramir rather than get involved with the battle for Middle Earth raging outside the gate of the city. He gives Denethor the choice of going out to fight but he rejects it and so chooses an ignoble death over a noble one, in contrast to Theoden. Had Gandalf chosen to go out into the battle would that have saved Theoden. It's impossible to know and as we read in the previous chapter No few had fallen, renowned or nameless, captain or soldier.

I was struck by the similarity of Denethor gripping his precious palantir as the flames consume him to Gollum clutching his Precious as he falls into the flames of Mount Doom. Apparently, the palantir survived but all that could be seen in it from then on were two hands enveloped in flames. I was also struck by the fact that the tombs of the kings and the stewards of Gondor were tucked away at the back of the city and the way guarded by a porter, whereas in Rohan the kings were buried outside the city in a public place that anyone could visit at any time.

That has been a gallop through the first seven chapters of The Return of the King. Now is time to draw breath in the Houses of Healing and look forward to the final acts of the epic.

 

[Eljorahir]

Comparing Denethor’s words (at two points in his life) regarding what it means to be The Steward of Gondor and the potential Return of the King…

To Frodo at Henneth Annun, Faramir recalls his father teaching him and Boromir the ethic and the mission of the House of the Stewards:
‘And this I remember of Boromir as a boy, when we together learned the tale of our sires and the history of our city, that always it displeased him that his father was not king. “How many hundreds of years needs it to make a steward a king, if the king returns not?” he asked. “Few years, maybe, in other places of less royalty,” my father answered. “In Gondor ten thousand years would not suffice.” Alas! Poor Boromir...’

And now, alas! Poor Denethor, corrupted:
‘But I say to thee, Gandalf Mithrandir, I will not be thy tool! I am Steward of the House of Anarion. I will not step down to be the dotard chamberlain of an upstart. Even were his claim proved to me, still he comes but of the line of Isildur. I will not bow to such a one, last of a ragged house long bereft of lordship and dignity.’

(Also, what’s with that “Gandalf Mithrandir”? Both names used together? I suppose it’s kind of like calling someone Legolas Greenleaf.)