The Breaking of the Fellowship

[Valandil]

I'm doing a slow (and enjoyable) re-read of LOTR, after having done the same with The Hobbit.

Just about to start the last chapter of FOTR, and this thought struck me: if Boromir had not tried to take the Ring from Frodo and spooked him into leaving (eventually with Sam) - how do you think the party would have split up? Let's also assume they make a division before the Orcs arrive.

Would it be Frodo, Sam, and maybe Gimli to Mordor - the rest to Minas Tirith? Or would Aragorn feel like he should go with Frodo (without Gandalf there), Legolas want to join Gimli, and Merry & Pippin want to stick with Frodo too - leaving only Boromir to go to Minas Tirith alone?

Or some other combination to Mordor? The four hobbits only? Aragorn with Frodo and Sam? Both Legolas and Gimli with Frodo and Sam?

What do you think?

 

[Olorgando]

I think the Breaking of the Fellowship is the most brilliant bit of writing JRRT did, right after his utter masterpiece "The Council of Elrond".
Of the original nine of the Fellowship, eight remain (Gandalf, "re-colored", re-appears a bit later).
Four Hobbits, two Men, one each of Elves and Dwarves.

Who has to go in the direction of Mordor? Frodo ... and with him his devoted Sam.
Who has to be kept away from the quest at this point? Men, especially Boromir.

Solution: kill the character Sean Bean played (which has become something of a running joke in the film industry by now), give Aragorn a different task.
Merry and Pippin: especially the latter would have been a serious hindrance to Frodo and Sam's quest of secrecy. But then, Pippin did drop the brooch that Aragorn was shortly later to identify. And in the end, these two Hobbits manage, through Treebeard, to get the Ents "not amused" (though not in the utterly imbecilic reversal of the book that PJ perpetrated).

Which leaves Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli to hunt the Uruk-hai captors of Merry and Pippin. Saving them being a task that Éomer and his Rohirrim actually accomplished without knowing it. The rest of the story (as everything I've blabbed about here) is found in JRRT's writings ...

 

[CheriptheRipper]

I think the Breaking of the Fellowship is the most brilliant bit of writing JRRT did, right after his utter masterpiece "The Council of Elrond".

I could never quite understand the breaking of the fellowship, despite the constant danger they were in everyone just let Boromir wander off 🤔

 

[Deimos]

I could never quite understand the breaking of the fellowship, despite the constant danger they were in everyone just let Boromir wander off 🤔

They didn't "let Boromir wander off".
Everyone was waiting for Frodo to decide for the Fellowship to either go south with Boromir to Minas Tirith or turn East to Mordor.
Aragorn gave him leave to go off a little ways by himself to think, and the other seven remained near the boats, grouped in a circle, making small talk about their recent adventures.
When Sam turned to say something to Boromir, "it was then that they discovered that Boromir, who at first had been sitting silent on the outside of the circle, was no longer there."

 

[Ent]

Ent has a hard time seeing it could have been otherwise.
Elrond at the Council said "these particular people are meant to be here, though we may not understand why." (Ent's rendition.)
Boromor showed his true colors at the council, clearly seen as too attached to the ring and power. (A shadow of his father.)
Yet he was 'part of the company anyway', though Elrond and Gandalf may not have fully understood why they allowed him. (Eru was in motion.)

Aragorn's choice to follow after the two captured hobbits rather than chase after the Ring (and Frodo) is instructive in many ways. What a trial that was for him. We undoubtedly don't give it the credit it is due.

As has been noted by @Olorgando, the entire sequence from pre-council to break-up is genius. We consider them two separate events, but as with all LoTR, they are integrally connected - a continuous, necessary flow.

Man has always been the weakest of the races...with a few exceptiions. Isildur showing his total failure quickly, 'great man' though he was, not listening to council and taking the ring as 'weregild' for the death of his kin, after only a short time of possession of the ring. It of course betrayed him to his death.

(The hobbits, one of the race of man, may be a bit of a hardy exception...or at least some of them. I doubt Lobelia would have done well with the ring for example...! But Gandalf does speak of the hobbits as being a surprise in a general way.)

By the time we get to the events of the Ring, the great strength of the Men of old has been slowly corrupted by power, greed, and lust for everlasting life, the race weakening through the ages. Then of course, the Elves were 'diminishing' and leaving Middle-earth. So by the 4th age, finally the 'age of man', what we have left is the weakest, most poverty-stricken bunch of folks of the world left over from the glories of old now 'in charge' of Eru's creation.

Oh what stories could be written about the continuing decline, before at last Eru himself comes and renews it all, the fullness of Melkor's fall having been dealt out to the original plan, undoing all the harm from the beginning.

Ent will leave it to the Film Industry to choose to alter the unity developed through Tolkien's pen and take it in less meaningful directions. Ent is still working to piece together what has been written, as its depths of meaning and display of the nature of things are greater than we know.

Perhaps in a few decades, the time will come to explore what is not there. For now, plumbing what is there is enough.

 

[Radaghast]

They wouldn't have had the luxury of making a decision. If the encounter between Frodo and Boromir doesn't happen, the former never flees and very likely ends up captured by the orcs.