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warrioreowynofrohan · 4 years

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On Gondor and Nationalism

Gondor, and particularly Denethor and Boromir, is characterized more than any other realm in The Lord of the Rings by nationalism, and there is a sharp contrast between its actual role in the war and the way Denethor and Boromir percieve its role. Two quotes in The Return of the King form the core of Tolkien’s discussion of nationalism, and both are conversations between Denethor and Gandalf.

The first:

Denethor: Yet the Lord of Gondor is not to be made the tool of other men’s purposes, however worthy. And to him there is no purpose higher in the world as it now stands than the good of Gondor; and the rule of Gondor, my lord, is mine and no other man’s, unless the king should come again.

Gandalf: ...I will say this: the rule of no realm is mine, neither of Gondor nor any other, great or small. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I should not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit or flower again in days to come. For I also am a steward. Did you not know?

And the second, discussing Denethor’s views on what should have been done with the Ring:

Denethor: It should have been kept, hidden, hidden dark and deep. Not used, I say, unless at the uttermost end of need, but set beyond his grasp, save by a victory so final that what then befell would not trouble us, being dead.

Gandalf: You think, as is your wont, my lord, of Gondor only. Yet there are other men and other lives, and time still to be. And for me, I pity even his slaves.

Denethor: And where will other men look for help if Gondor falls?

Both of these conversations point to the fundamental flaw in Denethor’s worldview, and it is a nuanced one. He is not the weak, selfish old man presented in the films; he is intelligent, pragmatic, and realistic, and his strategy and tactics are thoughtful. Again unlike the movies, the mission he sends Faramir on - to prevent the armies of Mordor from crossing Anduin, and cause them heavy losses if they do cross - is not a pointless suicide mission but a crucial and tactically necessary battle. He is wrong in his attitude towards and treatment of Faramir, not in sending him into danger.

Denethor represents (as, in another way, does Saruman) the wisdom of the world. His statement that, as the steward of Gondor, his highest purpose must be the good of Gondor, would be approved by many political theorists. But in the wider vision of the story of The Lord of the Rings, expressed by Gandalf, it is critically flawed in its narrowness and arrogance. The war against Sauron is not about the victory or preservation of one realm alone; it is about saving anything and everything good in Middle-earth, in the present or the future. This is the moment when Gandalf comes closest, of any point in the story, to stating outright who he is and what his purpose is; he doesn’t say outright that he was sent by the Valar to preserve the world against Sauron, but he comes near enough to it that Denethor, an intelligent and learned man, could pick up on it if he wanted to. It is important to Gandalf to at least try to get Denethor to understand the importance of what he’s saying.

In the second conversation, though, Denethor has fallen still farther from the truth. In the first one, he only said that Gondor’s good had to be his highest priority, as its ruler; now he says that if Minas Tirith falls, Sauron’s conquered the world anyway and it doesn’t matter if he gets the Ring. In his eyes, Minas Tirith is the only thing standing against Sauron, and the only thing that matters; its defeat is to him synonymous with the destruction of the world. People across Middle-earth are fighting against Sauron: on the very day of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, the elves of Lothlórien are fighting off an assault by Sauron’s forces, as are the wood-elves in Mirkwood; the Battle of Dale in which the kings of both Dale and the Lonely Mountain fall will be two days later. Gondor is not alone in this war; it is not the only realm fighting and not the only one whose battles matter. It is not the bulwark sheltering the peaceful rest of the world from war; the rest of the world is fighting. But Denethor chooses to regard it as the only place of importance.

These are perspectives that he passed on, in part, to his eldest son, as seen in some of Boromir’s deeds at the Council of Elrond as well as in his later temptation by the Ring. At the Council, he takes the tone that Gondor is unacknowledged and unappreciated and is doing all the work of fighting Sauron: “Few, I deem, know of our deeds, and therefore guess little of their peril, if we should fail at last...By our valour the wild folk of the East are still restrained, and the terror of Morgul kept at bay; and thus alone are peace and freedom maintained in the lands behind us, bulwark of the West...those who shelter behind us give us praise, if ever they hear our name: much praise but little help.” He also - very importantly - instantly conflates “Doom” in the prophecy he hears with “the Doom of Minas Tirith”: the same thing Denethor is doing when he says that, if Minas Tirith falls, the world has already fallen and there’s no point in keeping the Ring away from Sauron. When he is told that the Ring cannot be wielded to defeat Sauron by force of arms, he acts as though the other members of the Council are abandoning Gondor. And so the Ring tempts him with the power to save Minas Tirith, because that’s the only way he can concieve of for the world to be saved.

Aragorn’s response to Boromir, in speaking of the Rangers, is not a counter-boast but an attempt (like Gandalf’s with Denethor) to give Boromir a broader perspective: many people are fighting and resisting Sauron and other evil things, in their own ways (“the servants of the Enemy...are found in many places, not in Mordor only”). Gondor is not alone; it is playing one particular role, while others play other roles.

This attitude, that its battles are the only ones that matter, is quite unique to Gondor. Legolas and Gimli, fighting in the wars of Rohan and Gondor, recognize that their kin cannot come to them: “They have no need to march to war...war already marches on their own lands”. The hobbits continually think little of themselves and their actions, even while achieving great things. (One example that amuses me is the contrast at the Council of Elrond between Boromir, who thinks his comparatively uneventful journey quite heroic - “since the way was full of doubt and danger, I took the journey upon myself” - and Frodo, who regards his achievement of escaping to Rivendell while pursued by all nine of the Nazgûl, and surviving a wound that would have been worse-than-fatal to most other mortals, with an attitude of ‘well, I rather muffed that up’.) The Ents very much have their own priorites - Treebeard says “I am not really on anyone’s side, as no one is really on my side - no one cares for the woods these days” - but they involve themselves in the war beyond merely defending Fangorn, by destroying the orcs who invade Rohan from the north. Théoden likewise keeps the big picture, not just the narrow ‘good of Rohan’ in mind, continuing with his army to the relief of Gondor even as news comes of Rohan being invaded from the north and east (the aforementioned orcs whom the Ents deal with).

Frodo comes closest to understanding what Gandalf is saying in the first-quoted conversation with Denethor. After seeing the Witch-king’s army march out from Minas Morgul, Frodo is tempted to despair: “Even if my errand is performed, no one will ever know. There will be no one I can tell. It will be in vain.” But he resists this: what he had to do, he had to do, if he could, and whether Faramir or Aragorn or Elrond or Gandalf or Galadriel or anyone else ever knew about it was beside the purpose. Aragorn, too, understands it: the march on the Black Gate is the antithesis of Denethor’s perspective: sacrifice of the armies of Gondor and Rohan without even knowing what may happen after they are defeated, in the hope that they may enable someone else to win the victory. They have no way of guessing that Frodo and Sam will reach Mount Doom at the same time as the armies clash at the Black Gate; their hope is founded on the idea of distracting Sauron long enough that Frodo and Sam can destroy the Ring days later, after the armies are all dead.

And Denethor and Boromir’s attitudes are all the more ironic because, in the end, Gondor doesn’t hold up very well. They fall apart and stop even trying to man the walls of Minas Tirith after a mere two days of siege, when food supplies haven’t even begun to be an issue. For a fortified city, especially one as well-designed for defense as Minas Tirith, that’s a very short amount of time to hold out against a siege! During the march on the Black Gate, even the sight of the Plains of Gorgoroth is too much for some of the men of Gondor and Rohan, and they can’t keep going. Yes, they’re just regular people and have never seen anything this horrible before, but Frodo and Sam and now Pippin are also just regular people used to peaceful lives, and they keep going. The purpose of this comparison isn’t to run down the Men of Gondor, but to point out how deeply wrong the idea is of them being the only ones whose fight matters, the only ones with the nerve and determination to protect the rest of the world. The hobbits, who don’t think of themselves as anything special or important or strong, are the ones who save the world, and they do it through hope, endurance, self-sacrifice, love, and compassion, not through military might.

#tolkien #the lord of the rings #denethor #boromir #gondor #aragorn #frodo baggins #gandalf #politics

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semusepsu · 3 years

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i wanna watch the two towers again. there’s this bit that always got me when i saw it as a kid, where the ents see the destruction that saruman wrought on the forest and they decide to fight, and treebeard says: “Haroom, haroom, come my friends. The ents are going to war. It is likely that we go to our doom; the last march of the ents.”

that line really affected me. like, they are completely aware that they might all die, they might go extinct, that this may be the last thing that they do, but they believe that it is more important to do this, to fight, than to survive. that moment stuck with me

#lotr tag

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lordoftheringsfanart · 3 years

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Treebeard: "Come, my friends. The Ents are going to war. It is likely that we go to our doom. The last march of the Ents." Source: https://ift.tt/2O1nuYk

#lord of the rings online #lord of the rings wiki #lord of the rings cast #lord of the rings shop #lo

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iniziare · 4 years

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... Screencapping Two Towers for Legolas this time ‘round and I swear, the moment when Treebeard arrives at the burnt/devastated part of the forest and I hear his gasp, my heart breaks.

Come, my friends. The Ents are going to war; it is likely that we go to our doom. The last march of the Ents.

Please tell me I’m far from the only one who got really emotionally invested in the Ents here.

#[ out of character. ] i'm not questioning your powers of observation. i'm merely remarking on the paradox of asking a masked man who he is.#[ i remember when i watched this for the first time not that long ago at all. ]#[ and i just wasn't invested in the ents whatsoever. i mean interesting-- but y'know; very slow part of the story. ]#[ and everything changed the moment i heard the gasp and saw why. ]#[ and i was emotionally rooting for them when they marched to isengard. ]#[ and i'm proud that they kicked ass. ]

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atheistj · 6 years

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Treebeard: The ents are going to war. It is likely that we go to our doom. Last march...of the ents.

THAT music: *starts playing*

me:

#lord of the rings #two towers #treebeard

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catbowserauthor · 6 years

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MIDDLE EARTH 30 DAY Challenge Day 27 Isengard or Mordor?

This is a fun question.

Isengard quickly becomes associated with Saruman, mining, the orcs, the Urk-hai and various other dangerous creatures so that it's really easy to forget that it wasn't always like that. In fact, as we learn from Treebeard, the Ents were actually strong allies with Saruman, who used to tend to their lands. As a reminder, Isengard was once quite lush, beautiful and green:

I admit that I honestly forgot how utterly beautiful Isengard was at the beginning of these movies because it is turned into such a desolate place after Saruman's fall. It's after Saruman turns to an alliance with Sauron that the land loses its luster. Saruman orders the trees cut down, the ground dug up, the earth scorched with fire. The river is damned and only rock, dirt, mud and fire dictate the landscape.

The Ents, who once had a strong alliance with wizard as he used to care for their forests and trees, turn against their former friend due to the harsh treatment of their kind and the land. Treebeard's quote is among my favorites:

Treebeard: Many of these trees were my friends. Creatures I had known from nut and acorn. Pippin: I'm sorry, Treebeard. Treebeard: They had voices of their own... Saruman... A wizard should know better! [He gives a loud yell which echoes across the landscape] Treebeard: There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of men for this treachery! [More Ents emerge from the woods, following Treebeard] Pippin: Look, the trees! They're moving! Merry: Where are they going? Treebeard: They have business with the Orcs. My business is with Isengard tonight, with rock and stone! [More Ents emerge from the woods, joining Treebeard] Treebeard: Come, my friends. The Ents are going to war. It is likely that we go to our doom. The last march of the Ents.

However, I feel like I still have to give the edge to Mordor, if only because Mordor drips with the atmosphere of corruption. It's referred to, several times, as the land of the Black Speech, the land of Shadow. Sauron chose the volcanic plains of Mordor because of the strategic position: they are surrounded on three sides by nearly impenetrable mountains and the large flat plains are inhospitable to invaders.

The whole existence of Mordor is designed to be unapproachable, dark and unwelcoming. That gives a great atmosphere to a fortress of a villain and Mordor has served not only Sauron but Morgoth himself, with it being speculated that he was the cause of the great volcanic activity that purged the whole of Mordor, save a small corner, of being able to produce life, be it vegetation or civilization.

From a story telling standpoint, there is a lot of possibilities with Mordor because there's a lot we don't understand or know about it. We know some of the history, we know it's the Land of Shadows and has been essentially created to house evil and corruption. We know that from a strategic standpoint, it's extremely difficult to conquer. Sam and Frodo give us a some idea of that just on their journey to Mount Doom.

So, I'd say Mordor is more interesting simply because I see so many possibilities with it. Plus, I must wonder...what is South of Mordor?

#middle earth 30 day challenge #day 27 isengard vs mordor #isengard is intriguing #it used to be so beautiful #mordor though just creeps me out #it pretty much has a sign that says 'evil here'#there's a lot we don't know about Mordor #In Mordor where the Shadows are

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akhaste · 7 years

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“The Ents are going to war; it is likely that we are going to our doom.

Last march of the Ents.”

#tolkien #meriadoc brandybuck #pippin took #treebeard #lotr #mine*tolkien #ttw #mine

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indianangel01 · 4 years

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A Corona Warrior's Tale of Woe

This is a guest post Day 75 of lockdown: More than 2 months of lockdown have passed by in a haze. On 21st March, our PM declared a nationwide lockdown. The next 10 days resident doctors spent in a limbo wherein we wondered about the upsurge of cases, what measures would be taken to contain them, and when would the public healthcare system be hit. What we didn't anticipate is how badly it would be hit and how fast it would crumble. I'm an exam going resident who got relieved of my duties as a resident on 1st February of this year. I was expected to give my International Council of Ophthalmology examination on 20th April and my M.S. Ophthalmology theory exam on 15th of May. By June end I was supposed to be a free bird. Cut to 1st April, all exam going residents who were neck deep in exam prep were recalled back for duties. Specifically covid duties. All exam leaves were declared cancelled until further notice. ICO flashed status of our exam as postponed to 3 months later. Shit was about to hit the fan. Those of us who were in the same city rejoined immediately, others from different cities and states scrambled to find transport to rejoin as the lockdown was in full swing and all trains and flights and cabs were suspended. We were given circulars saying legal action would be taken against anyone who didnt rejoin work. Our degrees were already at stake. A friend of mine spent 25000 and hired a car to come from Bangalore to Mumbai. There would be no mercy shown to those who couldn't show up. I work at Sion Hospital, one of the busiest in Mumbai. There was buzz that Nair hospital would soon be converted into a COVID designated hospital. Sion was referring positives to Seven Hills, Kasturbha. We were managing the workload quite efficiently. The first danger started when Dharavi got its first COVID positive case. Dharavi, last recorded population of over 8 lakhs, is situated exactly behind Sion Hospital, and its residents form a major chunk of our patient load. When cases started emerging from Dharavi, initially in single digits, then rapidly in double and triple digits, we knew Sion Hospital was about to go under the COVID wave. It was days before the State Government finally accepted that community spread had occurred in Mumbai. Community spread is spread basically which cannot be contact traced, direct contacts are already traced and tested; it's very difficult to contain a disease once community spread occurs. By the time the government declared community spread, Sion hospital was already receiving enough COVID cases that it could no longer refer to any other hospital. We had become a covid and non covid hospital now fighting to strike a work balance. Residents were shunted from departments to work in COVID wards in shifts. The Category A residents of specialties like Chest Medicine, General Medicine, Anesthesia would lead the fight; specialties like Obstetrics and Gynecology, Radiology, ENT and Ophthalmology were to struggle alongside. Ophthalmology as a specialty doesnt equip us to deal with either respiratory distress or cardiac arrest. Systemically unstable patients are encountered by an ophthalmic surgeon as frequently as chilly weather is encountered in Mumbai. Once in a blue moon. I was petrified of what I would even do in such a scenario. I hadn't declared a single death in three years of residency. More precisely, none of my patients had died in three years because systemically unstable patients are always stabilised before we operate on them. Thrust into an unending vortex of community screening, ward duty which was putting angiocatheters, catheterizations, blood collections, vital monitoring, paperwork with alternate managing of department duties- casualties, OPD and OT it started looking like residency would never really be over. Exams or no exams, this was war and everyone had to participate. Everyday we would get some new protocol from the authorities; some change in the period of quarantine we would be offered- which decreased from 7 day work and 7 day quarantine to 5 day work and 2 day quarantine to 9 days of work and 6 days of quarantine to 14 days of work and 9 days of quarantine and so on. Apex institutions disagreed with the Municipal Corporation which disagreed with institutes which disagreed with departments. The result? Residents were testing positive by the dozens. Within a couple of weeks, 61 residents at Sion Hospital had tested positive, some were critical, all were stressed and overburdened. Meanwhile Nair was declared COVID only and referrals of non covid patients to Sion had of course increased substantially. Sion was crumbling under the weight but apparently nobody except residents could see the cracks. One afternoon a video from Sion became viral. It was shot by the relative of one of the COVID positive patients and showed body bags on beds next to living patients. It didnt take long for everyone from civilians to the media to the government to raise questions about how Sion hospital was being managed so badly. They questioned the humanity of the doctors and the delay in transportation of dead bodies. What they didnt question was the reason behind it. They didn't question the lack of goverment investment in public healthcare since decades. They didn't question why noone bothered to rectify this when shortage of beds and manpower has been an issue way before this pandemic. And they definitely didn't question whether the government had let doctors down by sending them to battle ill equipped and underprepared. Residents were being made to work inhumane hours but noone had the energy to really speak against it because things were getting worse by the day. We lay in wait for the new resident batch to join so that we could get some respite. New circulars kept popping every day - "Residents will receive COVID work benefits of rupees 300 per say", "residents will receive a pay hike". Meanwhile our salaries were credited late, with a 10% tax cut, no COVID benefit and definitely no stipend hike. A stay order on the state merit list of new incoming resident batch was finally lifted a week ago, which gave us some hope. Hope that was immediately squashed by the administration which issued a circular saying no matter when the new residents joined, we would not be relieved of our duties till 31st July at the earliest. No word about our exams or if we would get a preparatory leave period. Meanwhile residents were thrust to the forefront while everyone else cowered conveniently behind us. We were being called "corona warriors" but we felt nothing more than a scapegoat. There is no glory in working a PPE suit so impervious your sweat forms puddles around your feet or taking swabs going from house to house in 40 degrees in a PPE suit. I wont even get into how worried our families were during this ordeal. My mother lives in Nagpur and with every phone call she was becoming increasingly worried and upset and I was becoming increasingly quiet. She asked me to leave everything and just come home. Nothing is more important than staying healthy, she said. Of course, I didn't listen to her. Though none of us had signed up for this, this was a price we would all have to pay, whether we liked it or not. What was awful to watch was not the fact that we all were being coerced into work, but the fact that not only were the people of Mumbai doing nothing to abide by the lockdown, but our administration wasn't supporting us with a well formulated protocol either. There was complete chaos in the way the pandemic was managed, right from availability of PPE and masks, to overlapping duty schedules, lack of facilities to isolate positive asymptomatic resident doctors and symptomatic ones, lack of facilities to keep asymptomatic positive patients and lack of tests. The government was refusing to let us test anyone asymptomatic, even those who had known contact with someone who had turned positive. Because of this, asymptomatic carriers were running rampant, and there was no way to identify who would be positive next until a 60+ person landed in respiratory distress in the emergency services. Instead of focusing on things like getting adequate PPE for residents, making sure they got salaries and other covid benefits for their services, their food needs were taken care of; airplanes were busy showering petals from the sky. Policeman had by this time given up on checking ID cards. Essential and non essential people were out on the streets. We were getting the usual trauma like assault when everyone was supposed to be maintaining social distancing and staying indoors. Some routine complaints like watering of eyes and refractive error were resurfacing. Clearly the pandemic seriousness had not permeated to all sections of the society, and even if it had, not even was being done to mitigate it. Amidst the chaos, the fear and frequent blasts of depressing bulletins, residents were waging a war against the virus that had left life as they knew it in shreds. Managing to treat patients to the best of their abilities, bringing smiles to cured patients, delivering babies, operating tumors and saving lives. All while praying they wouldn't contract the illness, praying they would be able to survive this pandemic with only emotional scars and nothing more. Now here we are, still exam going, still very much working, still frustrated, overburdened and exhausted. With no end of the pandemic in sight (the peak is yet to come) and monsoon around the corner, which itself brings a tidal wave of dengue, malaria and leptospirosis and no manpower nor hospital facilities to deal with the upcoming doom. Read the full article

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