Latest / Mythmakers / Were You a Friend of Boromir? - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Bk 4 Ch 5

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Were You a Friend of Boromir? - LOTR: An Author's Journey, Bk 4 Ch 5 · Mythmakers

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Hello and welcome to MythMakers.
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MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives
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brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy.
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My name is Julia Golding.
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Now we are doing a
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series reading our way through Lord of the Rings and we have reached chapter five in book four,
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That's the latter half of the two towers.
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And this chapter is called The Window on the West.
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And I'm having a look at it from the point of view of the authorial tricks of the trade in this story,
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as opposed to the deep history of Middle Earth.
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Anyway, so let's get on.
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This is an unusual chapter in many ways, because basically it's one extended conversation held in three locations.
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and that is a conversation between Faramir, Frodo and Sam.
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And the excitement is not the
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excitement of set piece battles like in the previous chapter where we had the skirmish
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and the first glimpse of an olifant, nothing like that.
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Here the tension is in the battle of wits.
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Who is going to make a mistake?
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Who's going to slip up?
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Who's going to make the wrong choice?
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and it's really the chapter where Faramir bursts onto the scene in Middle-earth and becomes
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one of many people's favourite characters.
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Tolkien said he felt he was most like Faramir,
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except he didn't have the courage of his characters.
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I'm not so sure.
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I think Tolkien
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showed himself to be a man of courage, but will allow him his own self, his own humility in that
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case.
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So there is a lot of wisdom that is the kind of wisdom that Tolkien himself espoused.
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He wants,
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he feels he identifies with Faramir's worldview.
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And I think we can see that as this chapter goes
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on.
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And in thinking about looking at this from the author's point of view, if you're writing a
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book, it might be that there's a character in there which surprises you as being the one that
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is closest to you.
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In a way, all your characters are you, of course.
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But the Tolkien strategy of
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having not a major character, but one of the important ones, sort of a second rank character,
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shall we say, being closest to his worldview is an interesting strategy.
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It stops it being
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too didactic because you can get your worldview, your sort of thoughts across without it dominating
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is sort of the atmosphere of the novel, I should say, rather than a message carried by the novel
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that men like Faramir can exist in this world.
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So it starts with something like,
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is the closest we get to return to the council of Elrond or maybe a little bit like the incident
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where Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas are sort of first encounter the men of Rohan and Aemir and have to
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explain themselves and note that we are in Sam's point of view and we're starting in the middle of
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the thing because Tolkien has used the strategy that many of us use that Sam has been asleep he
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wakes up and he finds a lot of the boring introductory stuff is done.
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So we can go straight
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into the heart of the matter.
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It's a good idea.
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Well, here we get another description of Faramir.
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We've met him briefly in the previous chapter, but now he's unmasked.
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And I was interested to
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see how Tolkien describes him.
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It's not to do with what he looks like.
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It's actually what he
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feels like, what impact he makes on people around him.
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His face, it was stern and commanding,
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and a keen wit lay behind his searching gaze.
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And that's really the key to his character
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and what he's going to show us in this extended conversation.
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And we can see his wit as in not witty remarks,
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not that kind of wit, but wit as in cleverness, intelligence,
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the grasp of a situation,
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as he puzzles through what Isildur's bane might be.
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If you go all the way back to the Council of Elrond, he is mentioned so briefly in passing as Boromir says that the dream, the song, the poem first came to his brother and then to Boromir.
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And so here we've got that long narrative thread being picked up again.
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and Frodo is really forced on the back foot and he's doing some careful defensive play here
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hitting back across the net or it's more like he's on defense in this sword match
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trying to give enough truthful information without betraying his real purpose for being there
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and during the course of that he mentions that Aragorn was in charge of the company and talks
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of his lineage.
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And here we get a division in Faramir's company.
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We got some of them
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saying all these great tidings.
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Remember, these are the southern Dúnedain, a lot of
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these people for whom Aragorn may have been a leader of the northern Dúnedain, a sort
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of a bigger deal in many ways because they understand his power and where it comes from.
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to someone like Faramir, who is the son of the steward of Gondor, who has been ruling in the
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place of the king, obviously it's a threat.
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And we can imagine that Faramir might turn out to be
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a good person in the way he reacts, but still it's a threat to his future.
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That after many,
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many years, centuries of there never being a king, Aragorn is coming.
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I think that
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Tolkien knows how Faramir is going to react, but he holds it back.
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This is one of those times where
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you hold back from telling your reader, because he says here that Faramir's face was unmoved.
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Not Faramir himself, but just his face.
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He's got a good poker face, to use that comparison.
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And why does he do this?
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It's to keep the tension.
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Because if we get access at this point to Faramir's
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thoughts, internal thoughts.
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And we're not inside Varamir's point of view.
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We're only
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hearing what he says, which gives us a clue to it.
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But if he's really thinking,
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I'm never going to challenge the real king when he comes, that takes away all the tension.
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Don't do that.
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Leave things hidden so that Aragorn's return to Minas Tirith has some
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tension.
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They don't just open the doors and let him in.
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One of the things in this chapter which
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I wanted to highlight is how Frodo is characterized.
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Here you need to delete your Elijah Wood version
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of Frodo.
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Here we have what is effectively Sam's commanding officer, the head of his little squad
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who have gone out on this dangerous mission, standing up for himself and his mission and his
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right to hold back information from another figuring command.
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And remember, we're in Sam's
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point of view initially.
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Sam has pride in Frodo for the way Frodo stands up for himself.
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And Frodo is actually a very good arguer in this passage.
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He says,
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yet those who claim to oppose the enemy would do well not to hinder it, it being his mission.
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so he's hinting and he's saying if you're a friend on the right side here you're not going
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to stand in my way but in this rally which is where the tension comes from and the excitement
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I love this chapter for that for just the way this long conversation unfolds
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Faramir has an amazing drop shot were you a friend of Boromir and interestingly at this point
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Tolkien chooses to throw us very abruptly to being inside Frodo's point of view from having
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looked at him from the outside from Sam we're suddenly with Frodo and there's this phrase
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vividly before Frodo's mind came the memory of Boromir's assault upon him and for a moment
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he hesitated that abruptness I think is on purpose because it makes us feel a shadow of the
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the shock, the trauma that Frodo is still experiencing there.
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So that's an effective
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shift in our point of view to bring that home.
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And the bottom half of page 272, if you're
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following in the three-volume version, you get a really good sense of this, the hidden agendas
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and the explicit agendas in the interplay between Frodo and Faramir.
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Because Faramir sort of keeps laying out breadcrumbs for Frodo to sort of take
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and then Frodo sort of thinks, oh, hang on, there's a trap here.
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So I'll read you a little bit.
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It says, then you would grieve to learn that Boromir is dead.
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I would grieve indeed, said Frodo.
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Then catching the look in Faramir's eyes, he faltered.
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dead?
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He said.
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Do you mean that he is dead and that you knew it, that you've been trying to
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trap me in words, playing with me?
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Are you now trying to snare me with falsehoods?
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So there is this tussle going on at deeper levels in this conversation.
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And we'll see that
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Faramir catches Frodo out again.
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He keeps laying these traps.
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And the reason he's doing this is
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because he is in command of this secret base and he has to know how much he needs to risk
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with this stranger who suddenly appeared which priority he should be following frodo's missional
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priority or his own standing orders to defend this base at all cost
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anyway so we got this sword fight going on verbal sword fight between faramir and frodo
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and then Sam breaks in.
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It's done as a line break to emphasize
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that we're in sort of phases of conversation.
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And he sort of bursts in saying,
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see here, Captain,
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and goes on to sort of stand before him.
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He brings the Shire authority
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to what is actually Gondor authority.
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He gets slapped down for that, gently,
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because this is Faramir,
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but it's still a lovely moment,
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which many of us will remember,
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where he's described as,
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he planted himself squarely in front of Faramir his hands on his hips and look on his face as if
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he was addressing a young hobbit who had offered him what he called sauce and questioned about
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visits to the orchard so with Sam we're always going back to the shire and to the homely world
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which gives this sense of the grounding of his character he actually makes an effective
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argument.
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He's basically saying, you'll be doing the work of the enemy if you stand in our way.
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If you think we've murdered Boromir, you've got another thing coming.
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That's the sort of the
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burden of what he's saying.
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He does get pushed back by Faramir because Faramir knows that the
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sort of negotiation is really with Frodo.
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And actually, Faramir is a bit unfair saying that
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that Frodo has more wit than Sam.
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But I suppose what he means by that is Frodo is more aware
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of the cross-currents in this conversation than Sam is.
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The other way that this chapter has a sort of tension and excitement
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is the well-placed revelations.
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so we've got the sort of the sense of Faramir getting closer and closer to what Isidore's bane
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might be but we also have sudden moments where he says things which change everybody's understanding
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of what's going on and the first of those here is Boromir was my brother so immediately Frodo
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who's been traumatized by his relationship with Boromir is thrown back so that what he thought
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he knew about this person he's just met, he is now beginning to doubt.
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And he's looking at Faramir
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trying to judge him, just as this is a two-way judging process.
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What he says he likes,
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he judges Faramir as being less self-regarding but sterner and wiser than Boromir, but he still
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can't fully trust him.
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And like any good spy in enemy territory, he's not going to give up his
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secrets easily.
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So this leads us on to Faramir's, what I would call a poetic
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account of his vision of Boromir.
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If you've watched the Peter Jackson films, the extended
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versions, there is a kind of, he tries to do this.
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He does it in a kind of dreamlike sequence
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where you see Faramir thinking back.
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It's paying homage to this section, but I would say that this
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is one which is really worth reading because it feels like a piece of translated Anglo-Saxon
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poetry.
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And particularly there is a series of laments that break into it that feel like
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within that form, a lament for a fallen warrior.
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And it's got the most beautiful cadence.
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So
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it starts with the, after the sort of the telling of how the sort of chronology of when
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he heard the horn and all that kind of thing.
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He then says, this is Faramir, I sat at night by the
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waters of Anduin in the grey dark under the young pale moon, watching the ever-moving stream and the
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sad reeds were rustling.
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Now that's in no way realistic dialogue.
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We're not in the world of
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realism in that sense.
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We're in the world of poetry, poetic speech.
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Because if he was just
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having a conversation to get to the point, he would say, well, I was by the river Anduin
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among the reeds.
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Cut out all the poetic language.
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But no, this is about casting a literary spell,
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a sort of atmosphere and the sense of the majesty of this world.
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And it goes on.
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That night all the world slept at the midnight hour.
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Then I saw, or it seemed that I saw,
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a boat floating on the water, glimmering grey, a small boat of a strange fashion with a high prow,
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but there was none to row or steer it.
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And he goes on and describes seeing Boromir in this boat,
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including things which he could not have known in advance, how he was dressed and the Lorien belt.
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And this is where you get the lament, Boromir, I cried, where is thy horn?
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Whither goest thou,
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O Boromir, but he was gone.
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It reminds me of Lewis saying how he fell in love with northern
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stories by coming across the phrase, the lament for Boulder, O Boulder is dead,
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even though he didn't know who that character was.
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There's an element of the echo here, I think.
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And the passage then concludes with this wonderful cadence which takes us out to sea.
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and I do not doubt that he is dead and has passed down the river to the sea.
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It's probably only somebody so steeped in that kind of literature could write something like that.
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It feels like a song and it's noteworthy that he gives it to Faramir to say this.
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You would expect it from an elf or something like that.
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But this character is the most elven of men,
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or as Sam says, most wizardly of men.
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And so he's being characterized through his speech here,
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which is something that Jane Austen does particularly brilliantly,
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but not this kind of character.
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And we get a line break after this, what is a set piece,
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in order to sort of say, well, that was that kind of register and now we're moving on.
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We note here that when they go on to discuss that they've come out of Lorien,
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when Frodo explains where the belt comes from,
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that Faramir actually calls Lorien by its old name, Lorilindorinan,
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which those of you who are following along will remember that's Treebeard who used that name.
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And like Treebeard, Faramir is not going to make a hasty judgment.
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So he's in that set of people who take their time.
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Fortunately, not quite as long as an end.
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There is an interesting little, several phrases that pop up out of this conversation,
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which I think have wider interesting applications to the whole book.
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one is a discussion about was what he saw like a dream or an artifice or a vision or something like
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that Faramir says it wasn't evil for his works for Sauron's works filled the heart with loathing
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but my heart was filled with grief and pity and I think this is something which both Tolkien and
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Lewis understood about works of art, that they have a sort of imprint that they leave
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on the reader.
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And one of the reasons why so many of us love Narnia Middle-earth is
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the imprint they leave is one that is of, in the case of Middle-earth, this sort of
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longing and this grief and this pity, sort of the greatness of the characters within
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it.
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Perhaps one of the reasons why subsequent fantasy works don't attach in the same way is
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they don't have quite that power.
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There may be some that slip through and do leave that impression.
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I mean, Harry Potter, for example, does also have the idea of a sort of, as well as the whimsy,
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there's a sense of the greatness of sacrifice and a slightly sort of sour understanding of
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the sacrifices that you have to make in order to defeat evil.
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There's some interesting aftertaste left by Harry Potter.
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But anyway, going back to Middle-earth,
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I think that this grief and pity is actually something that Tolkien meant his work to do.
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So it's not a work of Sauron, it's a work of the good, actually, obviously, you already.
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And he goes back as well to using the italics to sort of give his lament here.
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Isildur's bane is italicized and exclamations of sadness are also italicized.
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Yes, he says, Boromir, what does she say to you, the lady that dies not?
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I think that is a sort of express, a sort of heightened speech not addressed to the people in the room with him.
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It's peculiar, I think, to this conversation, but noteworthy because Tolkien is using it to set this conversation apart.
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This is very different from the film version.
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If you come at Faramir from the film version, you find a much coarser, weaker younger brother here.
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but actually the Faramir here is already a man of mature judgments and learning.
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So he doesn't do such a big character arc.
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The film does that in order to give him a bigger character arc
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so that there is more drama in the decision.
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They actually have it with Faramir taking Frodo and Sam to Osgiliath.
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That doesn't happen.
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here his decisions are all taken quite early on and he's so he decides to trust Frodo and then
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he's trying to work out well what do I now do with him what is best I've got to use my judgment I
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can't just accept what he's Frodo's saying about himself so it doesn't have that cruelty there's
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no beating up of Gollum or anything like that in this in this story it's it's a softer version of
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Faramir.
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I prefer this one because it seems as though he's a nobler character in the book than
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he is in the film.
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He does get there in the film, but it takes a jaunt before he does.
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And as they carry on with their sparring, they move to a different phase, which is when they're
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walking along together.
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And Faramir returns to the subject of Boromir.
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And he says, you were not
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holy frank with me Frodo and Frodo has a very good comeback which is I told no lies and of the truth
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all I could but Faramir can he's like a really great detective in fact he's like the Hercule
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Poirot of Middle-earth because he puts together what he knows about the character of his brother
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and the signs and what he's read in the archives and what he knows of Gandalf and so on he says
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Isildur's bane lay between you.
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Such things do not breed peace among confederates,
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not if aught may be learned from ancient tales.
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Here there is a sort of link to the Silmarillion,
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which is all about the kin strife that happened as a result of heirlooms, Fianna's jewels.
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so remember Silmarillion isn't published at this point when Tolkien's publishing Lord of the Rings
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it's that sense of the depth of the story that you can then go on to learn about but Faramir has
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clearly been reading the right tales because he knows but Faramir is not only showing that he
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knows his history he is also getting answers by gently pushing Frodo to defend accuracy
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and Frodo says it wasn't the company that was a problem
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and Faramir is it is as I thought your trouble was with Boromir alone.
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He knows his brother and he goes on to say that he thinks that Boromir died well
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achieving some good thing because of the way he appeared in death.
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There is a mercy in this world.
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You can redeem yourself.
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Boromir redeems himself.
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But it gives Faramir a chance to set up what is going to be Pippin's meeting with Denethor.
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So while we're getting some interesting material here, I think Tolkien contemplated moving some of it into the appendices.
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But still, it really sets up what happens when Gandalf and Pippin arrive in Minas Tirith.
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because Faramir goes into some detail about the line of stewards
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and how Boromir was frustrated by still being a steward and not a king.
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And Frodo says, well, you know, he seemed to accept Aragorn.
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And this is where Faramir shows he loved his brother,
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but he knew him inside out.
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He said the pinch had not yet come.
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He anticipates that if Boromir was still alive,
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he would actually end up fighting for the rule of Gondor.
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she's a fate that was spared by him dying so early on in the narrative.
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And another, there's so much in this chapter to delight those of us who follow all these sort of
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highways and byways.
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We get a sort of extended little bit about Gandalf,
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because one of the reasons why Faramir knows all of this is he's been a pupil when he could
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of Mithrandir.
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And here we get, I'd actually forgotten when I read it here that it's Faramir
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the one who says this, the one who remembers.
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We get the names of Gandalf.
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Mithrandir among the
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elves, Tharkun to the dwarves, Olorin I was in my youth in the west that is forgotten,
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in the south, Incarnus in the north, Gandalf to the east, I go not.
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the companion to the Lord of the Rings has some very interesting little section about this.
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You can also read about this if you want to get a sort of Tolkien version in the Unfinished Tales
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in the Istari section.
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So do go digging because it's some delightful little facts and figures
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about what Gandalf exactly is.
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But Faramir not only knows Gandalf's names, he's astute because
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he says that Gandalf was more than a lawmaster.
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He was a great mover of the deeds done in our time.
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And he is linking us back here.
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One of the images I've used for Lord of the Rings
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and the way it sort of bears study
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is the way that different parts of the narrative
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sew their way back to an earlier section.
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It's like this great weave that's going on.
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And here we're back in the shadows of the past
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where we hear that Gandalf had gone to the archives
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of Minas Tirith and found the account of what Isildur did after the battle.
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And we get the sort of Minas Tirith end of it,
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of Faramir watching Gandalf do that research.
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So it sort of connects us to where we came from.
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And so Faramir understands what a loss Gandalf is
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because he is one of the great movers of deeds done in our time.
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and then we get the test the temptation it's it's sort of in in stages and here we get
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faramir making a sort of vow because he senses there's something an heirloom something like that
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he says but fear no more i would not take this thing if it lay by the highway so he knows it
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would be bad for in his tyrith if he took it and so he would resist the temptation lead us not into
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temptation.
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And we get Faramir's vision of what the future restored looks like.
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Again, it's another
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lovely passage on page 280.
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He says, for myself, I would see the white tree in flower again in the
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courts of the kings and the silver crown returned and Minas Tirith in peace.
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Minas Arnor again,
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as of old, full of light, high and fair, beautiful as a queen among other queens.
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And he says in an echo of Galadriel that he doesn't want her to see Gondor as a mistress
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of many slaves, not even a kind mistress of willing slaves.
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That was the language
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that Galadriel used, that if she took the ring, she would enslave the population,
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and even if it starts as a benign loving rule,
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it would become an evil version of it.
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I think that some of these lines,
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and there's another one later on,
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are transposed to Boromir in the film.
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You have to watch this out
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because sometimes if you watch the film a few times,
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you start to think, oh, that's a Boromir line.
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It's a Faramir line.
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Because when Boromir is talking to Aragorn in Lorien,
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again, I think it might be extended edition,
29:08
He talks about, you know, that he wants to see the city restored.
29:13
So watch out for those is a Faramir thought.
29:16
And then we sort of conclude this little section as they're walking to the hideout
29:22
with a wonderful piece of wisdom from Tolkien.
29:28
Again, wisdom given to Faramir.
29:32
And it's much quoted.
29:33
I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory.
29:41
I love only that which they defend, the city of the men of Numenor.
29:47
And so on.
29:49
There are similar thoughts about being in the Second World War and why fight that Tolkien expresses in his letters at the time when he's writing this.
30:02
So just remember that going on underneath this, Tolkien is in a way working through
30:07
his reaction to a real world conflict.
30:11
Why should people fight?
30:12
Yes, they should stand up for what
30:14
is right.
30:15
But you fight not because you like battle, you fight because of what you're defending.
30:21
Then we shift back to a quick dip into Sam's point of view, just to catch the reader up on Gollum
30:27
and hint that he's still with them.
30:30
When your plate's spinning like this,
30:32
you've got sort of so many different plot threads to keep going.
30:38
A little hint of that Gollum's still with them really helps
30:41
because that will set up the next chapter.
30:43
Then we get the approach to Henneth Arnoun Lair
30:49
and their eyes abound.
30:50
Again, we've got another of these little threads
30:53
weaving us back to earlier parts of the narrative.
30:57
Some of these sort of picaresque novels of earlier times are more like strings of beads where each individual adventure is its own thing.
31:07
And they move on to the next adventure, which is its own thing.
31:11
Tolkien doesn't write like that.
31:12
His travel is always connected, both backwards and forwards.
31:19
so the echo of what happens when they approach Lorien as they're led by the elves into Lorien
31:27
is recalled here it's just sort of saying remember that and it recalls of course the other characters
31:33
who have dropped out of sight for half of this book but the binding also gives us this amazing
31:42
moment which is the most beautiful visual moment in this chapter it's very good to deprive
31:51
us of one of our sort of senses to heighten the other senses it happens again in the
31:59
she lobs lair where they lose you know it's so dark they can't see here it's through um having
32:06
their eyes bound but they get this uh experience of just being able to listen and to feel
32:12
feel the the floor descending and so on and then being spun round and then there's a moment of like
32:18
the curtain opening and they see where they are they stood on the wet floor of polished stone
32:25
the doorstep as it were of a rough hewn gate of rock opening dark behind them but in front a thin
32:31
veil of water was hung so near that Frodo could have put an outstretched arm into it,
32:37
it faced westward.
32:38
The level shafts of the setting sun behind beat upon it, and the red
32:43
light was broken into many flickering beams of ever-changing colour.
32:48
It was as if they stood
32:49
at the window of some elven tower, curtain with threaded jewels of silver and gold and ruby,
32:55
suffer and amethyst, all kindled with an unconsuming fire."
33:01
Now it's all very subtle here, but
33:03
one of the images that Tolkien uses about creativity in the poem Myth Appear is this
33:09
idea of the split light, that we are fragments passed through like a stained glass window.
33:17
So the white light, if that's the origin of creativity, it splits through us.
33:22
And the
33:23
image of this window on the west which is like a natural version of a stained glass window justing
33:32
references subtly that idea of creativity and beauty for me that's what I think of when I
33:40
so we we are taken by it into other imagined worlds an elven tower and so on just a beautiful
33:48
moment.
33:49
So before the third part of the conversation, we're in a little intermission
33:54
where the Robin Hood atmosphere of rough and ready hospitality is reasserted.
33:59
We get Anborn
34:01
with a hint of Gollum being glimpsed.
34:04
The idea he might be a, I think he calls it a black squirrel,
34:08
but possibly Gollum.
34:10
And you get the fact that Faramir looks at Frodo and Sam and he's thinking,
34:16
I think it's your companions, but it's not stated.
34:19
You don't have to state everything.
34:21
It's actually fun for your reader to infer.
34:24
Let your reader feel a bit clever.
34:28
And we've got Sam forcing himself to stay awake whilst the meal is being set up.
34:32
And this leads to that sort of lighter moment in this chapter, which is actually the whole of it
34:39
is one of those reprieves in the darker material here,
34:44
where we get the contrast between the customs of Gondor and the Shire
34:49
with a misunderstanding about why Sam dunked his head in the water.
34:55
And we get that bit of Shire wisdom that doing so is like rain on a wilted lettuce.
35:02
That's an image totally out of Sam's world.
35:06
this is one of the things that you might want to consider if you're looking for ways to characterize
35:13
look for the moments when you can refresh old ways of describing something within the language that
35:20
that person would use so it's not like a dash of cold water to the face it's like rain on a wilted
35:27
Lettuce.
35:29
So it helps create character, but also conveys exactly what that person means.
35:36
And then there's a moment which straddles page 284 and 285, which is much written about because
35:43
it is a very rare religious moment.
35:48
Again, the companion to Lord of the Rings goes into great
35:52
detail about this.
35:54
But they have basically what is a grace before the meal, where they all stand
36:00
and they turn to the west.
36:04
And Faramir's example says, the reason why they do it, is we look
36:09
towards Numenor that was, because Numenor has sunk both the ways, and beyond to Elvenholm that is,
36:18
and to that which is beyond Elvenhome and will ever be.
36:22
That is like a Trinitarian.
36:25
It's got a sort of prayer cadence, hasn't it?
36:28
Tolkien considered himself writing in an era that's pre-Christian.
36:32
So his Gondorians are like Egyptians.
36:37
They're that sort of ancient civilization, pre-Christianity.
36:42
But they have this intuition about a sort of natural form of religion.
36:48
And this is the moment where you see it.
36:50
Elvenhome, the Valar, sort of the archangels in this
36:54
world live there.
36:55
And beyond that, the ever will be, is the world of Iluvatar, the sort
37:01
of what goes beyond Middle-earth, the eternity of this world.
37:08
And we get one of the most
37:10
memorable meals that follow.
37:11
I know I was thinking about this as I was reading it again,
37:15
what is emphasized here is the clean hands and clean knives and plates.
37:20
They've literally come
37:22
out of the equivalent of the trenches to some respite leave away from the front lines.
37:27
And
37:27
that's what I wonder if that is taken directly from experience of what it was felt like to have
37:32
a decent meal away from the trenches.
37:35
That's what I thought of as I was reading it.
37:38
And then we get
37:38
the final section which is the return to this conversation and it starts a bit like the
37:47
conversation at the in at brie where pippin goes a bit too far but that role is split between frodo
37:54
and sam in this case because frodo is definitely turning aside tricky subjects sort of maximizing
38:02
Boromir's heroism, avoiding things he doesn't want to say.
38:06
And Faramir is looking for the
38:12
cracks because he needs to make a decision about whether or not he should let them go.
38:16
He hasn't made his mind up.
38:18
He is not being hasty.
38:21
But it's interesting that he
38:23
reveals his mindset here and the mindset of the people of Gondor facing what looks like an
38:31
unwinnable battle.
38:33
He says it is long since we had any hope.
38:36
That's the other line I mentioned
38:37
that is given to Boromir in Peter Jackson's version.
38:41
He calls this stage of Gondor's existence
38:44
a springless autumn.
38:47
And we go into another very poetic passage, Faramir is such a poet,
38:52
where he talks about the history of Gondor.
38:55
And I imagine this is the bit that he might have thought
38:58
Tolkien might have been considering.
38:59
Am I saying too much?
39:01
But he left it in.
39:02
And I enjoy it just
39:03
because of the language.
39:05
Because he has that wonderful image which sets up what Aragorn does
39:11
right at the end.
39:12
So again, it does have its purpose.
39:14
I'm glad he didn't move it into the
39:17
appendices.
39:19
He talks about how the sort of kingdom sort of almost committed a kind of
39:23
suicide in the sense that it became fixated by the wrong things.
39:27
Kings made tombs more splendid
39:29
than houses of the living and counted old names in the rolls of the descent dearer than the names
39:34
of sons.
39:35
Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry.
39:39
In secret chambers withered men
39:41
compounded strong elixirs or in high cold towers asked questions of the stars.
39:48
And the last king
39:49
of the line of Anarion had no air.
39:52
Again, we're not in the world of natural speech.
39:55
We're in the
39:55
world of heightened poetic speech, and it's absolutely beautiful.
40:01
But it does also convey
40:02
something important about Gondor.
40:05
He also goes into the link to Rohan here and talks about how
40:10
the once high people and the middle people are sort of becoming the same thing.
40:14
And his love
40:15
for Rohan, of course, foreshadows the fact that it's Erwin, plot spoiler, who he ends up with.
40:22
Anyway, he says how they're more like each other, middlemen of the twilight.
40:27
That word twilight,
40:28
of course, links to anybody who sort of follows the kind of culture that Tolkien loved,
40:34
the sort of twilight of the gods theme, the sort of Argonaut, end of, you know,
40:40
the Ragnarok feel that inspired Tolkien so much.
40:45
It ends up being the discussion of elves that leads to Sam's downfall.
40:50
He is the one who does the equivalent of the ring falling on his finger.
40:56
Because he and Faramir discuss this idea that Veladriel is perilously fair.
41:04
And that leads him to drop his clangor about how Boromir realised
41:09
when in Lorien, what he always wanted, which was the enemy's ring.
41:13
And you get this moment, which is what it's all been leading to,
41:17
where the conversations come to a head where we get the choice.
41:23
Sam states it, now's a chance to show your quality.
41:29
And it's a tension of that moment that just hovers for a second.
41:33
And Faramir releases it by saying,
41:35
I am wise enough to know that there are some perils
41:38
from which a man must flee.
41:42
And he also goes on to sort of offer some comfort to Sam,
41:45
saying that his stumble was fated to be because it's helpful.
41:48
It's meant that Faramir makes up his mind.
41:54
And seeing that Faramir has resisted taking the ring,
41:58
Frodo finally is able to say what the plan is.
42:01
And he collapses because it's been a very, very tense time for him.
42:04
and he just, you know, he says he's got to go to Mordor,
42:10
but he doesn't know how to do it.
42:12
And so he is, you know, that's the moment when he releases the information
42:16
that he's been holding on to.
42:17
So we've got these moments of like turning points and this is one.
42:22
And so Sam and Faramir have a little coda here where Sam says to Faramir
42:29
that you took a chance and showed your quality the very highest.
42:33
he gives him the compliment that Faramir reminds him of wizards.
42:37
And here the section is wrapped up by Faramir saying,
42:41
maybe you discern from far away the air of Numenor.
42:45
Good night.
42:46
Good night is the end of the chapter.
42:48
A beautiful long conversation is that chapter.
42:53
Quite a long chapter compared particularly to the one that comes after,
42:56
which is the Forbidden Pool,
42:58
where we get back onto the main road after our respite.
43:03
Thank you very much for listening.
43:10
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43:14
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43:17
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