Despair and Denethor

Against All Hope

Denethor in Tolkien's Lord of The Rings and Peter Jackson's movie adaptation by the same remains, perhaps among other characters in the franchise, the most fecund character for internet memes. I always laugh each time I chance upon a Denethor meme lamenting Boromir’s death saying “That should have been Faramir.” The idea is that Denethor, father to Boromir and Faramir, and the Steward of Gondor —in the absence of Gondor's true heir—prefers his older son to the younger. For reasons I don't think Tolkien ever makes clear. From all indications, Faramir is just as capable of being captain as Boromir was. Denethor just preferred Boromir. As such, he despaired upon learning of Boromir's death. And eventually committed suicide once he thought Faramir was dead; although he knew that Faramir was only sick and could be rescued. Denethor chose to burn himself and his son —who was still alive— at the funeral pyre. What drove him to the pyre was none other than despair. And despair sourcing from the wrong visions.

Denethor and The Palantiri by Denis Gordev

What separated Gandalf from Denethor was hope. Gandalf, who by all measures set the events of the Lord of The Rings in motion that could not be undone, knew the enormity of the task. He knew sufficiently the dangers therein. He knew the risks. He knew that the fate of Middle-Earth rested on the shoulders of one halfling. And that should things go wrong, all Middle-Earth would fall into Sauron's hands. This was their last stand. Gandalf thus, knew far better and more intimately than anyone, the details of the task; more than Denethor. But he refused to despair. Hope against all hope was the mantra.

This was not so with Denethor. Who, due to his position as Steward of Gondor, had access to the Palantiri, the seeing stones. Ensconced in the towers of Minas Tirith, he knew only a handful of the events in motion and was as such vulnerable to Sauron's trickery. Sauron, the dark Lord himself, who had successfully puppeteered Saruman’s lust for his benefit, found a vulnerable Denethor peering into the seeing stones and showed him just enough to drive him to gloom. The scene when Pippin enters the steward's presents this gloom:

There Denethor sat in a grey gloom, like an old patient spider, Pippin thought; he did not seem to have moved since the day before. (Bk 5, Ch 4).

Knowledge drove him to this gloom. But half-knowledge; if we can call it so. For although much of Denethor's reputation is attributed to his vast knowledge of things, of things happening far beyond his borders; things he knew despite not travelling out of his city in a while, knowledge that ensnares him to his eventual death.

This snare is to be expected of one who is puffed up with knowledge. Within a short space of time, Denethor had boasted various times of how much he knew. He vaunted of his decoding Faramir’s motive and gesture, accusing Faramir of desiring Gandalf’s admiration. This, of course, he lamented, Boromir would not have done. “For Boromir was loyal to me and no wizard’s pupil. He would have remembered his father’s need, and would not have squandered what fortune gave. He would have brought me a mighty gift.” He did not veil his contempt for Gandalf: “You are wise, maybe, Mithrandir, yet with all your subtleties you have not all wisdom. Counsels may be found that are neither the webs of wizards nor the haste of fools. I have in this matter more lore and wisdom than you deem.” Most importantly, he had such ostentatious faith in himself, as to believe that he could subdue The Ring and use it for heroic purposes without its overwhelming him “If I had this thing now in the deep vaults of this citadel, we should not then shake with dread under this gloom, fearing the worst, and our counsels would be undisturbed. If you do not trust me to endure the test, you do not know me yet.” Believing, with much certitude, that the solution to his gloom is the thing wreaking havoc on his city.

Nonetheless, despite all the gloom, Denethor showed some fight in him. There was a spark, a willingness to do battle: he marked out portions he was unwilling to yield and places he wouldn’t leave defenceless. Although he was reckless. He was ready to fight: “He stood up and cast open his long black cloak, and behold! he was clad in mail beneath, and girt with a long sword, great-hilted in a sheath of black and silver. ‘Thus have I walked, and thus now for many years have I slept,’ he said, ‘lest with age the body should grow soft and timid.’” Yet he was blinded by boastful knowledge: “Some have accused you, Mithrandir, of delighting to bear ill news, but to me this is no longer news: it was known to me ere nightfall yesterday. As for the sortie, I had already given thought to it. Let us go down.” He was the sort of person who found joy in pessimism —and people like this are not scarce.

Then Faramir arrived. Struck sick by a deadly dart. Then it happened “as he (Pippin) watched, it seemed to him that Denethor grew old before his eyes, as if something had snapped in his proud will, and his stern mind was overthrown. Grief maybe had wrought it, and remorse. He saw tears on that once tearless face, more unbearable than wrath.”

It was downhill from there onwards:

“The fool’s hope has failed. The Enemy has found it, and now his power waxes; he sees our very thoughts, and all we do is ruinous.”

“I must stay beside my son. He might still speak before the end. But that is near. Follow whom you will, even the Grey Fool, though his hope has failed. Here I stay.”

“Why? Why do the fools fly?’ said Denethor. ‘Better to burn sooner than late, for burn we must. Go back to your bonfire! And I? I will go now to my pyre. To my pyre! No tomb for Denethor and Faramir. No tomb! No long slow sleep of death embalmed. We will burn like heathen kings before ever a ship sailed hither from the West. The West has failed. Go back and burn!”

“Battle is vain. Why should we wish to live longer? Why should we not go to death side by side?”

(Bk 5, Ch 7)

Denethor was broken at this time. Irreparable. Faramir was sick, not dead. But his father had prepared him for burial. This was sacrilegious, so to speak, as Gandalf admonished: “Authority is not given to you, Steward of Gondor, to order the hour of your death. And only the heathen kings, under the domination of the Dark Power, did thus, slaying themselves in pride and despair, murdering their kin to ease their own death.”

Now, this must be said, noting Gandalf's admonition. Perhaps one that can be traced back to Tolkien himself. This is the character of despair at work biologically and sociologically. There is a dangerous mix of pride and despair found in men and women today as it was present in Denethor. Acquainted with the reams of knowledge as to the world's failing, whether via climate change or through some other form of impending disaster, they are filled with pride; pride that they know better than their forebears, and despair —the knowledge fills them with gloom. As such they drive themselves to neuter themselves; whether anatomically or psychologically or spiritually. Murdering their kin even before they get the chance to come into the world. For these people, as it was with Denethor, think that battle is vain and they must go down in death with the children they would have had.

Finally, Denethor showed his hand: the Palantiri; “Then suddenly Denethor laughed. He stood up tall and proud again, and stepping swiftly back to the table he lifted from it the pillow on which his head had lain. Then coming to the doorway he drew aside the covering, and lo! he had between his hands a Palantiri. And as he held it up, it seemed to those that looked on that the globe began to glow with an inner flame, so that the lean face of the Lord was lit as with a red fire, and it seemed cut out of hard stone, sharp with black shadows, noble, proud, and terrible. His eyes glittered.”

“Pride and despair! Didst thou think that the eyes of the White Tower were blind? Nay, I have seen more than thou knowest, Grey Fool. For thy hope is but ignorance. Go then and labour in healing! Go forth and fight! Vanity. For a little space you may triumph on the field, for a day. But against the Power that now arises there is no victory. To this City only the first finger of its hand has yet been stretched. All the East is moving. And even now the wind of thy hope cheats thee and wafts up Anduin a fleet with black sails. The West has failed. It is time for all to depart who would not be slaves.”

This, dear reader, is the voice of all who mix their pride and despair. Or one might say, that despair is a type of pride. Hope, an expression of humility.

Those who think they know; who think they have seen things correctly, that they have the full scope of things and events, who then because of this knowledge fall into despair and gloom, are proud. They think that all that their mind can conceive is all that there is. But those who hold out hope believe in something far greater than themselves, whatever that thing may be.

Some who despair, like Denethor, have grand visions of the world falling to its inevitable ruin whether by climate change or economic crisis. They, in their respective articulations, echo Denethor’s lament that “But against the Power that now arises there is no victory.” I am not one of such people.

I belong to the school of hope. And I write this to ask more people to enrol. I belong to Aragorn’s company; of Gandalf and Gimli and Legolas and Merry and Pippin at the Black Gates of Mordor. Even when you show me Frodo’s Mithril coat as evidence of our doom, my response remains “For Frodo.”

Abundant knowledge of our doom probably exists. Some even in respectable academic research, as to the world’s ending. Those who despair have gorged on knowledge such as this to drive their antinatal views. They say, not just that it is of no use to, but that it is wicked and selfish, to bring children into an ailing world.

This is a strange view: I stand on the mount that we humans, if we are the agents of destruction, we can as well be the agents who stop Earth’s death. If we are the destroyers, we can as well be its repairers. So long as we have our agency, we can do something. In this way, bringing children into the world is a vote for the earth; an incarnate decision to make this world a better place for those we bring into it. Nothing stands more defiant than living breathing incentives for us to do better. Whatever vision, by any strength and quality, that suppresses the reproductive, maternal and paternal desires that surge through our beings, is not true, and is only a manipulation from the dark Lord. Once a very perspicacious tweeter asked a pertinent question against the notion that improved education standards yield antinatalism. He asked, “What demon is hiding in y’all curriculums?” We all must answer.

Other types of gloomy visions exist in popular spaces and media. Gender wars seem to be at their peak. Men and women have swallowed the blackpill. Men now fantasize about scenes where the women they have neither found nor married would fleece them of all their property and ruin them. Or other negative fantasies of cuckoldry. Women also produce some hefty imaginings. And arrive at misogamic conclusions. This is Denethor’s gloom: they have looked into the palantiri that is social media and its bilious sentiments, and they have walked away bitter to the funeral pyres of their God-given erotic desires. No, all men are not dogs; all women are not whores.

But against all hope, we hope. Hope is a force of life. A human need. The means to a eucastatrophe. Without hope, one is unable to spot a miracle. Without hope, one never even walks to the point where help might come. “How can man die better/than facing fearful odds/for the ashes of his fathers/and the temple of his gods,” Thompson Macaulay wrote.

Here is an admonition dear reader:

“A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we fight!! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Men and women!!!”

Aragorn’s speech at The Black Gates, Return of The King (2003) (edited for effect).

What we do not need is more despair and the surrendering of hope. What we need is a cherishing of what we have, what we share; which is one another. To be grateful for the gift of each other. With lifted spirits, to say “I am glad that you are here.” Rid yourself of all “mis-es” in your life: misanthropy, misandry, misogyny, misogamy. Let us cherish the gift of being and the being of givenness. The eminent Scruton said,

At the end of all our striving, we rejoice in our being and offer thanks. It is then, eating a meal among those we love, dancing together at a wedding, sitting side by side with people silenced by music, that we recognize our peculiar sovereign position in the world.

Dear reader, I am glad that you are here. And remember the words of the Prince of Paradox, Chesterton himself: “The one perfectly divine thing, the one glimpse of God's paradise given on earth, is to fight a losing battle - and not lose it.” Valete

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