ROTK: Thinking about Denethor

On Friday, December 14,  many lives were interrupted--some permanently.  In the face of this, I am interrupting my posts on Outlander, just for a moment.

On Friday, December 14, Peter Jackson also released another of his interpretations of Tolkien.  I have not seen The Hobbit.  But I remember that, when Fellowship of the Rings was released into theaters on the heels of September 11, 2001, it offered some comfort in its portrayal of Tolkien's noble, beautiful Middle Earth--a world that was crumbling, but was still worth fighting for.  The film reminded us, in Tolkien's words, that "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."  It gave us a vision of joining hands and bravely facing what might lie ahead, however beautiful or terrible.

By the third film, many of these ideas--prominent in Tolkien-- had been left by the wayside, or reduced to an afterthought.  I focus on Denethor, because Jackson's film gives us a vision of Denethor as a near-demonic madman, first with a mouth full of berry juice, dripping red down his chin--heavily (and heavy-handedly) symbolic of the blood of his people, and of a flaming Denethor hurling himself off a cliff.

Denethor has always registered with me as painfully tragic.  He kills himself, and tries to kill his son.  He is corrupted by the absolute evil of Sauron.  But he is not a demon, or, strictly speaking, a monster.  He is simply a soul in absolute despair.  And Tolkien gives the reader, in the words of Gandalf, the tools to understand Denethor's actions:

"Authority is not given to you, Steward of Gondor, to order the hour of your death," answered Gandalf.  "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." (835)

Because of his despair and pride in his own false knowledge, Denethor is unable to face life.  But he is equally unable to face death alone.

Tolkien evokes "heathen kings."  Wives thrown onto the pyres at Norse funerals, or buried alive.  The accompaniment of souls into the afterlife is an idea evoked in Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, when Nimue kills herself after betraying Kevin the Bard to his death--Morgaine is comforted that Kevin will have someone waiting for him on the other side.

We are afraid of death.  We seek company in our fear.  We want a blaze of destruction to signify our mark on the world, and to give us the courage to die.  A grand gesture.  I am reminded of the video to Pearl Jam's "Jeremy," which does not (as some suggested when the video was popular) show the boy committing an act of violence on others, but rather, depicts suicide and death as a grand performance.  It is a madness of pride and egotism.  But it is very, painfully, human--and a symptom of our broken world.  A world that, in some ways, returns to primitive customs in the absence of Faith and in response to despair.

And as we ask why, one discourse is lacking--a discourse that centers on our fear of death, but also human desire for companionship, despair in isolation, and pervasive lack of faith in a world to come, or in a God who will comfort us on the other side.