Let's Read Tolkien 57: The Window on the West

It seemed to Sam that he had only dozed for a few minutes when he awoke to find that it was late afternoon and Faramir had come back.

Faramir returns from leading the ambush to interrogate Frodo. Since Frodo has to explain himself somehow, he already admitted to being the halfling spoken of in the prophetic words that Boromir brought to Rivendell, but he tries to not reveal what Isildur's Bane is, or what his specific errand is. He learns from Faramir that Boromir is dead, because Faramir saw his body floating down the river in a grey elf-boat. Frodo can explain the provenance of the boat and Boromir's elven-cloak, and recalls Boromir's horn, which was found shattered in the river.

Faramir takes the hobbits to his company's hideout, and chats with Frodo on the way there, making many shrewd guesses. From Gandalf's inquiries in Minas Tirith, he had already concluded that Isildur had taken from Sauron "some heirloom of power and peril", which he would refuse as a weapon of the Dark Lord.

They arrive at the rangers' hideout, a cave behind a waterfall. There they eat, and as the hobbits chat with Faramir, Sam blurts out that Frodo is carrying "the Enemy's Ring". Like Galadriel before him, Faramir passes the test and doesn't succumb to the temptation. Frodo admits that he's trying to get to Mordor, to destroy the Ring. He almost collapses on the spot from sheer exhaustion, and the hobbits are taken to bed.

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There's a hint in Faramir's conversation with Frodo of Tolkien's earlier idea of a rivalry between Aragorn and Boromir:

"If he were satisfied of Aragorn's claim, as you say, he would greatly reverence him. But the pinch had not yet come. They had not yet reached Minas Tirith or become rivals in her wars.

Faramir and Boromir are, of course, a study in deliberate contrasts. Where Boromir dreamed of war, victories and mastery, Faramir dreams of peace. This is why he can reject the temptation of the Ring, while Boromir was destroyed by it. In a more interesting contrast, while Boromir defended his people's vitality against Elrond's racism, Faramir is a fervent believer in the Decline. "We are a failing people, a springless autumn." He even expounds a racial classification of humans, from the High Men of the West, through Middle Men, Men of the Twilight, to the Wild Men of the Darkness, and bemoans how the Men of Gondor (of course it's always Capitalized Men) are becoming Middle Men.

This declinism is a key theme of Tolkien's, and I already discussed it when I talked about the Council of Elrond. Faramir is its most vocal proponent in the book, but he also highlights some of its complications.

The declinism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was basically rooted in anti-modernism and racism. While Tolkien was definitely an anti-modernist, he doesn't phrase his declinism in that context. Faramir has no Howardian complaints of city life softening the Gondorians in contrast to the vital and masculine barbarians at the gates; to the contrary, he bemoans how bellicose his people have become. Also, in Middle-earth all advanced technology is old, like the palantír, not a new threat to an established order.

In racism, Tolkien is closer to the fascist ideas of decline; Elrond directly attributes the Untergang of Gondor to racial mixing, and Faramir also talks about how the men of Gondor (of course it's always men) have become more like "lower" men. But again, this is never something that should be fought. Faramir is, by his attitude to the Ring in particular, one of the most virtuous characters in the Lord of the Rings - and (spoilers) he goes on to marry a lady of Rohan. In doing so, he joins all the other Tolkien protagonists or figures of virtue who are either themselves of conspicuously mixed descent (Bilbo, Frodo), marry into completely different "bloodlines" (Beren and Lúthien), or both (Aragorn). Nor is it ever suggested that the "blood of Númenor" should be deliberately kept pure. The "blood of Númenor" isn't even a purely hereditary thing; Faramir, we're told, has it, but clearly his father and brother don't, at least not in equal measure.

It's also worth noting that if Tolkien really was the full-on fascist some people claim he is, surely the dwarves, who Tolkien himself insisted were an allegory of the Jews, would play some sinister part in the corruption of Gondor. Yet neither dwarven plots nor dwarven gold undermine Minas Tirith.

While Faramir's description of the decline of Gondor harks back to these ideas, there's something more important at work here - certainly something more crucial to Tolkien's theology.

"Yet even so it was Gondor that brought about its own decay, falling by degrees into dotage, and thinking that the Enemy was asleep, who was only banished not destroyed.

Death was ever present, because the Númenorans still, as they had in their old kingdom, and so lost it, hungered after endless life unchanging. Kings made tombs more splendid than houses of the living, and counted old names in the rolls of their descent dearer than the names of sons. Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry; in secret chambers withered men compounded strong elixirs, or in high cold towers asked questions of the stars. And the last king of the line of Anárion had no heir.

For Tolkien, the fundamental sin of Gondor wasn't racial mixing or modernity, but the desire to cheat death: to devise, because of the Fall, Machines with which to escape Mortality. Like he said, these are the crucial points of the whole work, and Gondor embodies them. This is why Tolkien said they were "best pictured in Egyptian terms" (Letters, 211). So the decline of Gondor is a product of sin.

Again, whether Tolkien is succesful in conveying this is another question. And even if his notion of decline is fundamentally a Christian one, it's still at best uncomfortably close to the fascist one. Here in Finland, our fascist movements always drew the majority of their followers from devout, "awakened" Christians, which is hardly a coincidence. The Nazis' antipathies toward Christianity have been massively and deliberately exaggerated. So while Tolkien wasn't a fascist, there are times when his Christianity comes very close to fascism, and his notions of blood and decline are the closest.

**

Next time: fishing.