The Lord of the Rings: The Siege of Gondor (Part 10)

The Tale

Meanwhile, all during that day Faramir lies burning with fever in his chamber in the White Tower, and rumors that he is dying spread through Minas Tirith, further disheartening the defenders. Pippin must stand by and watch as Denethor stands by Faramir’s bed, seeming to grow old before his eyes, his mind seemingly overthrown. ‘He saw tears on that once tearless face, more unbearable than wrath.’

Pippin finally asks him not to weep, and if he has asked Gandalf for help?

‘Comfort me not with wizards!’ Gandalf’s plan has failed and the Enemy has the Ring now. The Stewards House is over. Whatever remnants of Numenor survive will skulk in the hills, ruled by ‘lesser men.’

People come to the chamber, begging him to come and help them, but he will not leave his son’s side. ‘Follow whom you will, even the Grey Fool, though his hope has failed. Here I stay.’

So it is that Gandalf takes command of the City. He walks along the wall from north to south, bringing hope with him, lifting hearts. With him goes the Prince of Dol Amroth in shining mail, still holding his head up like a Lord of the West. But once they have passed the shadows close in upon them again, and day darkens into a desperate night, fires raging in the first circle of the City. Few remain at their posts there, most fleeing beyond the second gate.

‘Far behind the battle the River had been swiftly bridged, and all day more force and gear of war had poured across.’ Heedless of loss they pour through until they are massing at the wall, unchecked by the few defenders left. The dark captain calls for the siege-towers to be brought forward.

Desperate messengers break in upon Denethor’s gloom. They tell him of their desperate need. The people want their Lord and Steward; not everyone will follow the wizard. They are running and leaving the walls unmanned.

Denethor says they might as well stay and burn, for burn they all must. He’s going to his funeral pyre himself. ‘No tomb for Denethor and Faramir! … We will burn like heathen kings before ever a ship sailed hither from the West. The West has failed. Go back and burn!’ The messengers flee without a word.

Denethor releases Faramir’s hand. Faramir is already burning, consumed by fever. The Steward turns and looks at Pippin. He bids the hobbit farewell and releases him from his service. One last task, summoning the lord’s servants, and he may go and die as he sees fit, even following the wizard who’s meddling brought him to doom.

But Pippin will not say farewell, or willingly leave Denethor’s service. He will go and see Gandalf, who is no fool. Pippin ‘will not think of dying until [Gandalf] despairs of life.’ But if the enemy comes at last to the Citadel, he means to stand by the Steward’s side and perhaps earn the arms he has given him.

‘Do as you will, Master Halfling!’ said Denethor. ‘But my life is broken. Send for my servants!’ He turned back to Faramir.

 

Notes

Pippin keeps his Oath to the Steward, though Denethor has broken his ‘oath of office’ to defend the City.

What exactly does Denethor mean by the ‘heathen kings’? Does he just mean the wild men who ‘lived on the heath’ without town or tower, or does he mean that they did not revere Eru and the Lords of the West, the Valar? In any event they burned their dead, even as pre-Christian Rome or the Norse barbarians did in our world. Such practices were considered ‘heathen’ in both worlds. The preferred method in Gondor seems to have been ‘the long slow sleep of death embalmed.’ The Numenorean skills of embalming were developed to a high degree, another one of their efforts to cheat death.

On a side note, Dwarves preferred entombment in stone, but there were so many killed after the Battle of Azanulbizar (where they avenged Thror, Thorin’s grandfather) that they had to resort to funeral pyres. It denuded the Dimrill Dale of all trees, and led to the boast of an ancestor, ‘he was a burned Dwarf.’

In Peter Jackson’s movie, Gandalf gains command just by knocking Denethor out. In the book, as you can see, Denethor abdicates his authority in despair and grants Gandalf a sort of backhanded command.

Denethor’s comment that ‘Mean (lowly) folk shall rule the last remnant of the Kings of Men’ hints that he has knowledge of the approach of Aragorn, and doesn’t think much of his claims.

I can never think of that line ‘The West has failed’ without hearing it in William Conrad’s croaky voice in the Rankin-Bass version of The Return of the King.