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"..but in me she loves only a shadow and a thought'.: a hope of glory and great deeds, and lands far from the fields of Rohan".
Why does he say in me she loves only a shadow & a thought? The more I think about it, the more it seems Aragorn is saying that the 'shadow' Eowyn loves is in him, that she 'loves' something that is really there. And when she later says:
"I stand in Minas Anor, the Tower of the Sun, and behold, the Shadow has departed! "
that she means the shadow she has both loved (in Aragorn) & feared (in Sauron) & sought out (in battle). So her love for Aragorn is, on some level, the same as what she fears & what she desires. She is 'shadowed' - is this what attracts Wormtongue to her? (prob. a speculation too far!). But to what extent does the departure of the Shadow of Sauron correspond to the passing of the love she feels for the 'shadow' Aragorn. The 'shadow' passes in two ways.
Without wanting to get all Jungian, is there some mirroring of the Gandalf/Balrog conflict, (where the Balrog can be seen on one level as Gandalf's 'shadow', & his defeat of it as a 'purification', so that he goes from the Grey to the White) in Aragorn's defeat of Sauron - Aragorn's 'shadow' also passes away, he becomes Elessar, & so, symbolically, the 'shadow' which Eowyn loved in him passes from him, & she is free to love Faramir?
Or is the shadow she loved in Aragorn really her own Shadow, her own darkness & desire for death, which she projected onto him - prob. not, as Aragorn has stated 'in me she loves only a shadow and a thought'.
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