Boromir (one of my favorite characters) was certainly not bad or evil. He is the most human in LotR. Nearly all other characters are super-heroes or nearly perfect. Boromir´s a human; he makes mistakes.
I once had a dream about Boromir. He was in Lothlórien, talking with Galadriel. As in the book, Galadriel saw through him. He said: "It´s hard to be the only evil among good people. It's hard to be the only man among women."
At first I nearly laughed at my dream. But then I realized that it described him actually quite well. Boromir was a human among super-humans and he might be consired as evil compared to them. But if he was taken off the book and for example to our world, he would have been considered maybe as a good person.
I had my first touch with LotR when I was six and my father read it aloud to me and my liitle sister. Then, and also much later in the following times I read it, I thought that he was evil and one of the few characters I didn´t like.
Now he´s one of my favorites and I understand him. He´s a tragic character. Quite a change in my attitude towards him? Maybe it's because I´ve now read LotR so many times and understand it better or maybe because I was so small then (around both sides of 10 years) and little children easily think that people are "good" or "bad".
Boromir is lovely and always will be.
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