Quote:
Originally Posted by cellurdur
The ring takes advantage of everything. It's a question of character and not education.
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Now that I think about it I'm not sure why I was arguing the point I was because it's quite opposed to how I read
The Lord of the Rings, for many of the same reasons you gave.
In his chapter on
The Lord of the Rings in
Classic Cult Fiction Thomas Reed Whissen argues that
The Lord of the Rings reminds us of how much our notion of good and evil and our power to resist temptation depend, not upon reason and will, but upon the kind of family and society into which we happen to have been born and by which we have been educated. Yet this can be seen as patently untrue through Boromir alone, as well as Denethor, Saruman, even Sauron himself.
So if Boromir's susceptibility is a matter of character and not culture, how does he reflect whatever Professor Tolkien's opinion is on how much choice we have over our own actions? Is this a 'nature vs nurture' question, and does Professor Tolkien fall on the side of nature? Or is there a compromise to be found between these two aspects and circumstance? I am loath to suggest that Professor Tolkien was ever guilty of that for which he is so regularly accused by his detractors, that he did not draw humanity in complex terms.