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I think Fordim's point about love is well made. These characters all grow in their capacity to love. They begin, as Merry says, with the capacity to love what they are 'fitted to love', because they 'must start somewhere'. Their experiences enable them to love more deeply, & specifically to love 'higher' things. This is mot to say that 'higher things' are beyond thair knowledge from the start. Boromir loves his ideal 'Gondor' in much the same way as his brother - even if their concepts of that ideal differ. Eowyn loves Aragorn for the same reason - he represents an ideal. But these ideals are 'gropings' for something 'other', so to an extent they are fantasies & have little grounding in reality.
Boromir in the end discovers a higher love - not one that he could have concieved of at the start of his journey. He discovers that to die an ugly death, not on some great field of battle, with banners flying, surrounded by knights in shining armour, but on a lonely hilside, protecting two helpless hobbits, is a true sacrifice, & he is ennobled by it in a way that falling on the battlefield & being carried in state to Rath Dinen would not do. His self sacrifice there is what enables him to rise above his former state.
Eowyn discovers the same thing - she had sought a glorious death on the field, but in the end she stands against the WitchKing, not wishing for a glorious death which would bring her renown as well as peace, but only to protect Theoden.
It is this humbling that enables them to rise above their former state & gives them the capacity to transcend what they had been.
What they all discover is that these high dreams to which they had commited themsleves are not true. They are fantasies of which they need to be broken if they are to become fully & truly human.
We see the same with Frodo, who sets out to 'save the Shire' - not the real Shire, but his fantasy ideal of it. His journey will break him, but that very breaking will enable him to be remade.
They may all only be capable of 'loving what they are fitted to love' at the start, the simple everyday things - but each character's journey will enable them (through breaking them) to become fitted to love greater things.
What I find interesting is that these characters at the start love things which they are not 'fitted to love', so what they feel is not truly 'love' but rather desire. It is an ideal they yearn for. Yet it is this desire for an ideal which inspires them. The ideal exists to motivate them into action, to inspire them. Its what makes them set foot upon the Road which they believe will lead them to that ideal. Yet the journey breaks them & they end up, reborn, at a totally different location. Not where they expected to be, but in the place they should be.
Arwen is broken by the loss of Aragorn - actually, by the simple fact of death. She is broken by what we may think of as a simple 'fact'. Yet it is only a simple fact to mortals like us. To her, it is 'wrong'. She is confronted by a cosmic wrong. Its the inescapable inevitability of it which is too much for her. I suppose its the same for all the characters - for Frodo perhaps most intensely - or maybe we just see it expressed most intensely in his experience.
Love for the 'ideal' inspires & the quest to attain it breaks the questor - & that in itself is a kind of death - even if the individual doesn't actually die. That death, that breaking, is what allows transcendence, & enables the individual not only to love higher things, but to love them truly.
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