Tolkien- For the Love of Eowyn!

[Lyta_Underhill]

While Éowyn decides at the end of her journey to adopt a more ‘traditional’ female role as wife of Faramir and become The White Lady, she has already fulfilled a ‘healing’ function by taking the place of Boromir in the Fellowship. (See what I mean about it being a crazy theory?)

Wow, Fordim! You have come up with a theory I've never heard of before, but somehow it rings true in some particulars. Have you tried testing the theory by replacing Boromir with Eowyn in the Fellowship? I can see Eowyn thinking the way Boromir does about the Ring, but I have a hard time picturing her attacking Frodo for it. Could she pull the "I beg thee!" desperate plea on Frodo like she did with Aragorn? I doubt it would work on Frodo...hmmm...must think about that more before going off about it.

Her interactions with Merry seem also parallel, if one wants to draw parallels from Eowyn to Fellowship members. She and Merry have the "left behind" syndrome, the feeling that they cannot affect the evil besetting them, a helplessness and rage against it. I can see this being a point of Boromir's character, although he, being a strong man of action in an established warrior's seat in Gondor, is not subject to the same level or kind of despair that the non-traditionals are (Merry and Eowyn). But you are right in one thing in my opinion--they are focused on the death aspect, the winning of war by killing off the enemy. Because they are narrowly focused on the death side of the warrior's world view, they do seem a dark mirror to the life-focused characters of Aragorn and Arwen.

Similarly, there seems to be a life/death dichotomy between Merry and Pippin in ROTK especially. While Merry rides with the Rohirrim shouting "DEATH!!" Pippin tries valiantly to keep Faramir from that very thing. (I don't know how far I could take THAT crackpot theory, though...) I'm thinking about starting an "Outrageous Crackpot Theories" thread on ME Mirth one of these days, just for the more outlandish of these theories. Just wait until you see all the identities for Tom Bombadil! Since I'm going off on a tangent, I'll close for now...

Cheers!
Lyta (whose second choice for personal title was "Crackpot in Residence")