The 7 deadly sins vs. The 7 heavenly virtues.

[Keeper of Dol Guldur]

I had practically written an essay on this post ... but I accidentally pressed backspace while not in the text box, lost the whole thing, and am very sad about it now.

It's in my opinion, that as far as the Sins and Virtues go, there are seven of each for a reason. Balance.

They balance each other out perfectly. In the same regard, a few of them cancel other ones out.

In Boromir, we see pride, envy and lust. He only lost his temper once, which threw him off balance quite literally, going from 3 out of 7 Sins to 4 out of 7, which is over half. But since he kept a cool head almost all the time, I wouldn't call him angry.

As far as virtues go, all men of Gondor have faith in the Valar. Faith in the quest ... is another thing. He probably had faith in Frodo, but didn't have any hope of Frodo getting into Mordor, let alone to Mount Doom. He'd seen the place, he knew the odds ...

But Boromir was charitable, steadfast (fortitude), righteous (justice) and always kept his cool (except just once). He was also pretty keen on prudence. Since Gandalf didn't counsel prudence, and the whole idea of trying to sneak into Mordor and destroy the ring went against all common sense, we can't even say the quest was prudent.

He had 3 out of 7 of the Deadly Sins, but he had 6 out of 7 of the Heavenly Virtues. When he lost his cool with Frodo, and bumped up to 4 Sins, he lost a little bit of fortitude, and temperance, knocking virtue down to 4. Still, he never really got into the realm of sin any of our key villains attained and held.

I think it's important to mention that Sloth didn't really exist before electricity and all of our other modern comforts. The laziest person in Middle Earth was probably Bombur, who was so fat, that he was carried around. Dwarves seemed most prone to Sloth. But everybody had to do all sorts of basic things, just to stay alive. Sloth just wasn't prudent.

The most sloth came in the form of Lords staying in their towers, ruling from a safe place, and actually ... that was prudent. Even so, Sauron, Saruman, Denethor, Elrond, Celeborn ... they didn't sit around on thrones all the time. There were things to be done.

[Boromir88]

I had practically written an essay on this post ... but I accidentally pressed backspace while not in the text box, lost the whole thing, and am very sad about it now.

I tend to do that from time to time as well. Only instead of pressing backspace, sometimes my mind will just work totally wierd and i'll click the "x" to sign off aol, lol.

I like your argument, so would you say it was the deadly sins that led Boromir to his death, but his heavenly virtues redeemed himself? Making it a "honorable" death? Or, would you say they have nothing to do with Boromir's death at all?

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Still, he never really got into the realm of sin any of our key villains attained and held.

Not saying he did, Keeper. There are very few "bad guys" who are really and truly bad guys.

Wormtongue: not very nice, but not exactly all-together evil. He just worked for Saruman.
Denathor: driven mad.
Bill Ferny: miserable lackey from a back-country town. He probably had no idea of the consequences of his actions.
The Haradrim: Evil and cruel, yes, yes. But look at what Faramir has to say of them; young sons sent away to fight for some unknown cause. I wish I could find the quote, but after some time of searching, it still alludes me.

You'll notice that I included only humans in that list. It is my idea that only humans can be subjected to human ideas and standards. Judging a wizard or a hobbit or an Elf by what we deem is right for humans is like condemning a Komodo dragon for mercilessly eating its own young. However, to keep in the spirit of the discussion:

Saruman: As an Istar, and the leader of the White Council, he was quite obviously a good person. He exemplified the Virtues:

Faith: Maia, anyone? How could an Istar not have faith?

Hope: To be devoid of hope is to defeat the purpose of the Wizards. What would be the point of journying to Middle Earth to help the free peoples unless there was some semblence of hope that it could be done?

Charity: Although you could classify helping the free people as a job that they had no choice in, the wizards still came with that exact purpose. They're entire existence in Middle Earth was based on divine charity.

Fortitude: In order to directly oppose the forces of evil, Saruman obviously must have a lot of courage. Or at least faith that it would work out all right. Either way, virtues!

Justice: The use of authority to uphold what is right. The White Council, anyone? Banding together in order to oust Sauron from his place in Dol Goldur?

Temperance: Yet again, I see no immediate examples, but like Keeper said of Sloth, it wasn't really a problem at this point in time.

Prudence: Managing carefully. Even after he joined the "Dark Side", so to speak, he still showed prudence. Just look at the secrecy and organization of Isengard!

And yet, just like my prior example of Boromir, Saruman was only really swayed into sin by temptation for the Ring.

Fea

[Elianna]

I was just thinking of yet another example involving Boromir:

Perhaps not just his sins, but also his lack of virtue caused his downfall. He had a lack of faith in Frodo and the Wise that destroying the Ring was to way to go. This also shows a lack of hope.

[Keeper of Dol Guldur]

That's what I was sort of getting at.

It wasn't Boromir's Pride, or Envy or other sins that led to his spell, if anything his sins and virtues were balanced out fairly well, as they should be in all men, but a lack of virtue was what let him lose it, and so it was totally not his sins that did him in, but his lack of virtue.

Even if it was only momentary, it was enough to screw all sorts of things up.

He got shifted off balance for like ... a moment, and it took a long time for those tensions to even build up, and then when he finally lost his cool a little bit, whammo! The Fellowship is broke and he ends up dead.

But like I said, he was very balanced before, and even though he got 'unbalanced' for his sudden spell with Frodo, after he fell flat on his face and lay there for a while and cooled off, he was balanced again.

Honestly ... after that, and seeing firsthand what the Ring could do ... I think he would probably have actually been safer around Frodo and the Ring than he had before, when he had doubts and misconceptions about it's power.

[Mithalwen]

I found this by acccident and am going to bump it up before I lose it again!

It strikes me that it applies much more to the Silmarillion than the Lord of the Rings. I guess that isn't surprising given that the characters in The Silmarillion tend to be much more complex and ambiguous.

It is easy to find examples for the sins(saving sloth perhaps) but a lot of the "good" characters doom themselves by failing in the virtues.

Je reviens..

[Nogrod]

It may be that one of the reasons why the character of Boromir is hard to pin down with the deadly sins vs. heavenly virtues is the fact that western culture indeed carries two sets of virtues in its inheritance. One from the Middle-Age christianity and the other from the Antiquity (Greek and Roman virtues).

With the virtue-code of Antiquity fex. noble pride or anger (not hate...) are virtues: a good man knows his value and worth (not belittling oneself and thence be untrue) and knows when to anger (for example when facing injustices). I think these older virtues are near Tolkien's heart too, not only the Christian ones.