If most of the tragic figures of Tolkien’s Silmarillion and the LotR are going wrong by forgetting that the goods they inherit and seek to preserve by their own hands are only a part, and not the whole, of the good that is to be sought, I raised the possibility that Samwise Gamgee gives us the proper response to this temptation to error: essentially, stay in your lane and be content with your own small role to play.
But what if the case of Denethor complicates this situation a bit, for reasons that might take some elucidation. While Denethor never came within close proximity of the One Ring, we learn that, by way of the palantir, he has had more direct contact with Sauron than any other protagonist in the story. As a result of this, he suffers the same temptation as our other heroes, and his response seems similar to Boromir’s, in that he envisions the ring in Gondor for the defense of the realm. In a meeting with Gandalf and Faramir in Book V, Denethor first chastises Faramir for simply letting the ring go, unlike his elder son who tried to take the ring to Gondor by force: “Boromir was loyal to me and no wizard’s pupil. He would have remembered his father’s need, and would not have squandered what fortune gave. He would have brought me a mighty gift.” We can interpret this as a willingness to use the ring in short order for the war effort, but when Gandalf challenges Denethor on what he imagined doing with the ring, it is interesting that his story changes slightly. Denethor responds with a cautious strategy, insisting that the ring “should have been kept, hidden, hidden dark and deep. Not used, I say, unless at the uttermost end of need, but set beyond [Sauron’s] grasp, save by a victory so final that what befell would not trouble us, being dead.” While we may have some doubts about the sincerity of this answer, let us, for the moment, take him at his word. What, then, does Denethor want, if not the power of the ring?
Gandalf, it turns out, asks Denethor this very question, and he does so just at the moment when the ring is completely beyond Denethor’s grasp and Denethor believes his son Faramir to be mortally wounded and the war effort to be completely doomed. This is the precise moment–the “uttermost end of need”–in which Denethor would have finally used the ring. However, in the depths of despair, Denethor now prepares funeral pyres for himself and his son, and is on the brink of suicide.
Brought away from the battle at a decisive moment so that he may attempt to prevent this immolation, Gandalf has arrived in time to try and dissuade Denethor. Denethor responds with angry accusations, largely centered on the idea that Gandalf intends to rule all the lands himself, and Gondor by way of Aragorn as his puppet. Interestingly, Gandalf opts not to even respond to the obviously false charges, but cuts to the point with the salient question: “What then would you have, if your will could have its way?” Denethor’s response is revealing:
I would have things as they were in all the days of my life and in the days of my long-fathers before me: to be the Lord of this City in peace, and leave my chair to a son after me, who would be his own master and no wizard's pupil. But if doom denies this to me, then I will have naught: neither life diminished, nor love halved, nor honour abated.
On one level, this sounds like the Samwise strategy. He wants merely to remain the ruler of his city, to guide his people to safety and raise his son to lordship and see this inheritance passed safely on. To make the analogy even clearer, is he not a gardener in his own way? Does Denethor not wish simply to continue pruning and weeding and tending his rows as he sees fit and as he has always done? Is this not the good for which he was intended to work? How then has the ordered love of something good gone so wrong yet again, allowing evil to gain a foothold even in such a noble lord?
Gandalf, I believe, has the diagnosis (and, as we will see in a moment, it is the hobbits who have the cure). While clever Denethor–and I think it is fair to lay some of this cleverness at the foot of Sauron and his malign influence–sure sounds like he is simply preserving an inherited good, what he is really doing is corrupting that good out of selfish pride, as Gandalf observes: “To me it would not seem that a Steward who faithfully surrenders his charge is diminished in love or in honour.” Denethor is rightly the lord of Gondor, but the Steward is empowered only insofar as there is no king. The stewards served the kings as counselors in the days of old, and so they should again when a king returns (indeed, Aragorn immediately invests Faramir with this role upon his ascension to power), but that is Denethor’s real problem, isn’t it? If we could make Denethor’s response to Gandalf even more honest, it would read “If doom would deny me ultimate power, then I will have naught.” So the old problem has really cropped up again: Denethor has confused his small role in the good and forgotten that his role exists to serve a good even greater than this.
So, in all, we have seen some of the Valar, and the mightiest elf lord ever to live, and one of the strongest men of the West fall victim to this corrupted view of the good. It seems only fitting that the simple hobbits would offer a corrective, and they do not let us down. After receiving healing at the hands of Aragorn (and note the contrast in leadership: Denethor broods and rages at decisive moments, while Aragorn goes and tends to the needs of his people), Merry and Pippin discuss their shared experiences in service to the rulers of Rohan and Gondor. Pippin remarks, “Was there ever anyone like [Aragorn]? Except Gandalf, of course, I think they must be related…Come on now! Longbottom Leaf it is. Fill up while I run and see about some food. And then let’s be easy for a bit. Dear me! We Tooks and Brandybuck’s, we can’t live long on the heights!”
But Merry’s response is key:
No, I can't. Not yet, at any rate. But at least, Pippin, we can now see them, and honour them. It is best to love first what you are fitted to love, I suppose: you must start somewhere and have some roots, and the soil of the Shire is deep. Still there are things deeper and higher; and not a gaffer could tend his garden in what he calls peace but for them, whether he knows about them or not. I am glad that I know about them, a little. But I don't know why I am talking like this. Where is that leaf? And get my pipe out of my pack, if it isn't broken.
It is no trivial desire on Merry’s part that he wants to ponder these things while he smokes Longbottom Leaf. He returns to the literal roots of his homeland, the Shire (Longbottom Leaf grows not far from his very home), not so that he can lock the Shire in amber and prevent it from ever being touched by chance or change, or plan to rework the fields and towns of Middle Earth until it is nothing but tobacco and hobbit holes as far as the eye can see. Instead, he settles into a familiar habbit from home so that he can consider the things that are “deeper and higher” than what he has known previously. While we all must start by loving what we are suited to love by our particular nature, this is not the summum bonum but a training ground so that we might prepare to love higher goods.
And so, from the mouths of the hobbits, we get a theory of loving the good which is every bit as sophisticated as that of Plato (see especially Symposium 201 D-212 C). If Diotima has her famous ladder, then I think Merry has found a ladder of his own. Poor Denethor, and a great many others, should have tried climbing it.