No problem! I really enjoyed reading this, and yeah, it's pretty much how I see the situation. I think there's profound ideological clash between them (Denethor prioritizes Gondor's welfare over everything else, while Faramir prioritizes principle), but they're much more similar than not, and in Boromir, Denethor values what he himself isn't.
It really is tragic—arguably, he replicates the Ecthelion-Aragorn-Denethor tension as he saw it, but it ends up far worse than the original. And it's Faramir whom he casts as himself. And I def feel that despair is his ultimate moral failing, though it's not intrinsic to him but built on other failings, like his possessiveness and his ultimate desire being the preservation of Gondor as it always has been, rather than changed (even for the better). It's a very Elvish fault, in its way, and equally doomed.
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2019-09-14 05:50 pm (UTC)It really is tragic—arguably, he replicates the Ecthelion-Aragorn-Denethor tension as he saw it, but it ends up far worse than the original. And it's Faramir whom he casts as himself. And I def feel that despair is his ultimate moral failing, though it's not intrinsic to him but built on other failings, like his possessiveness and his ultimate desire being the preservation of Gondor as it always has been, rather than changed (even for the better). It's a very Elvish fault, in its way, and equally doomed.