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Tumblr crosspost (24 March 2020)
I’ve seen some fairly elaborate theories for why Faramir’s representation of Boromir in TTT seems fairly negative. And they’re fine and all, but I think they do tend to ignore two important things:
- Faramir is trying to extract information about how Boromir died from people potentially involved in his death
- Faramir is explicitly said to have believed that Boromir was the best!! ever!!!!!
I mean, you can go the unreliable narrator route for the second, but not really the first. And jumping to ‘unreliable narrator!’ with anything that doesn’t fit an interpretation is meh, anyway.
So. While Faramir is not actively lying in that scene, and in fact says he wouldn’t, his approach to the truth can be … oblique. He certainly conceals things as suits his purposes (he hides that Boromir was his brother at first, for instance) and picks his words carefully (he says his public interrogation was deliberately phrased to give a somewhat different interpretation than what he really thinks is going on). He’s deciding whether Frodo and Sam (and anyone else) betrayed Boromir to his death, and in general whether he should kill them or help them. That is the critical context to everything he says and does until his rejection of the Ring.
He may very well have thought that Boromir was a glory seeker. But leaning into it hard while staying completely silent about ‘Boromir helped me and protected me when we were growing up and HAD NO RIVAL OKAY’ serves his purposes in that context. It’s not that he didn’t love and admire Boromir; it’s that emphasizing it won’t help him find out how Boromir died and what he should do about Frodo and Sam.
#context matters! and the context of that scene is that faramir is trying to get frodo and sam off their guard #he /knows/ something went wrong between them and boromir; praising boromir isn't going to get him anywhere #idk it seems like all the explanations treat his commentary as if it's a monologue in an empty room and not meant to achieve something #i've talked about this before but i feel the line about faramir's real feelings in the appendix makes it especially glaring
- Faramir is trying to extract information about how Boromir died from people potentially involved in his death
- Faramir is explicitly said to have believed that Boromir was the best!! ever!!!!!
I mean, you can go the unreliable narrator route for the second, but not really the first. And jumping to ‘unreliable narrator!’ with anything that doesn’t fit an interpretation is meh, anyway.
So. While Faramir is not actively lying in that scene, and in fact says he wouldn’t, his approach to the truth can be … oblique. He certainly conceals things as suits his purposes (he hides that Boromir was his brother at first, for instance) and picks his words carefully (he says his public interrogation was deliberately phrased to give a somewhat different interpretation than what he really thinks is going on). He’s deciding whether Frodo and Sam (and anyone else) betrayed Boromir to his death, and in general whether he should kill them or help them. That is the critical context to everything he says and does until his rejection of the Ring.
He may very well have thought that Boromir was a glory seeker. But leaning into it hard while staying completely silent about ‘Boromir helped me and protected me when we were growing up and HAD NO RIVAL OKAY’ serves his purposes in that context. It’s not that he didn’t love and admire Boromir; it’s that emphasizing it won’t help him find out how Boromir died and what he should do about Frodo and Sam.
#context matters! and the context of that scene is that faramir is trying to get frodo and sam off their guard #he /knows/ something went wrong between them and boromir; praising boromir isn't going to get him anywhere #idk it seems like all the explanations treat his commentary as if it's a monologue in an empty room and not meant to achieve something #i've talked about this before but i feel the line about faramir's real feelings in the appendix makes it especially glaring