Past Trauma Influencing Characters

[Keeper of Dol Guldur]

I don't know why it wasn't obvious to begin with, but I realized the last time I read (and remembered yesterday after watching Fellowship EE) that when Sam almost drowned in the final chapter, what went through Frodo's mind must have been very, very heavy. Both his mother and father drowned, and now his best friend was going to unless he did something. Pulling a sinking hobbit from a river isn't exactly easy for another, so maybe this explains a severe adrenaline kick just in the nick of time.

[Olorin]

I realize that this's a bit off topic, but on the subject of post dramatic trauma, maybe the trauma of Gandalf's death contributed to the reasons of why Boromir assaulted Frodo. Just a thought...

[Elentári]

What? I don't understand all this psychology stuff...I can suddenly see that bit with Frodo and Sam, but Boromir? What would that trauma have to do with anything? Sorry, my brain isn't working...

[Mariska Greenleaf]

I realize that this's a bit off topic, but on the subject of post dramatic trauma, maybe the trauma of Gandalf's death contributed to the reasons of why Boromir assaulted Frodo. Just a thought...

I've been thinking about this, but, I'm sorry, I have no idea what you mean. I don't see any connection between Gandalf's death and Boromir's assault on Frodo.
Could you explain this a little?

[Olorin]

Post-traumatic stress disorder sometimes occurs after people experience traumatic or catastrophic events (Gandalf's death in this case), such as physical or sexual assaults, natural disasters, accidents, and wars. People with this disorder relive the traumatic event through recurrent dreams or intrusive memories called flashbacks. They avoid things or places associated with the trauma and may feel emotionally detached or estranged from others. Other symptoms may include difficulty sleeping, irritability, and trouble concentrating.
-Encarta.com

Hence, Boromir wouldn't have been mentally stable at the time he tried to get the ring from Frodo.

Does this clear it up?

[Elentári]

Well, I had thought it was just the lure of the Ring....

[aragornreborn]

Well, I had thought it was just the lure of the Ring....

Yes, the lure of the Ring was probably the main draw. But what Olorin is saying is that other factors most likely contributed to Boromir attempting to take the ring. Most people would say Boromir is a decent character and most people would say he had no ambition to become a dark lord. So he clearly isn't evil and desiring the ring for those purposes. Therefore, other things much have contributed to him trying to take the ring from Frodo, such as desiring to protect Gondor. And he probably was not thinking clearly when he tried to take the ring. Gandalf just died, Gondor is in trouble, the quest looks like a failure... Things looked pretty bleak to Boromir and his behavior could have been altered because of that. So, basically, that's what Olorin is saying.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

But Boromir was not the only one of the Fellowship who saw Gandalf perish, i. e. all of them should have suffered from post-traumatic stress. However, they did not all react in the same way. I see no reason to use that factor for excusing Boromir's behaviour.

[Elentári]

Ok, I finally understand it now...and I agree. Even though they all saw it, people react to things in different ways. Frodo couldn't exactly steal it off himself, and he had enough sense and trusted in Gandalf enough to see that to destroy the Ring was the only hope. Aragorn was a very noble person, etc etc, and also trusted in Gandalf's counsel. And he wasn't very human in the book, was he. The hobbits were not fool enough to take the Ring for themselves, and seeing Gandalf fall wouldn't have prompted them to anyway. Legolas and Gimli I guess were a bit more resilient to the lure of the Ring, knowing its corruptive powers- Legolas because he is an Elf I suppose, and Gimli because those Black Riders had been to the Lonely Mountain trying to obtain the Dwarf Rings. Seeing Gandalf perish shouldn't have had that kind of effect on them.
But Boromir had the pressure of his failing city, the pressure of knowing his father would expect him to do his best, his own pride which desired glory, and his slight disregard for the danger in the first place.

[Keeper of Dol Guldur]

Actually, yeah it is pretty obvious that everything fell apart after Gandalf was lost, not just in his leadership (Aragorn did a pretty decent job of it) but because of the trauma itself. Here was somebody that Aragorn and Legolas knew to be an ongoing entity, and who to the rest seemed immortal and unquenchable in that regard, falling. And they all had known him for their entire lives.

After Gandalf's fall, Aragorn grew testy, Boromir lost confidence in his own strength and Gimli grew louder if anything. Other than that, Legolas stopped noticing nature to some degree (he didn't stop to listen to stones on the east side of Moria, and only the Mallorns really peaked his interest), Merry and Pippin stopped being jovial and shut up, and Sam and Frodo were even more silent.

But back to Boromir, it does seem his assault on Frodo was a bit unlike himself. Obviously it's supposed to be like that, with his mind being drawn by the ring. But maybe that was the ring's effect, after all a man who had fought in wars and seen many good men fall in battle shouldn't have broken down that much, and for somebody who didn't have much hope to begin with for the quest, how could it have worked now without Gandalf's leadership? While Lothlorien offered a respite from their worries about such things for a while, once they hit the river, Boromir's mentality deteriorated with every mile the river took them.

[Ophelia]

Well , in one word , death is something I do not like to have in my life not to mention seeing somebody dying . It could be quite a trauma . A human can not forgive himself so easily . The only thought going trough mind is "I could have saved him if only I had..." . And to a hobbit who has allready faced death too many times for one person and was allredy depressed by he's burden , now that is a pressure ... [img]smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img]
And forgive me this off topic reply but there was a case when 2 girls went swimming and one started to drawn and the other one went to save her . She did but the ironic part of this is that she herself drawned .

[Alphaelin]

I have to say that I don't think past traumatic events were ever intended to be a motivation for any of these characters. Though JRRT could very well have seen first-hand the effects of shellshock during his service in WWI, he did not write Lord of the Rings to create a psychological study. His passion was epic literature, and that is what he wanted to create. Characters in the epics I've read (LOTR, The Iliad, The Odyssey) tend not to be written with a lot of internal angst. Instead they are intended to show their response to a given quest or situation: destroying an evil ring, defending one's city, winning back a prized possession, getting back home again.

While Boromir would recognize the disastrous nature of the loss of Gandalf in Moria, he should be one of the least affected members of the Fellowship. Not only has he seen violent death before, it is his job both to kill and to send other men to their deaths. In order to do his job, he would have had to learn to cope with grief and guilt long before. While it might be argued that Gandalf's death might be the last straw for a mind that has seen years of death and destruction, the ring starts working on him before he even leaves Rivendell.

His vulerability to the Ring is based in his personality flaw of pride more than a traumatized past. The Ring, being completely evil, is able to capitalize on Bo's pride, and even on his determination to defend his city. Boromir never quite sees the big picture: Middle-Earth must be saved even if Gondor falls. For him, Gondor must be protected even if the rest of Middle-Earth falls. Thus he is able to justify attacking Frodo by telling himself that he needs the Ring to protect Gondor.

[Lord of Angmar]

I disagree with your statement that characters in an epic should not be written with internal angst. If you were to read the Odyssey in its original form (which I have done) you would see better the multi-dimensional and often deeply troubled mind of Odysseus. And what of other epics, such as the movie Lawrence of Arabia or Shakespeare's plays Romeo and Juliet, MacBeth and Hamlet (to name only a few)? These may be considered epics, and in each the characters obviously have immense internal angst and their purposes are never so completely clear cut as

destroying an evil ring, defending one's city, winning back a prized possession, getting back home again.

In Lord of the Rings, the characters do not necessarily show their internal anxiety and fears in words or direct actions, but certainly they are ever looming over the characters on their quests. Even before I saw the movie, I knew of the hardships and doubts of Aragorn's life, Boromir's passion for his city and willingness to give his life for it, and his uncertainty about what was to come. I cannot say that traumatic events are not used as influence and motivation for these characters. The plight of Gondor is surely traumatic to Boromir, and surely it sculpts drastically all of his decisions in FotR. The death of Gandalf is a traumatic event to all, and all of the members of the Fellowship feel it and act on it in different ways. For Frodo, it is leaving the Fellowship and determining to go off to Mount Doom alone. For Aragorn, it is being unsure about the path to take after the death of Boromir and the departure of Frodo and Sam. For Merry and Pippin it is wondering what part they are to play--if any--in the great deeds of the time. In many ways, Tolkien's book is can be considered a psychological study, although, granted, their emotions and motivations are never really as fully displayed and depicted as they are in the movies.

His vulerability to the Ring is based in his personality flaw of pride more than a traumatized past.

I tend to disagree with this statement. I do not see any proof that Boromir's pride is the key factor in his lust for the Ring. I think it is far more the idea in his mind of the fall of Gondor that pushes him to try to steal the Ring. It is, in my opinion, more a product of love for his city and fear of its destruction than pride (I do not even see what you mean by pride-- do you mean that he thinks he deserves the Ring by relation to Gondor? That he thinks he is a better bearer than Frodo? Please elaborate.) that draws him to the Ring.

[The_Hand]

I totally agree. Boromir was drawn to the ring because he wanted above all else to save Gondor and plase his father. And as for the part about characters in Tolkien not haveing trauma well just look at Turin!

He is a perfect example of someone who has had enough. All through his life he has had one trauma after another. From him having to leave his mother to the fact that he married his sister in end. Now the loss of Beleg almost pushed him off the egde... but not quite. I agree that Gandalfs death affected them all but least of all Boromir.

[Arothir]

I wonder if the descendants of Arvedui Lastking were afraid of water after he drowned in the Icebay of Forochel.

[Lord of Angmar]

That is a bit of a stretch, Arothir. [img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img]

Good point about Turin, Hand. If he wasn't written with extreme internal angst, then no fictional character has ever been.

[Arothir]

I know it's a stretch, but I thought it would be funny if Aragorn got scared at the Great River.

[Alphaelin]

I disagree with your statement that characters in an epic should not be written without internal angst.

I didn't say that characters in epic literature shouldn't be written without internal angst. I said they tend not to be written with internal angst. I will try to clarify:

In most of the epics I have read, the reader (or listener) is often not given a detailed description of the characters' inner thoughts. While there are episodes of introspection from characters such as Odysseus, most of the narrative focuses on the actions the characters take rather than on what they are thinking.

Tolkien admired the epic narrative style far more than he did drama, hence my statement that he never intended LOTR to be a psychological study. LOTR is a fairly straightforward presentation of people dealing with the challenges and hardships of a specific quest. Tolkien wrote LOTR to see if he could create a mythology for Britain.

And what of other epics, such as the movie Lawrence of Arabia or Shakespeare's plays Romeo and Juliet, MacBeth and Hamlet (to name only a few)? These may be considered epics, and in each the characters obviously have immense internal angst and their purposes are never so completely clear cut as
quote:
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destroying an evil ring, defending one's city, winning back a prized possession, getting back home again.
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While all the examples you gave are great works of art, none of them are epic literature, the style that Tolkien specialized in and loved. All of your examples are forms of drama, which depends on the spoken words of the characters to move the plot along. In drama, the devices of monologue and dialoque show the audience what characters are thinking. While screenplays differ from stage plays in that they are allowed to have bits of narration to describe action or setting, like plays they require human beings to enact the story in front of an audience.

A piece of epic liteature is "a long narrative poem in elevated style recounting deeds of a legendary or historical hero" or "a work of art that resembles or suggests an epic" or "a series of events or body of legend or tradition felt to form the proper subject of an epic". (Definition from my old Webster's Dictionary.) While the characters in LOTR have to develop and grow for the reader to stay interested in the story, the main thing for Tolkien was always to tell the story of the Quest - his "adventures of men in the Perilous Realm or upon its shadowy marches."

Regarding Boromir's reason for trying to take the Ring, we may just have different but equally valid opinions about the character. Here is my thought: Boromir is a noble and courageous man, yet he is vulnerable to the Ring's influence, which leads him to attack Frodo. My thought that it is his pride which makes it possible for the Ring to influence him is based partly on The Council of Elrond in FOTR, where he does not believe that true-hearted men would be perverted by the Ring, but largely in The Window on the West in TTT when Faramir speaks of him: " 'And this I remember of Boromir as a boy, when we together learned the tale of our sires and the history of our city, that always it displeased him that our father was not king.'" and a few lines later "If he were satisfied of Aragorn's claim, as you say, he would greatly reverence him. But the pinch had not yet come. They had not yet reached Minas Tirith or become rivals in her wars." Also in the Appendices at the end of ROTK, Boromir is spoken of as desiring glory in battle and his own glory therein. These all describe a prideful man, one who is so convinced of his superior skills on the battlefield that he could well believe himself impervious to outside influences. And since he does not regard the Ring as a danger to him, he takes no precautions to guard against its influence.

[Garulf]

Also in Lorien didn't Galadriel sort of read the minds of the Fellowship? Maybe Boromir is stressed olut and troubled that someone knows that he desired the ring (i haven't read FotR for awhile so I might be confusing book for movie but I'm pretty sure it happened in the book)

[Finwe]

Pressure can change people a lot. A person that we think is calm, collected, and ready to take on anything can become the wildest and most uncontrolled person that we know, just because of pressure. Believe me, being in high school, it really gives you a few insights on how the rest of your life is going to be. I'm not saying that I know everything, I know that college is going to be worse, but pressure can really change a person (grades, family. etc.)

I think the reason Boromir seemed to "lose it" to a much greater degree was that he felt everything was being pinned upon him. From childhood, his father had favored him, and made him think that he would one day inherit the Stewardship and take care of Gondor. He wanted Gondor to stay strong. He wanted Gondor to hold against Sauron's forces. During that time, when Sauron's forces started harassing Gondor, I think that Boromir, subconsciously, could have been really bewildered. I mean, he was brought up to think that Gondor was the best and the greatest, and now, it was under attack. Along with his own expectations, his father's hopes were being pinned upon him, and that was a very heavy burden to bear for him.

The Ring played a major part in his breakdown because its main "strength" is finding out other people's weaknesses, and exploiting them. Boromir's weakness was his love for his country. He would do anything to make sure that Gondor would be victorious, even if it meant breaking a thousand rules. The Ring acted on that, and sort of "convinced" him to believe that taking it from Frodo, and bringing it to Gondor would make it serve as a weapon. He forgot that it had done the exact same thing to Isildur, his ancestor, an age before.
The Isildur's Heir problem also put pressure on Boromir. I think subconsciously, he wanted to believe that Aragorn was the Heir, and that he would become King. But with his father's expectations, hopes, and opinions being so ingrained in him, he immediately burst out against Aragorn, and resented him. I think, though, that once the Fellowship reached Lothlorien, and after talking to Aragorn about Minas Tirith, Boromir grew to accept him a little. He even tried to convince Aragorn to lead the Fellowship to Minas Tirith, since he was the true King. Of course, Aragorn knew what Denethor's reaction to the proximity of the One Ring would have been, and wisely decided not to. That drove a wedge between him and Boromir for a while, and unfortunately, it took a bunch of Uruk-hai arrows for Boromir to truly accept Aragorn as his "brother... captain...king."

[ September 24, 2003: Message edited by: Finwe ]

[Guinevere]

Arothir wrote:

I wonder if the descendants of Arvedui Lastking were afraid of water after he drowned in the Icebay of Forochel.

No, but Faramir, as a descendent of the Numenoreans, has inherited the nightmare of the drowning of Numenor!!

As for Boromir, I agree with Alphaelin's statement. Faramir's characterization of his brother shows clearly why Boromir would be more susceptible to the lure of the ring.

Back to the title of the topic:
if any character in LotR is influenced by past trauma, it is surely Frodo when he returns to the Shire after the quest!
I remember even having read a lengthy essay by a psychologist about Frodo having a typical "post-traumatic survivor syndrome" . He isn't able to enjoy life in the Shire anymore, and it is only in the undying lands that he can find healing from his hurts.

[ September 28, 2003: Message edited by: Guinevere ]

[Olorin]

Clarification: I did not mean to say that Gandalf's death was an excuse, the only reason or even the main reason for Boromir to take the ring. I merely meant to say that it could have been one of the contributing factors.

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That's a very good example, Guinevere. Past trauma with Frodo is probably the most obvious, yet it never occured to me. I don't really have anything to add to your theory except that I concur.