Thoughts on friendships.

[Boromir88]

Tolkien stresses the point of friendships throughout his books. The main ones I wanted to get too were The Fellowship, Gondor and Rohan, and Sauron and Saruman. I will touch on a few others, but there will be many I don't talk about so please send in your thoughts.

First off, The Fellowship, the fellowship broke up in utter disaster at the end of FOTR. It was because of the Fellowship that created the bonds between fellowship members later on through the story. Without the Fellowship you wouldn't have the friendships with the Grey company, Merry and Pip, and Frodo and Sam. The fellowship broke apart but out of it came smaller, yet stronger, friendships. You simply wouldn't have that if there was no fellowship.

Second the two connected relationships between Gondor and Rohan (something the movies don't show well). First, as most know Denethor willingly lit the beacons, and sent out the red arrow. Theoden wasn't such a jerk as well, lol, he knew why Gondor couldn't be there to help Rohan, and he understood, so when the Beacons were lit he knew he must ride to Gondor (Which in the movie he does eventually do). This is sort of a weak bond, because Denethor hated anybody who didn't fight underneath him, he wanted to control, but he did this for the defense of Gondor, no matter how small of numbers Rohan came in (6 000 I believe) without them, Gondor would have lost. The Second friendship between Gondor and Rohan (or soon to be) is between Aragorn and Eomer (which again the movie just doesn't show). Aragorn (soon to be king of Gondor) and Eomer (soon to be king of Rohan) create a strong bond between eachother, symbolizing the future relationship between Gondor and Rohan, a strong, lasting one. They created a bond way back in the seconds chapter of TTT, and continued it to the very end, and would continue it until each's death, and beyond.

Lastly, the weak ties between Sauron and Saruman (which I would think is one of the downfalls of these two evils, there ill use of one another). Saruman thought he could deal with Sauron, and Sauron knew this and just used Saruman as a puppet. This goes to show a point, "good" friendships remain strong and true, "evil" friendships are weak and will be broken. Occurs through history a couple of times, WW2, Hitler doesn't use his allies (Russia and Italy) to his advantage. Causing Sauron's downfall and Hitler's downfall.

Some of the other relationships would be people who aren't really "allies" but have a common enemy and decide to help eachother. Gollum is a good example with Frodo (yes Gollum wanted to kill Frodo, to get the ring back). The point is Gollum hated Sauron probably even more then he hated Frodo. He wanted to do whatever he could to keep Sauron from getting the ring, and if that ment to have it in the hands of a Hobbit (in his mind atleast only for a while), it's much better then Sauron getting it. Then finally you have Ghan-buri-ghan and his agreement with Theoden. Before this time it seemed like the Woses weren't that great of friends with Rohan, but yet we have it again, they have a common enemy in this case, Ghan wants to kill Gorgun. I believe Ghan says something like we don't have enough to kill gorgun, so we help you kill them (something to that effect). In return Ghan wanted peace for his people, and I'm sure long after these troubles they got it.

There are many others I haven't even touched on, Shelob-Sauron, Elrond and Galadriel's impact, Halbarad-Aragorn...the list just goes on. So instead of taking up too much of the screen, if anyone wouldn't mind talking about other relationships or making comments on the ones I've posted, please do so.