Now we come to the siege of Minas Tirith. In this Chapter, the power of the Shadow reaches its absolute height, as it ends in the depths of darkness, in madness, and with the Lord of the Nazgul poised to enter the greatest City in Middle Earth over its rubble.
And this Chapter can be viewed in many ways. It is the set-up for the great battle-scene of the next Chapter. It is the story of the wounding, sometimes beyond healing, of almost all those who take part in this part of the struggle against Sauron, the Black Breath. It is certainly the story of the Collapse of Denethor, about which much has been said by Tolkien and others.
Parenthetically, I do think that we sometimes miss just how nuanced Denethor is. He shows a capacity to listen to others (“Pride would be folly that disdained help and counsel at need”) and to take a “high” viewpoint (his logic is that if Gondor falls, everything else falls, so the survival of Gondor must be the focus of everyone, including its Steward).
But instead of examining these themes, I want to take a look at what I believe is typically scanted in thinking about this Chapter: the contrast between two views of stewardship.
The stage is set at the end of the last Minas Tirith Chapter, where Gandalf says to Denethor, “For I too am a steward. Did you not know?” We see that Gandalf’s idea of what his responsibilities are as a steward are different from those of Denethor. But is it just a difference of opinion over responsibilities, or is it a disagreement over what it is to be a Steward?
“Steward” is another of those new/old words. In Middle English, it means approximately “house guardian”. In the castles of the high nobility and the King, it often meant more specifically one who guards and delivers the food and drink of the household to the Master – and there is an ambiguity here, because the food was often in the form of steaming cauldrons in which the food was stewed, hence the connection with the French verb estuver, to steam or bathe. But the steward might also take full responsibility for the care of the house while the Master was away.
The situation was further complicated by the story of the Stuarts – or, more correctly, the Stewarts (Stuart was Mary Queen of Scots’ “Frenchification” of the name). These were High Stewards of Scotland in the sense of house guardian since the early 1100s; the post was hereditary. In 1371, they crossed the line and became full kings. The career of Robert the Steward, the first Stuart king, shows how the meaning of steward had evolved: he was at various times before the transition an effective King in the same way that a Vice President takes over as President in the case of incapacity of the President, and the Guardian of the king at the time.
So even then there were two, and possibly three, functional roles of a steward, two or three views of stewardship as a whole:
1. Someone who is effectively the Master or King (until some unspecified time when the real King returns, or perhaps indefinitely as in the case of the House of Stuart)
2. Someone who takes care of things as a service to someone else – someone who views themselves as acting on behalf of others;
3. Someone who serves food and drink, like the stewards and stewardesses in air travel.
Clearly, the last thing we’re thinking about in these Chapters is whether Denethor is going to serve us our next meal. So I think it’s fair to say that the contrast drawn here is between two types of steward: someone like a Vice President, or someone like a CEO, who runs a firm or nation on behalf of its real owner.
But there’s more to it than that: We should also ask, for whom is this service performed? This is an instance of what is called in economics and business the “agent problem”: When you are the owner and hire someone else to run the place, how do you make sure that the self-interest of the hired gun meshes with the needs of the stockholders? Or, in an altruistic organization such as Gondor hopes to be, how do you make sure that the steward is taking the viewpoint of the correct set of “owners”?
And here is where Gandalf seemingly draws the sharpest distinction between the two types of steward. Denethor defines himself as the VP permanently in charge. And by Denethor’s logic, if Gondor goes, everything goes. So by serving Gondor as a substitute King, he serves all the Free Peoples of Middle Earth. Gandalf says, not so. By the logic of one serving on behalf of all of Middle Earth, Nature as well as people, the survivors left behind after Gondor falls as well as Gondor’s allies, “I shall not wholly fail of my task …if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come.” In other words, if all the peoples are swept away and Nature survives, that’s who I will serve.
Implicit in this definition, I assert, is the idea that there is a tendency for the first type of steward to focus on his own view of what is in the best interests of all, and for the second type – if the identification of the “owners” is broad enough – to look to others’ view of what is in the best interests of all. And so we come to this Chapter, which is, I believe, in one sense the playing out under highly stressful circumstances of these two views of stewardship.
The Way It Plays Out
So let’s take a look at this Chapter from the point of view of stewardship, and see how that might enter into the actions of Denethor, in particular.
The first thing Denethor does is order Faramir to defend the River and Osgiliath and the Rammas Echor, in spite of the advice of his Council to pull back within the walls of the City. And I think it’s fair to say that his judgment is flawed by the fact that it is he, Denethor, who ordered the walls of the Rammas Echor built (and the Causeway Forts). In other words, he is like a WW II French commander who has staked everything on the Maginot Line that he has helped construct, and then doubles down with efforts to defend it after it should be plain that it will fail.
And, over the next few days, we see that happening. Faramir his subcommander is out there, over-extended, and Denethor sits in his tower and watches the disasters pile up, without changing the plan – clearly, because he views even this as still within the bounds of the strategy he has had in mind from the first.
And then Faramir returns. Just as clearly, Denethor has prepared for this possibility within his plan, and sends out a sortie to rescue those of the retreating warriors that can still be saved. In Denethor’s mind, he is still playing out his strategy as expected. And then, with a shattering abruptness, his control of the situation breaks – because Faramir turns out to be wounded unto death.
The point I am making here is that what has also happened with Faramir’s wound is that Denethor, like a bad ruler or a flawed CEO who thinks of himself as the real ruler, has no succession plan in place. As far as Denethor is concerned, the death of his heir plus the likelihood of his own death effectively means the death of Gondor, and the ruin of everyone. And he never considered this possibility? Or did he consider it and reject doing anything about it, because his idea of stewardship was of the first type?
Meanwhile, by the way, what is Gandalf doing? As befits the second type of steward with a broad definition of the people and Nature whom he serves, he is out there listening to the needs of the people in the battle, and serving them. And when the siege commences, he is out on the walls with the Prince of Dol Amroth, giving heart to the defenders in the face of horror. But without the support of the Steward, it is not enough.
So I am saying, yes, the fall of Denethor was caused in the end by pride and despair, as Gandalf, as Tolkien says explicitly. But there was a flaw in Denethor from the beginning, in that he espoused the first type of stewardship, not the second, and made his definition of whom he served too narrow. I believe there is a small possibility that he would not have succumbed to pride and despair, had he fundamentally been in the habit from the beginning of doing type 2 stewardship, with a broader definition of the people served.
If we just consider the idea of stewardship, I think there’s an interesting possible parallel in WW II. I would suggest that General MacArthur saw himself as a type 1 steward, master of his combat theater and fully independent, with all the flaws and strengths that revealed – dependence on sycophants, unnecessary frictions with the British and Australians, set against a good island-hopping strategy and effective use of his air commander, who effectively made his island-hopping strategy successful. And I would suggest that Eisenhower saw himself as a type 2 steward, and most accounts agree that he succeeded in his main task of welding disparate views into a coherent strategy that he drove forward effectively, with constant consultation. But suppose the roles were reversed?
I would argue that Eisenhower would have made a quite effective Pacific commander. What he might have lost in strategic skills – and I’m not convinced he wouldn’t have adopted the same strategy as MacArthur – he would have gained in more effective coordination with the Allies. However, I think MacArthur in Eisenhower’s place would have been a disaster. He almost certainly would not have worked effectively with the British, nor with FDR and Marshall in Washington, and especially not with the always-difficult French. In other words, the steward as servant of all can do well both in the stresses of war and the trickier demands more associated with long-term strategy and peace, while the steward as substitute ruler is more likely to fail at the latter.
But I think there is one more possible consideration for our own world.
It is interesting that the King James version of the Bible uses the “old” English term stewardship to refer in the Old Testament to our responsibilities to Nature, to the flora and fauna that surround us. And I think that both there and in the New Testament (the parable of the Good Steward) it is taken to mean more a steward of type 1, a substitute for a ruler who deliberately hands over all responsibility. And given the preponderance of Christian thought in policy-making even into the 1900s, in Europe, the US, and perhaps the European colonies, I think it’s fair to say that it colors our thinking even to this day: we are substitute rulers of the Earth. Our task is to decide for ourselves, individually or collectively, what is best for Nature, and even the peoples closely integrated with Nature.
But Gandalf’s notion of stewardship offers us an alternate path. We can view ourselves, in fact, as in service not only to the overall good of people and Nature, but more specifically to Nature itself and those peoples who best approximate the interests of Nature. The Lapp, the Inuit, the Native American. The ecology of California; of Alaska; of Montana. We think globally about climate change and sustainability, yes; but we start by consulting them, by asking them or by using environmental science to approximate their needs. As stewards in equal service to people and Nature, we listen to what both say are their needs, and especially those who have no voice at present.
Of course, we need not adopt a stewardship model at all –unless we are Jewish or Christian or Muslim. We can simply focus single-mindedly on climate change mitigation until we reach some point where sustainability kicks in and we can practice “progress within equilibrium”. But, I would ask, what happens then, to keep us from straying from equilibrium and skyrocketing carbon emissions again?
I would say, at that point, that altruistic stewardship with a very broad definition of those served seems to me one approach, then or now, to embedding ongoing atmospheric-carbon stability in our habits, our societies, and our global culture.
Not a bad idea for Tolkien to introduce, and then show playing out. In the middle of ultimate horror.
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Like You’ve Never Heard It:
- The First of a Series of Ramblings About JRR Tolkien
- Part II. Pre-Psychology Writing, Poetry, and a New Hero
- Part III. Torture, Enlightenment
- Part IV. Weather, Mushrooms, Leaders
- Part V. In the Moment, Sam the Obscure
- Part VI. Folk Songs, Master, First, Fair
- Part VII. Hiking, Curses, Noble Language
- Part VIII. The Hiker’s Extrasensory Writing
- Part IX. Torture, Elves, Endings
- Part X. Your Highness
- Part XI. Business Meetings, Dwarves
- Part XII. Horns of Wild Memory
- Part XIII. Ecstasies of the Dwarves
- Part XIV. Valaraukar, the Third Touch of God
- Part XV. Memory, Nature, Passion
- Part XVI. The Gift of Enchantment
- Part XVII. Frontier Maturity
- Part XVIII. Pity, Decisions, Endings
- Part XIX. Into the Shadow, Kings, Names, Winds
- Part XX. People of the Morning, Child Soldiers
- Part XXI. Herdsmen and High Trees
- Part XXII. The Faith of God
- Part XXIII. Theoden’s Law
- Part XXIV. Helm’s Deep, Zangra, and A Life Worthy of Song
- Part XXV. Book of Marvels, Book of Friendship
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