today in defenses of boromir that no one asked for: tired of reading that boromir’s death was in vain because he failed to save merry & pippin from the uruk-hai. the fact that this clearly important warrior was willing to die to protect those two is what convinced the urukhai that they had indeed captured the halfing who carried whatever important thing saruman wanted. they took the hobbits to isengard (to isengard gard) because they thought they had the right ones! boromir didn’t succeed in preventing their capture but he did in fact keep them alive by making them seem valuable. furthermore, he actually also saves frodo in this way: because the orcs and uruk-hai think they have what they came for, they stop looking and turn back: if they had not, they might have ultimately found and captured frodo or at least raised the alarm that a hobbit with an Important Thing was on the loose, setting others searching. which is the very heart of tolkien’s worldview - that you do the right thing because it is right, and doing the right thing is never in vain.
to conclude this essay boromir died a hero and saved not just merry and pippin but also frodo and sam - and in doing so also saved himself from the ring’s attempt to twist him to its own ends
I have had it with this likescolding. “Tumblr doesn’t have an algorithm so likes don’t actually do anything” motherfucker I am not clicking that heart to give some post better ~algorithmic visibility~ I am clicking that heart to help my internet friend microdose on serotonin as god fucking intended