MattfromWI
New Member
Listening to The Prancing Pony Podcast this weekend, I thought their guest Bret Devereaux (@BretDevereaux on twitter) made a really good point about how morally correct actions are privileged over practical ones. I thought it was so good that I transcribed it, and I thought you all would enjoy it as well.
Obviously this is a snippet of a conversation, so it’s not as clean or tightly written as an essay. Alan, the host, and Bret are discussing the part of The Return of the King where Pippen tells Beregond that Denethor has become “a madman” and has taken the still-living Faramir to the mausoleum to be burned with him on a pyre, and asked Beregond to do something to prevent it.
Bret: Beregond is a tower guard. These are clearly professionals. They occupy a position of high status, they are the elite, and they are clearly very disciplined; they have excellent equipment. And so I think we can imagine… and he has been in this position for a long time, and he is an important person in this position. And so this is going to be very ingrained with him, and of course, the impact also of this command, Denethor is not merely his superior officer, as it were, right, but also his civilian leader. Beregond has been obeying this man’s orders since he was an infant, right, for his whole life this man has been in charge. And so yeah the psychological pressure to just, you do, follow orders …and that will be a defense.
One of the things that is incredibly difficult in warfare is that you have situations where, in order to make an army controllable, and to a degree predictable to it’s commanders, you have both the structure of command and you also have what we’ll often refer to as doctrine, um the way the army expects to function, and the various rules. And what you quickly learn in an institution like this is that if you follow orders and doctrine, even if things go badly, you always have the defense of, “I did what I was told, and I followed the field manual.” And that will be a defense of your conduct.
And so when you have a moment, where someone needs to throw the field manual out and needs to recognize that the letter of the orders that they were given, is not the same as what they need to be doing in this moment, right, that involves tremendous personal risk. So it requires not only breaking a habit, in that moment, you know, you’re really going out on a limb. If this doesn’t work, you will be severely punished.
Alan: Killed, no doubt, in Beregond’s case.
Bret: Uh huh. So, all of that comes together, you know, at once, and it tells us something about Beregond’s character that he’s extremely reluctant and his response is more or less, “well, I’m going to go see what’s happening.”
Alan: Yeah, yeah, at this point he’s not there yet.
Bret: But when he goes and sees what’s happening, he recognizes what must be done, you know, The Lord of the Rings is so much about character studies about doing the right thing more than winning. The moral victory is more meaningful than the physical victory. And so Beregond gets there, he sees what’s going on, and he does the right thing. You know, and this has a measurable positive effect. The victory of the good guys in this story is the result of dozens and dozens of moments where they did the right thing. More than it is the result of swords or spears or arms. And sort of Beregond is like one of these moments.
Alan: It really is. It puts me in mind of a number of these moments like Faramir not immediately killing Frodo and Sam, you know, when he encounters them in Ithilien? Against the orders? Again, Eomer’s orders, of course, to kill anyone who’s not of Rohan there, he should have wiped out the three hunters. Even Hama, the door-warden, right, he knows what the orders are but he still allows Gandalf to come in with the staff. Again, just thinking that the right thing to do, is this, and you’re right, it’s just a compilation of these right things, these right decisions made against orders, or against protocol, if you will, that lead to that conclusion.
Bret: And I almost wonder, of course Tolkien was and, you know, anyone who’s read the forward knows this, defensive. He was very open about WWI’s influence on his work, and he is quite defensive about the idea that WWII had very much influence. But the fact that the day is sort of repeatedly saved, there are repeated moments where it is incredibly important that orders were not obeyed, is really striking in the context of you know, the late 1940s, where a lot of German officers were standing in front of tribunals and saying, “well I had orders, and orders were orders, and I followed those orders.” Even though those orders were inhumane, even though they were wrong. Even though they, you know, in some cases, were illegal, internationally if not domestically. And one wonders if that’s a factor here that, you know, Tolkien essentially asks the question repeatedly, “if your orders conflict with the right thing, do the right thing.”
Alan: Yeah.
Bret: And it’s interesting because, in most cases, the person who violates orders is still punished for the violation of orders! Hama gets demoted, Beregond faces consequences as well, that still happens. They don’t necessarily get praised and rewarded, [but] nevertheless they have done the right thing.
Alan: Absolutely.
Bret: I think Faramir, for that matter, for refusing to take the Ring, gets blasted by Denethor for it!
One point of emphasis I will add to this discussion is that the characters who do the right thing, even ‘against orders,’ seem aware that they are risking their life to do it. Faramir openly acknowledges that if Denethor thinks he was disobedient in the way he treated Frodo, Denethor can have him executed: “[your] gentleness may be repaid with death,” declares Denethor, and Faramir replies “So be it.” Eomer reminds Aragorn that in lending him horses, and suspending his orders to detain all foreigners in Rohan, that “In this I place myself, and maybe my very life, in the keeping of your good faith.”
In any case, Bret has written extensively on the main battles in LOTR, and his analysis of Tolkien’s narration (and P.J.’s adaptation, if it’s not against the rules to mention it) is illuminating. I highly recommend it, and you can find it at acoup.blog.
Obviously this is a snippet of a conversation, so it’s not as clean or tightly written as an essay. Alan, the host, and Bret are discussing the part of The Return of the King where Pippen tells Beregond that Denethor has become “a madman” and has taken the still-living Faramir to the mausoleum to be burned with him on a pyre, and asked Beregond to do something to prevent it.
Bret: Beregond is a tower guard. These are clearly professionals. They occupy a position of high status, they are the elite, and they are clearly very disciplined; they have excellent equipment. And so I think we can imagine… and he has been in this position for a long time, and he is an important person in this position. And so this is going to be very ingrained with him, and of course, the impact also of this command, Denethor is not merely his superior officer, as it were, right, but also his civilian leader. Beregond has been obeying this man’s orders since he was an infant, right, for his whole life this man has been in charge. And so yeah the psychological pressure to just, you do, follow orders …and that will be a defense.
One of the things that is incredibly difficult in warfare is that you have situations where, in order to make an army controllable, and to a degree predictable to it’s commanders, you have both the structure of command and you also have what we’ll often refer to as doctrine, um the way the army expects to function, and the various rules. And what you quickly learn in an institution like this is that if you follow orders and doctrine, even if things go badly, you always have the defense of, “I did what I was told, and I followed the field manual.” And that will be a defense of your conduct.
And so when you have a moment, where someone needs to throw the field manual out and needs to recognize that the letter of the orders that they were given, is not the same as what they need to be doing in this moment, right, that involves tremendous personal risk. So it requires not only breaking a habit, in that moment, you know, you’re really going out on a limb. If this doesn’t work, you will be severely punished.
Alan: Killed, no doubt, in Beregond’s case.
Bret: Uh huh. So, all of that comes together, you know, at once, and it tells us something about Beregond’s character that he’s extremely reluctant and his response is more or less, “well, I’m going to go see what’s happening.”
Alan: Yeah, yeah, at this point he’s not there yet.
Bret: But when he goes and sees what’s happening, he recognizes what must be done, you know, The Lord of the Rings is so much about character studies about doing the right thing more than winning. The moral victory is more meaningful than the physical victory. And so Beregond gets there, he sees what’s going on, and he does the right thing. You know, and this has a measurable positive effect. The victory of the good guys in this story is the result of dozens and dozens of moments where they did the right thing. More than it is the result of swords or spears or arms. And sort of Beregond is like one of these moments.
Alan: It really is. It puts me in mind of a number of these moments like Faramir not immediately killing Frodo and Sam, you know, when he encounters them in Ithilien? Against the orders? Again, Eomer’s orders, of course, to kill anyone who’s not of Rohan there, he should have wiped out the three hunters. Even Hama, the door-warden, right, he knows what the orders are but he still allows Gandalf to come in with the staff. Again, just thinking that the right thing to do, is this, and you’re right, it’s just a compilation of these right things, these right decisions made against orders, or against protocol, if you will, that lead to that conclusion.
Bret: And I almost wonder, of course Tolkien was and, you know, anyone who’s read the forward knows this, defensive. He was very open about WWI’s influence on his work, and he is quite defensive about the idea that WWII had very much influence. But the fact that the day is sort of repeatedly saved, there are repeated moments where it is incredibly important that orders were not obeyed, is really striking in the context of you know, the late 1940s, where a lot of German officers were standing in front of tribunals and saying, “well I had orders, and orders were orders, and I followed those orders.” Even though those orders were inhumane, even though they were wrong. Even though they, you know, in some cases, were illegal, internationally if not domestically. And one wonders if that’s a factor here that, you know, Tolkien essentially asks the question repeatedly, “if your orders conflict with the right thing, do the right thing.”
Alan: Yeah.
Bret: And it’s interesting because, in most cases, the person who violates orders is still punished for the violation of orders! Hama gets demoted, Beregond faces consequences as well, that still happens. They don’t necessarily get praised and rewarded, [but] nevertheless they have done the right thing.
Alan: Absolutely.
Bret: I think Faramir, for that matter, for refusing to take the Ring, gets blasted by Denethor for it!
One point of emphasis I will add to this discussion is that the characters who do the right thing, even ‘against orders,’ seem aware that they are risking their life to do it. Faramir openly acknowledges that if Denethor thinks he was disobedient in the way he treated Frodo, Denethor can have him executed: “[your] gentleness may be repaid with death,” declares Denethor, and Faramir replies “So be it.” Eomer reminds Aragorn that in lending him horses, and suspending his orders to detain all foreigners in Rohan, that “In this I place myself, and maybe my very life, in the keeping of your good faith.”
In any case, Bret has written extensively on the main battles in LOTR, and his analysis of Tolkien’s narration (and P.J.’s adaptation, if it’s not against the rules to mention it) is illuminating. I highly recommend it, and you can find it at acoup.blog.
