This is my third post on my rewatch of the Fellowship of the Ring. To see the other posts, click here: https://steemit.com/fiction/@castimir/the-lord-of-the-rings-rewatch-deities.
This is the ultimate crisis of the movie, as Boromir attacks Frodo and the Uruk-hai try to steal the ring. But I was struck by the nostalgic, and gorgeous, scene of the three boats floating down the River Anduin. I was struck again by Tolkien's view of adventuring. The hobbits wander out of their hobbit holes and sleep in the woods and marshes of the world. There is very little civilization, except for isolated clumps, and the natural world is far more important than those cities and villages. The classic DnD or Sword and Sorcery fantasy work focuses on the human habitations, but Tolkien is drawn to an adventure in the woods.
And I was struck tonight by how impossible that would be in today's world. Oh, to be sure, there's a world of underlying rural spaces where you could camp out, but you're hardly going to go on an orc-fighting, ring-destroying adventure. If things become too perilous, you can simply drop in at the local CVS and dial 911 and you should be fine. But Tolkien's heroes could have bailed, I suppose. They didn't, and that is why we are supposed to admire them.
I used to admire them for that. I used to admire the desperate last stand of Boromir, the anguish rock-throwing of Merry and Pippin. I used to admire that because I saw desperation and hope in the middle of that desperation.
But today I admire the journey. I admire that they wandered out into the unknown and had nothing to show at the end. They were adults, not the immature type of crazies wandering the world claiming inspiration. They knew the universe was hard, but they ventured out anyway into it. They made of it what they could and made their peace where they had to.
I've lost a lot of my former morality. The grand schemes of moral redemption ring false for me, leaving me floundering in a world full of orcs and theoretical biases. Like the hobbits, I'm wandering without a clear hope or definite victory in sight, but I know there's some sort of ultimate purpose that is incomprehensible to me at the moment. So, the question becomes, will I fall like Boromir, rise like Aragorn, or gray like Frodo?