“Gentleness may be repaid with death.”
—Denethor
“So be it.”
—Faramir
Boromir, son of Denethor, has his virtues. Ultimately, however, he is not a model of wisdom. Rather, he is the consummate warrior, who revels in the glory of war. He seems to care about military victory not merely as a means to some other end but as an end in itself. Military victory, to Boromir, is what matters most. And even if the wise of Middle-earth admire Boromir on some grounds—for his courage, his love of his country, or his warrior’s willingness to give up his life for others—they disapprove of his values in other ways. If Boromir’s values do not correspond to Tolkien’s understanding of wisdom, if it is not the military outcome of a battle that matters most, then what does matter?
Much of the rest of this book deals with that question. And our first observation is that in Tolkien’s writing, something that might be described as moral victory is more important than military victory. We see this in several ways. We see it in the way that the wise of Middle-earth treat Gollum, which relates this chapter back to the first chapter of this book. More broadly, we see it in the moral choices that are made in the context of the war. We see it in the costs that the main foes of Sauron are—and are not—willing to pay for victory over Sauron. And, ultimately, we see it in many of the responses to the temptation of the Ring.
Victory, at What Cost?
Consider again the mercy and compassion shown to Gollum by many of the foes of Mordor, including, at one time or another, Gandalf, Aragorn, Faramir, King Thranduil and the wood-elves, Frodo, and even Sam. Though it had become clear that Gollum had done great evil, and is still capable of doing much more evil, these characters still show him mercy on many occasions. One aspect of this is that torture, even under extreme need, would be immoral in Tolkien’s Middle-earth. As we saw in the first chapter of this book, Gandalf, in his desperation for knowledge, may have treated Gollum cruelly. But if he did so, he did so wrongly.
This discussion goes deeper than the ethic against torture explored in the first chapter, however. The good and wise characters of Middle-earth are committed to treating Gollum with kindness, even though doing so poses great risks and seems to go unappreciated. Given his past acts, Gollum does not deserve kindness. Though Gandalf defends the decision to show mercy to Gollum, he acknowledges that Gollum does instead deserve death: “Deserves it! I daresay he does” (I/ii). Many other good characters also suggest that it would be just to punish Gollum. Before Gandalf speaks these words, Frodo complains that it was a pity that Bilbo did not kill Gollum when he had a chance to do it justly. And at the Council of Elrond, others are bothered by the mercy that Gollum is shown. “He is a small thing, you say, this Gollum?” asks Boromir. “Small, but great in mischief. What became of him? To what doom did you put him?” Even Glóin the dwarf, who has been a prisoner of the elves himself (as told in The Hobbit), shows bitterness about the elves’ kinder treatment of Gollum, grumbling, “You were less tender to me” (II/ii).
Yet Gollum is shown mercy and compassion, and even “over-kindliness.” Why? One reason is Gandalf’s foresight that Gollum will play a later role, presumably with a good result, “a part . . . that neither he nor Sauron have foreseen” (II/ii). But most of the others at Elrond’s council, even among the wise, don’t share that foresight; they foresee just the opposite, that Gollum will do further evil. Aragorn comments: “His malice is great and gives him a strength hardly to be believed in one so lean and withered. He could work much mischief still, if he were free.” When he finds out that Gollum has escaped, Aragorn continues: “That is ill news indeed. We shall all rue it bitterly, I fear” (II/ii). When Sam finally has a chance to kill Gollum on Mount Doom, he sees that act not only as “just” but also as “the only safe thing to do.” And yet he refrains from hurting him: “Deep in his heart there was something that restrained him” (VI/iii).
So the question remains: Why are the foes of Mordor willing to pay such a price—or at least to take such a risk—in order to help Gollum? The answer is the same as our answer to the question of the first chapter, and we can now begin to see that it is a central theme in Tolkien’s books: moral victories are more important to Tolkien’s most noble characters than are military victories.
To put it another way, we simply restate the question as an observation: to the foes of Sauron, moral decisions, such as treating a prisoner well, hold greater value than military victory. Showing mercy is the right thing to do. It is right for many reasons. Some of the acts of mercy come from a real concern to help Gollum find his “cure.” But whether Gollum is cured or not, showing him mercy is right. Showing mercy is not only a means to an end; mercy is an end in itself.
In The Hobbit, Tolkien has Bilbo face a difficult decision at the end of his interaction with Gollum, shortly after the famous riddle game. Bilbo is trying to escape from Gollum’s tunnels, and Gollum is guarding the only way out.
Bilbo almost stopped breathing, and went stiff himself. He was desperate. He must get away, out of this horrible darkness, while he had any strength left. He must fight. He must stab the foul thing, put its eyes out, kill it. It meant to kill him. No, not a fair fight. He was invisible now. Gollum had no sword. Gollum had not actually threatened to kill him, or tried to yet. And he was miserable, alone, lost. A sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror, welled up in Bilbo’s heart: a glimpse of endless unmarked days without light or hope of betterment, hard stone, cold fish, sneaking and whispering. All these thoughts passed in a flash of a second. He trembled. And then quite suddenly in another flash, as if lifted by a new strength and resolve, he leaped. (Hobbit, 133)
Though the confrontation is not what we would typically describe as a military battle, it is similar to a battle in that there are two opponents, and the likely outcome is death for one or the other, with the spoils going to the victor. It is an unfair battle, however, because Bilbo has acquired the Ring and is now invisible. Furthermore, Bilbo has a sword, while Gollum is unarmed. Thus, Bilbo has a choice between what appears to be the easy escape route of stabbing Gollum in an unfair fight and the more difficult path of showing mercy to the creature and trying to get past him without killing him. The obvious (and seemingly justifiable) choice is to fight Gollum in the unfair battle. But Bilbo, in a debate that “passed in a flash of a second,” chooses instead the values of fairness and pity, even though by that course he takes on himself a much greater risk of defeat.
The hobbits’ treatment of the ruffians in the Shire at the end of The Return of the King is much the same. Some rightly perceive that the men are dangerous and will harm and kill the hobbits if given the chance. It would seem advantageous, from a strategic standpoint, to attack them first and ask questions later—especially given what the hobbits have already suffered at their hands. But Frodo, as we saw earlier, forbids killing them.
There is an old question, often asked: “What are we willing to fight for?” Every war ever fought raises this question. In The Lord of the Rings, we see that the free peoples of Middle-earth are willing to fight Sauron in order to protect their own lives and freedom. When the four hobbits return to the Shire, they find that their people are willing to fight the ruffians—and even to die doing so—in order to regain their freedom. But in a sense, Tolkien has also turned this question around. As much as the question is, “For what causes are we willing to fight (and seek victory)?” an equally important question is, “For what values are we willing to risk defeat?”
The issue of which moral choices Tolkien’s heroes make in the context of battle—for what values these people are willing to risk defeat in order to preserve—is illustrated in many ways besides their treatment of Gollum. Aragorn’s decision at Parth Galen to pursue Merry and Pippin, rather than to head straight to Gondor, can be seen in this light. There were three choices before Aragorn at the time: following Frodo and Sam to the east in order to aid them, traveling south to Minas Tirith to follow his own heart in hopes of bringing aid to Gondor and taking up his throne, or going west in an effort to rescue the two young hobbits. Of these three choices, the first two are far more advantageous from a strategic viewpoint, at least according to the knowledge Aragorn has at the time. “Boromir has laid it on me to go to Minas Tirith, and my heart desires it,” says Aragorn to himself, “but where are the Ring and the Bearer? How shall I find them and save the Quest from disaster?” (III/i). These are the strategic questions. In the war against Sauron, the two young hobbits, Merry and Pippin, would seem to have little strategic importance, while the quest of the Ringbearer and the military might of Minas Tirith are of great import. Yet Aragorn chooses the third of these options, even though it is clear that he believes (wrongly, as it turns out) that by making this choice he has removed himself strategically from the great events of the time: “‘I will follow the Orcs,’ he said at last. ‘I would have guided Frodo to Mordor and gone with him to the end; but if I seek him now in the wilderness, I must abandon the captives to torment and death. My heart speaks clearly at last: the fate of the Bearer is in my hands no longer. The Company has played its part. Yet we that remain cannot forsake our companions while we have strength left’” (III/i). Aragorn’s choice, ultimately, is not made for strategic and military reasons but for what might be called moral reasons. He cannot abandon Merry and Pippin to “torment and death”; it would be wrong to forsake them. Even in the midst of the war, it is the clear speaking of Aragorn’s heart to which he listens. The moral good is more important than the military good. To understand this is one of the highest marks of wisdom in Tolkien’s writing.
Aragorn is not alone in how he chooses nor in what he values most. His choices are echoed by many, if not all, of those whom Tolkien provides as the wise heroes of his work. Once again, Faramir gives us three of the best examples. Early in the conversation after Frodo and Faramir have first met, Frodo realizes that the son of Denethor has been testing him. He feels deceived and suggests that he has been lied to. Faramir responds, “I would not snare even an orc with falsehood” (IV/v). This is a telling statement—and what we see of Faramir through the remainder of the story would suggest that it is true. For this Captain of Minas Tirith, and heir to the Stewardship of Gondor, the value of truth is so important that he would not lie even to an enemy, not even to win a battle. The moral victory of speaking the truth is more important than any military victory that might be won through lies and deceit.
We see a similar principle when Faramir weighs the moral good of Frodo keeping his promise to Gollum to have him as a guide, against the physical harm that might result from that promise should Gollum choose to betray him and guide him into evil (which, in fact, he does). When Frodo asks him, “You would not ask me to break faith with him?” Faramir replies, “No.” He goes on to explain why he is tempted to give this advice: “It seems less evil to counsel another man to break troth than to do so oneself, especially if one sees a friend bound unwitting to his own harm.” But ultimately he agrees with Frodo that he must keep his word: “But no—if he will go with you, you must now endure him” (IV/vi). Faramir wisely sees the danger ahead for Frodo: that Gollum is not trustworthy and thus Frodo is bound “to his own harm.” He rightly predicts the evil that Gollum will seek to do against Frodo and Sam, though he does not know that it will take the form of Shelob’s Lair. Yet Faramir also acknowledges that it is a moral evil to knowingly break one’s word, to “break faith” or “break troth.” Moreover, he recognizes that it is an evil even to “counsel another man to break troth”—though perhaps a lesser evil than to actually break troth oneself. And so, when he realizes that Frodo has made a promise to Gollum, both he and Frodo agree that they must stick to the moral good of keeping that promise, even though it brings about a great physical danger. No, he will not counsel Frodo to break faith. In his moral integrity, he will not tell another to do what he himself would not do: to abandon the moral good for the sake of personal safety.
Faramir’s integrity and high moral values come even more to the forefront when he returns to Minas Tirith and faces his father, Denethor. When Denethor realizes that his son has had a chance to obtain the Ring of Power and that he has let it go, he is furious. He chastises his son, telling him that his “gentleness may be repaid with death,” to which Faramir replies, “So be it” (V/iv). The simplicity of this response is wonderfully powerful. There is nothing else that needs to be said. Faramir understands clearly the choices his father has laid before them. Again, he would choose the moral victory of being gentle, even if it means his own death.
Denethor, by contrast, is of a different mind than his youngest son. For the Steward of Gondor to be “lordly and generous as a king of old, gracious, gentle” is fine for times of peace, but all of those things must be sacrificed in a time of war, in “desperate hours,” for the sake of military victory. He goes so far as wishing, in Faramir’s presence, that Faramir were the one who died and not Boromir: “[Boromir] would have remembered his father’s need, and would not have squandered what fortune gave. He would have brought me a mighty gift. . . . Would that this thing had come to me!” (V/iv). In Denethor’s defense, we must acknowledge his claim that he would not have used the Ring. “To use this thing is perilous,” he agrees. Unless, of course, the defeat of Gondor were at stake: “Not used, I say, unless at the uttermost end of need, but set beyond all grasp, save by a victory so final that what then befell would not trouble us, being dead” (V/iv, emphasis added). The problem is that even as he speaks these words, Denethor is already at the point of perceiving this circumstance; in his mind, the “uttermost end of need” has already arrived. He is willing to betray moral virtue for the sake of victory—or, rather, for the sake of avoiding defeat. Unlike Denethor, Faramir is not willing to sacrifice moral good for military victory. Neither is Gandalf. The tale, of course, ultimately vindicates Faramir and Gandalf and their wisdom.
The Temptation of the Ring: Gandalf and Elrond
That moral victory is more important than military victory for Tolkien’s most heroic characters should be understood as one of the chief concerns (and also one of the most interesting to explore for its own sake) related to their refusal to use the One Ring. Indeed, we could draw the conclusion that moral victory is the more important victory merely from observing that the wisest and noblest of Middle-earth—Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel, Aragorn, and Faramir—when given the opportunity to possess the Ring for themselves, all refuse despite their dire need for strength in the fight against Sauron. Their temptations are key scenes in the story and are worth exploring one at a time.
Gandalf is faced with this temptation several times, at different parts of the story. The film version, for example, gives us a memorable shot of the Ring falling to the floor of Bilbo’s house when Bilbo departs the Shire after his birthday party. And Gandalf, watching it fall, is unwilling even to touch it long enough to set it on the mantel or return it to the envelope. He leaves it lying where it is on the floor, for he knows how great the temptation would be to keep it and use it, if once he touched it. Later, Frodo explicitly offers the Ring to Gandalf. This time, Tolkien gives us the wizard’s reply.
“Will you not take the Ring?” [pleads Frodo].
“No!” cried Gandalf, springing to his feet. “With that power I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly.” His eyes flashed and his face was lit as by a fire within. “Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. . . . I shall have such need of [strength]. Great perils lie before me.” (I/ii)
Note how adamant Gandalf’s response is. We see it in the wizard’s body: his springing to his feet, the flashing of his eyes, and the light on his face. That his words garner two exclamation points from Tolkien is notable too. He explicitly labels the offer as a “temptation,” a word suggesting that the Ring is both something he desires and something he ought not take. Temptation is also a word laden with moral implications; refusing temptation might be the very definition of moral victory, while giving in to temptation is the definition of moral defeat.
Elrond, with similar obstinacy, also refuses the Ring—not only for himself but for all those gathered at the council: “Alas, no. We cannot use the Ruling Ring. . . . I fear to take the Ring to hide it. I will not take the Ring to wield it” (II/ii). Much has been made of these passages and others like them, where the refusal is not just for one individual but for all involved. For Elrond, it is not merely that “I” cannot use the Ruling Ring, but that “we” cannot use it. Why does he refuse that power for everyone else?
One idea is that Tolkien viewed all power as essentially corrupting. Tom Shippey astutely points out how thoroughly modern this idea is. “The medieval world had its saints’ lives,” he writes, “in which the saints used their immense and indeed miraculous power entirely for good purposes; while there is no shortage of evil kings in medieval story, there is rarely any sign that they became evil by becoming kings.” He illustrates this a few sentences later with an Old English proverb, the meaning of which, he explains, is that power reveals character but does not alter it.[36] Shippey goes on to suggest, however, that in this regard Tolkien (despite his affinities for the medieval) may have been much more modern in his thinking. According to Shippey, Tolkien’s experiences with the wars and atrocities of the twentieth century may have made him more sympathetic to the view of Lord Acton: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”[37] Certainly, Saruman and Denethor appear to have been corrupted by their own power. And Boromir’s speech at Amon Hen shows all the dangers of the corruptive lust for power. Regarding the Ring and its temptation, Shippey concludes that any of the kings or powerful heroes of Middle-earth, no matter how good their intentions at the start, if they possessed the Ring, “would come to enjoy having their intentions achieved, the use of power itself, and would end as dictators over others, enslaved to themselves, unable to give up or go back.”[38]
And yet ultimately I think that Tolkien did hold to a more medieval view even on this issue. The power of the Ring is fundamentally corruptive, but power itself is not. It is possible, Tolkien’s narrative suggests, to be both powerful and good! Though I think Shippey is certainly correct that Tolkien understood more clearly than did the medieval poets he loved that there is potential for power to corrupt, he nonetheless also believed in the possibility of saints. What Shippey writes about Tolkien’s portrayal of the particular corruptive power of the Ring is fully supported in the text, but Shippey’s suggestion that this is true of all power may be the one matter on which I disagree with him. Consider that Gandalf, Elrond, and Galadriel are three of the most powerful figures in Middle-earth—bearers of the three elven-rings of power, in fact—and none of these three are corrupted by their own power (although they certainly would be corrupted by the power of the Ring). “But do not think that only by singing amid the trees, nor even by the slender arrows of elven-bows,” Galadriel tells Frodo, “is this land of Lothlórien maintained and defended against its Enemy” (II/vii). That Galadriel wields such power and yet remains uncorrupted—“There is in her and in this land no evil, unless a man bring it hither himself,” Aragorn says of her—is evidence that Tolkien did not hold the view that all power is fundamentally corrupting. Other examples beyond the three bearers of the elven-rings of power could also be listed. Aragorn himself is powerful, and becomes a king, and yet nothing suggests that he is ever corrupted by his power. Even in the case of Saruman and Denethor, both of whom are powerful and both of whom seem to become corrupt after growing in power, a stronger case could be made that their ultimate downfall is caused not by their power but by a loss of hope. That loss itself is caused by the deceit of Sauron at work through the palantíri (the Seeing Stones), which are controlled by Sauron and thus reveal only what he wants them to reveal.
This distinction between power in general (what we might call “all power”) and the particular power of the Ring is such an important one that we will return to it in chapter 6, for it gives insight into not only the nature of the Ring but also the deepest philosophical underpinnings of Tolkien’s text. In any case, whatever we may say about power in general, there is no doubt that the One Ring will eventually corrupt any bearer. Throughout the story, Tolkien shows its influence not only on Sméagol, but on Isildur, Bilbo, and Frodo as well. Even some like Boromir, who never actually bear the Ring but only come near it, feel its corrupting influence. The only two bearers who are ever able to give it up freely are Bilbo and Sam, but Sam bears it only a short time, while Bilbo gives it up only after a very long and difficult struggle. We need to consider why the Ring is tempting and how adamant are the refusals of that temptation. What the Ring would have meant to the foes of Mordor is “strength,” and particularly “strength to do good” (or so it would seem). Indeed, even Elrond sees it as a real possibility that “one of the Wise should with this Ring overthrow the Lord of Mordor” (II/ii). Gandalf, as the chief agent in the war against Sauron, has need of power for the many perils he faces.
Yet both Gandalf and Elrond refuse. Gandalf guesses, more clearly than any of the others, that using the Ring could actually bring military victory for the foes of Mordor: victory, that is, in the sense of defeating Sauron’s armies and overthrowing his power. “War is upon us and all our friends,” he tells Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas shortly after their reunion, “a war in which only the use of the Ring could give us surety of victory” (III/v). And later, in “The Last Debate,” he tells the gathered captains that Sauron “is now in great doubt. For if we have found this thing, there are some among us with strength enough to wield it” (V/ix). On the other side, Gandalf also knows that without using the Ring they have only a fool’s hope of defeating Sauron’s might. He also tells the Captains of the West: “This war then is without final hope, as Denethor perceived. Victory cannot be achieved by arms, whether you sit here to endure siege after siege, or march out to be overwhelmed beyond the River” (V/ix). And a little later he adds: “We have not the Ring. . . . Without it we cannot by force defeat his force” (V/ix). So strong is this understanding that when Gandalf first returns after his fall in Khazad-dûm, he briefly doubts the wisdom of his own choice and wonders about going after the Ring: “He rose and gazed out eastward, shading his eyes, as if he saw things far away that none of them could see. Then he shook his head. ‘No,’ he said in a soft voice, ‘it has gone beyond our reach. Of that at least let us be glad. We can no longer be tempted to use the Ring. We must go down to face a peril near despair, yet that deadly peril is removed’” (III/v).
In short, then, the situation is plain. Use of the Ring, by the right one of Sauron’s enemies, would bring military victory. Refusal of the Ring leaves them no hope at all of military victory—that is, a defeating of Sauron’s armies using their own military strength—and only a fool’s hope in the overall war: a “peril near despair.” They choose the fool’s hope. And this choice is central to the entire trilogy. It is one of the choices that characterize the great among Tolkien’s characters. They choose the moral victory, the moral good of refusing the corruption of the Ring, over the military victory that would come from using the Ring.
The Temptation of the Ring: Galadriel and Faramir
The temptations of Faramir and Galadriel are also important. The former stands in stark contrast to the failure of Boromir under similar circumstances, while the latter is one of the more vividly portrayed scenes in The Fellowship of the Ring.
Faramir is given his opportunity to possess the Ring when Frodo and Sam stumble into his hands in Ithilien. Though Frodo says nothing about what he carries, Faramir knows enough of the lore, and has enough of the wisdom and power of the true blood of Númenor, that he is able to guess much that Frodo does not reveal. Though he knows not the form of Isildur’s Bane—that it is a ring—he knows both that Frodo carries it and that it possesses great power. Unlike Gandalf and Galadriel, Faramir is not offered the Ring, and yet it is certainly in his power to take it. In contrast to his brother, however, he does not attempt to do so. In a statement similar to his earlier comment that he would not snare even an orc with falsehood, he says of the Ring, “I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs” (IV/v). Faramir is explicit in stating what was implicit in the refusals of Gandalf and Elrond: he would rather suffer total military defeat than do the evil that would need to be done to win the war by the use of the Ring. In fact, he would sacrifice not only his own life but also his land rather than give in to such moral evil. Given the choice between either doing good and having Minas Tirith fall into ruin or doing evil but winning a triumph on the battlefield, he would choose the ruin. These are not idle words, but ones proven by deeds. Faramir does what his brother could not do: he lets the Ring depart with the Ringbearer. Gentleness may be repaid with death? So be it.
Galadriel’s temptation is perhaps the most telling of any of them. For one thing, her temptation is given the most attention and time in the narrative, and the most vivid imagery. Yet there is another factor at work as well. With the others, the moral good of refusing the Ring brings a risk of defeat but not a sure defeat; though they have no hope of defeating Sauron in military battle, they can hope that Frodo will succeed in his quest and thereby defeat Sauron in another way. Galadriel, however, knows with certainty that if she does not take the One Ring for herself, then whether the Quest of the Ringbearer succeeds or not, whether Sauron is overthrown or comes into complete power, either way she will suffer a defeat. She speaks of this to Frodo: “Do you not see now wherefore your coming is to us as the footstep of Doom? For if you fail, then we are laid bare to the Enemy. Yet if you succeed, then our power is diminished, and Lothlórien will fade, and the tides of Time will sweep it away. We must depart into the West, or dwindle to a rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and to be forgotten” (II/vii). As Tolkien explains in the book, Galadriel is the bearer of one of the three great elven-rings of power: Nenya, the Ring of Adamant. Like the other elven-rings, it was forged for “understanding, making, and healing, to preserve all things unstained” (II/vii). It is by the power of that ring that Lothlórien itself is preserved unstained.
Unfortunately, though the elven-rings were never corrupted by Sauron, their power is caught up in the power of the One Ring. Sauron forged the One Ring for the very purpose of ruling the others, and Galadriel knows that when the One Ring is destroyed, the Three will fall also, and then all that was made by their power will fade. In fact, Elrond also guesses at this, though he seems less certain than Galadriel: “Some hope that the Three Rings, which Sauron never touched, would then become free, and their rulers might heal the hurts of the world that he has wrought. But maybe when the One has gone, the Three will fail, and many fair things will fade and be forgotten. That is my belief” (II/ii). Saruman also knows this, and when the fall of the Three comes to pass at the end of the book, he gloats over Galadriel: “I did not spend long study on these matters for naught. You have doomed yourselves, and you know it. And it will afford me some comfort as I wander to think that you pulled down your own house when you destroyed mine” (VI/vi). In choosing to help the Fellowship on their quest, Galadriel would be choosing to pull down her own house, and she knows this.
Into this situation steps Frodo. Seeing Galadriel as “wise and fearless and fair” (II/vii), he offers her the Ring. Her response to this temptation is tremendously vulnerable and sincere. In Galadriel’s articulation of her thoughts to Frodo, Tolkien gives the reader great insight into just what the temptation is about at many levels.
“I do not deny that my heart has greatly desired to ask what you offer. For many long years I pondered what I might do, should the Great Ring come into my hands, and behold! it was brought within my grasp. . . .
“And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!” (II/vii)
As we consider Galadriel’s temptation, we must do so in light of what we have previously seen: that if the Ringbearer even attempts the Quest, then whether he succeeds or fails, it will mark the end of Lothlórien. Thus his coming to Lothlórien truly is, as she said, the coming of “the footstep of Doom.” What the Ring offers to Galadriel is a way out of this doom, a third alternative to having Frodo either fail or succeed. To preserve that land and those works, she would need both to keep the Ring from Sauron and also to keep it from being destroyed. It is an alternative she has long pondered, and even greatly desired, as she admits to Frodo. It is a twofold temptation. Part of her desire for power is, as with Gandalf, the desire to defeat Sauron. It is the desire to do good and to prevent evil. As Sam puts it, she would “make some folk pay for their dirty work” (II/vii). Yet unlike with Gandalf, there is the added dimension of her great desire to take the Ring simply to save her kingdom and all she has worked for from an otherwise sure demise.
Yet with all of this, Galadriel still refuses the temptation. Her refusal is as beautiful and profound as it is simple: “The love of the Elves for their land and their works is deeper than the deeps of the Sea, and their regret is undying and cannot ever wholly be assuaged. Yet they will cast all away rather than submit to Sauron: for they know him now. . . . Yet I could wish, were it of any avail, that the One Ring had never been wrought, or had remained for ever lost” (II/vii). Galadriel might wish the One Ring had never been made or was still lost, but such wishes are of no avail. To preserve Lothlórien, she would need to take the Ring for herself. And yet taking the Ring for herself, she knows, would be a great moral evil. And thus, though using (or at least preserving) the power of the Ring is her one hope to preserve what she has created in Lothlórien, she will accept defeat rather than do what she knows would be evil.
So it is that Galadriel’s answer to this temptation is the same as that of the other great Powers: “She let her hand fall, and the light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunken: a slender elf-woman, clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad. ‘I pass the test. I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel’” (II/vii). In these last two passages, Galadriel summarizes the point of this chapter: that moral victory is the more important victory, that it is better to suffer a military defeat and a loss of everything than to suffer a moral defeat, even as it is better to “cast all away rather than submit to Sauron.”