It is during the most desperate of times that people become most susceptible to falsehood. Our minds are set up to rationalize the world around us, and hope is an often underestimated navigation tool, orienting us through figurative wind and tide. When said hope dissipates in the face of hardship and/or adversity, it leaves people adrift in a sea of uncertainty, far more willing to compromise their own morals/ethics for perceived temporary benefit. When taken one step further, this can also arrive at a dead end. Once the moral compass’ glass casing is cracked, it is in danger of total breakage. Thus, what follows is a rather nihilistic outlook, in which faith is replaced by hopelessness.
Per Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, this can manifest itself through a “Lie as a Form of Existence” in which a skewed reality becomes “the only safe form of existence” (Solzhenitsyn 325). This was certainly true in the Soviet Union for decades, with paranoia and suppression superseding any form of individualism or free speech. Who knows? You could be arrested and sent off to a tundra to chop wood and starve if you stepped outside of the Communist Party’s rigid (and strictly enforced) Overton Window.
Denethor, likewise, falls into this downward spiral. Having been corrupted by the power of the Palantir, he descends into madness, convinced that his once-prosperous kingdom is destined for doom. He asserts that “The West has failed… (and that) it is time for all to depart who would not be slaves” (Tolkien 853). However, as the reader comes to learn, the prophecy which the Palantir foretold is a fallacy. Had Denethor held faith, and trusted those around him, then perhaps he would’ve survived to see a brighter day. Instead, he suffers a painful death by opting to throw himself on a pyre with the Palantir — a tragically ironic end for a man once considered wise and noble.
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