Why was Boromir corrupted by the One Ring, but not Faramir in The Lord of the Rings?
07.06.2025 03:07
Instead, the movies replaced Tolkien’s admirable Faramir with yet another stupid, suspicious, discourteous brute. Because that is what he is when we meet him. Just look at him scowling, while Frodo is forced back and afraid:
This stage of drafting must have been in late April, 1944, because on April 30, 1944, Tolkien wrote to his son (letter 64):
Faramir’s men use disguise, green cloaks and hoods, disdained by the ancient warriors who wear glinting metal and plumed helms to make a show. Elves will do this – but here again, we cannot imagine Aragorn or Boromir fighting in disguise: Boromir will announce himself with his horn, and Aragorn will unfurl his banner. They recognize and accept the use of disguised fighters – but will not do it themselves.
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Faramir is one of the characters whom Tolkien “ennobled” – and ennoblement must include core character resistance to the Ring – meaning, resistance to claiming personal power over others.
And the grateful family members honor his service, including saving the mementos that meant so much to him – below is me today, April 30, 2024, 55 years later, holding that identical print, that sailed so many thousands of miles under the Pacific Ocean, on several Faramir-like secret patrols:
But an attitude of expecting subservience “as a right” can contaminate the elite leader’s character. Take a look at the late-1969 family photo below (I am not in it, I was far away at boarding school, surrounded by the anti-war demonstrations in Washington, D.C.; the photo is by my mother’s sister then visiting):
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There have always been negative aspects to this. For example, when I showed the above photo to my father, he commented – with some (to-me-disheartening) self-satisfaction – “Look at them all sucking up to me.” Why? Because: he writes their “fitness reports” for promotion, and thus all the officers at the table must laugh and smile. I did the same thing in my own career as a lawyer in a big Washington D.C. firm, with my mentor senior partner – and he wrote me glowing fitness reports and got me made a partner. This is a part of the human condition not confined to just the military.
To do this, these English must be fluent in French, which means that they must have been raised as children by French governesses, which only aristocratic families could afford for their children. Thus, only English aristocrats can be members of Blakeney’s elite band of 20:
One of the experiences we seek in stories is to be in the close company of admirable people – people we wish we had in our own lives. Faramir of the books gives us that experience. I had read the books many times before seeing the movies, so I knew that the movies blocked us from having the experience of being in the close company of an admirable, honorable person – the iconic small-elite-fighting-team leader.
We see a version of this in the Russell Crowe character in Master and Commander. At the times when the Captain and Royal Navy warship are in uniform and openly flagged, they are twice sent running by the superior French ship – which is not a Royal French Navy ship, but a privateer.
The small elite unit is an archetype – and so too is the unit’s leader. On a real submarine, no photos in any action stations were allowed – but we do have the following, from the Hunt for Red October, with Scott Glenn as the U.S. Navy submarine Dallas captain, set in a very accurate US submarine (I know its accuracy, I’ve been in the real ones):
Jess is an excellent analyst, a first-rate thinker – her video “Boromir: Book vs. Movie” gives the best and most understanding appreciation of “movie Boromir” I’ve ever seen.
Carter observes:
Moreover, the symbol of this band – the pink flower known as a pimpernel – comes from an ancestral aristocratic finger-ring Sir Percy possesses, showing that flower: the Scarlet Pimpernel. Aragorn, with his ancestral aristocratic symbol of the White Tree, is in this tradition.
Although not a point made by Carter, I will make it: that Faramir’s troupe were essentially submariners of the forest: striking from hiding with distance weapons. And in the ancient traditions of navies, submarines too were disdained, and for the same reason. And thus, when I see a photograph of my father leading his submarine into port in 1969 after a patrol (my father is immediately behind the vertical white pole), I see a version of Faramir leading his men into their cave harbor of Henneth Annun:
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Carter notes that Faramir’s men use the bow and arrow, a weapon disdained by the ancient warriors who used the sword, because the bow kills at a safe distance. Although elves will use the bow, we cannot imagine Aragorn using a bow – nor Boromir, nor Eomer nor Theoden. True, Eomer’s band that surrounded the orcs who took Merry and Pippin had some bowmen: “A few of the riders appeared to be bowmen, skilled at shooting from a running horse. Riding swiftly into range they shot arrows at the Orcs that straggled behind.” But bows are not shown to be a Rohan elite weapon. When Eomer dismounts to speak to Aragorn he has a spear and a sword, but no mention of a bow; and in the charge of the Rohirrim at Pelennor, Theoden says “spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered, a sword-day” with no mention of any bow-and-arrow work. The fighting is described as hewing – which is sword-work.
But my Dad also sustained that important familiar relationship that enables the men to make some light fun of their leader. As you see above, my father had a bit of a weight problem. Food on Navy submarines is excellent – and presiding over the officers’ table makes eating not just a pleasant, but a flattering, experience, that he could not resist extending as long as possible.
A movie audience unfamiliar with the books would be disconcerted and confused to have a Faramir who blithely said “take the Ring to Mordor, do your mission, destroy it, farewell.”
The second shot above shows the officers over the captain’s back: this is the captain’s view of them. And next, an officer’s dinner shot from the real U.S. Navy nuclear submarine Ulysses S. Grant in January 1969, also showing over the captain’s back – the captain being my father:
In summer 1968, I was reading The Lord of the Rings for the third or fourth time – and we lived in America’s version of Ithilien – Hawaii – at the time; and my Dad was a kind of Faramir, the trusted leader of a small elite band, armed with nuclear ballistic missiles that could devastate cities and kill millions. In the happy photo below, taken in America’s Ithilien, I’m on the left, shading my eyes:
We might say that Aragorn had the same relationship with the Dunedain as Faramir to his band – except that the Dunedain were all nobles, not men drawn as volunteers from the local population of farmers and craftsmen, which is the impression we have of Faramir’s men. Aragorn’s group was more on a par with the 19 aristocrats led by Sir Percy Blakeney in his guise as The Scarlet Pimpernel. In this, a small elite band of English aristocrats are skilled in disguising themselves as French, in order to extract French aristocrats from execution by the French revolutionary government that has overthrown the French king.
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This is the susceptibility so many fall prey to: the pleasure and flattery of personal power extending into all aspects of life. This is the temptation of the Ring.
The movie-drama rationale for the reversion of Faramir back into Falborn is that in the movie, the Ring must work its corruption instantaneously in order to keep the dramatic tension getting higher and higher, and that in this late-story scene, the Ring being so close to Mordor, it would discredit the power of the Ring if a man who encountered it there, so close to Mordor, were to be impervious to its temptations.
The significance of Faramir is that Faramir is Tolkien’s presentation of the archetypal character of the leader of an elite small-unit fighting force. There are many such characters in drama: Tom Hanks’ 1944 World War II US Army Captain in “Saving Private Ryan;” Russell Crowe’s 1805 Napoleonic War Royal Navy Captain in “Master and Commander;” Scott Glenn’s 1984 US Navy submarine Commander in “Hunt for Red October;” and others we will consider below – even the Scarlet Pimpernel of 1792!
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And here is my own photo of the Poseidon test missile my father launched – this one not armed, and not aimed at any city, but modeling those that would be:
The elite small unit has completed its surreptitious mission, is returning to its forward base (Hennuth Annun/Guam) and will soon be heading home to reunite with family (Minas Tirith/Honolulu).
Carter adds:
Faramir’s “power of command among men” is among his small group of elite fighters in Ithilien. We have seen this character in many dramas. Compare, for example, Faramir’s ambush of the Oliphaunt with Tom Hanks’s ambush in “Saving Private Ryan” of the German half-track. Both occur in flowered lands of beauty, and end with enemy soldiers shot dead on the ground:
Earlier, when he was a subordinate officer along the side, himself smiling in subservience to a higher man, he did not feel this – but now that he is in command of the elite small group, he does: this is what he starts to feel. He forgets the annoyance that he had felt when he had been beneath – because he is now on top. Dinners are no longer humiliations, they rather have become pleasing flattery-moments – at least, in his military world. So too it ought to be in his civilian world – he feels.
But it is offensive when the movie world degrades our adult fighting leaders and adult fighting teams into screamers that in real life they never are, who in real life are thoughtful, admirable, achievement-oriented, and work well together.
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Quoran Kunal Roy, in his recent answer to “Who is Faramir,” wrote
It is only when the Captain and officers doff uniforms, dress like the crew, disguise the ship as a civilian whaler, and then spring a trap on the opponent, that they succeed. This sequence is similar to Faramir and his band surprising the Southron column in Ithilien, by adopting disguise:
Movie Faramir in Ithilien is an unpleasant person to have to experience.
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“Faramir is believed to be modelled on Tolkien himself. Tolkien was a scholar. He did not glory in war. Rather he did it to defend those he loved. Tolkien probably knew Boromirs from the war [World War I]. People who gloried in feats of bravery and strength. On the other hand he was always the type to delight in scholarly ventures.”
Are such people worth any risk to save them? No they are not. They degrade the White Tree by wearing it. They are brutes without the redemption of thoughtfulness and morals and gentle care.
And thus, my Dad spent much time on an “exercycle” to try to keep his weight down. Some Grant crewman felt comfortable with the liberty to make a bit of fun of his commander, with the following cartoon, that is a favorite family heirloom now, the face surprisingly accurate, and the star command pin clearly visible opposite the submariner dolphins, though 55 years have yellowed the protective plastic:
This is a particular problem when the leader is in a secret service, and thus cannot tell his own family what he has achieved in the fighting-field that gives him the feeling that he has earned and deserves their deference. Why don’t you defer to me, he feels – but they feel back, why should we – and secrecy blocks him from giving them a substantive answer.
This is what the honorable “ennobled” fighting-band leader fights for: the protection of a peaceful, wise homeland.
But the movie-only audience, such as Jess was at first, would have no idea of the kind of character that they had lost: an “ennobled” person.
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Thus it is a serious matter for a society to set a model, an ideal, of the morals and the principles that the leaders of elite small-unit fighters ought to be. And it is not a mere matter of box-office and sales for entertainers to contaminate that ideal with degraded and inaccurate examples.
Carter also develops the idea of the temporary warrior who is by nature a scholar, turned to war by necessity, not by desire. We see a modern version in “Saving Private Ryan,” in which the Captain, played by Tom Hanks, explains to his men:
Notably, the movie sets the Captain’s inspiring speech to the men – “this ship is England” – during this moment when the Captain and the deck officers (but not the below-deck gun-crew officer) are all in raggedy civilian dress – “indistinguishable from any of the men under his command:”
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“I’m a school teacher. I teach English Composition. … last eleven years at Thomas Alva Edison High School. I was coach of the baseball team. Back home and I tell people what I do for a living they think well now that figures. But over here it’s a big mystery. … Just know that every man I kill, the farther away from home I feel.”
Tolkien’s original outline of the story did not include a brother for Boromir. PhD candidate Megan Fontenot, MA 2019 in English Literature, currently an instructor at the University of Georgia, on 14 May 2020 wrote an article on Faramir, on the website Reactor, in which she analyzes the various Tolkien drafts, noting that once it occurred to Tolkien that Frodo and Sam ought to encounter a man in Ithilien, his first conception was one “Falborn, son of Anborn, a distant relative of Boromir.” The personality of this Falborn was not that of Faramir: he was “harshly uncomprehending in tone compared to the later Faramir” and
But movie-goers, for decades subjected to, and thus long accustomed to, an endless diet of such screenwriter concoctions to generate conflict, find this stupid brute Faramir quite customary. So says Jess of the Shire, a 2021 American college graduate, and I believe her. Given her experience of the modern story-telling regime, it is rational that she does.
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There is a continuity in this, isn’t there – we are seeing 1805 and 1969, 164 years apart – yet hardly different at all.
My own father, a U.S. nuclear submarine commander during the Cold War, was one of this group, and so I have long given it special study. Compare, for example, the following Master and Commander officers’ dinner aboard the Royal Navy age-of-sail warship Surprise, set in 1805:
My father is the head of table here in the family home, as he was there on the submarine. He is in the habit of expecting in the home what he gets in the fighting unit, when he has this same view over food. His view is the same, his environment is the same: only the individuals along the sides are different. Ought they not also behave the same? Has he not earned this in the home as he has on the submarine?
This movie Faramir is rough and obtuse with Frodo and Sam. And then, this movie Faramir thwarts good and wise Frodo and Sam, to obey a misguided father – not out of respect for that father, but out of resentment at a father who has constantly belittled him.
On May 6, 1944 (letter 66), Tolkien wrote his son “A new character has come on the scene (I am sure I did not invent him, I did not even want him, though I like him, but there he came walking into the woods of Ithilien): Faramir, the brother of Boromir – and he is holding up the ‘catastrophe’ [meaning: delaying the rush to the climax of the tale] by a lot of stuff about the history of Gondor and Rohan (with some very sound reflections no doubt on martial glory and true glory): but if he goes on much more a lot of him will have to be removed to the appendices.” On May 11 Tolkien “airgraphed” his son (letter 67): “I completed my fourth new chapter (‘Faramir’), which rec’d fullest approbation from C.S.L. [C.S. Lewis] and C.W. on Monday morning.”
To understand Faramir in the books, we must start with what Tolkien wrote a reader named Thompson (letter 180) on Jan. 14, 1956:
As regards “movie Faramir,” Jess explains that she saw the movies before reading the books, and that movie-version Faramir made sense in the world of blockbuster film dynamics. She being a movie viewer who had never read the books, and thus had never experienced “book” Faramir, she felt no problem with him as she watched the movie.
“Faramir’s relationship with his subordinates is also peculiar in comparison to other military units and relates to the new model of heroism that arose during World War I. … One of the primary ways in which Faramir is able to break down the class barriers between himself and his subordinates is by wearing the same uniform as his men. When fully uniformed with mask and hood, Faramir is indistinguishable from any of the men under his command.”
“As far as any character is ‘like me’ it is Faramir – except that I lack what all my characters possess (let the psychoanalysts note!) Courage.”
If entertainers want to attract the screaming-teen audience, make the story one of screaming teens – but do not degrade those who’ve grown up, especially not those who’ve grown up in order to protect the people with arms. It isn’t just “not fair” – it is also just not accurate to the people of our real world.
The following photos – taken by me, on the scene from the deck of a destroyer – show the real-world importance of the character of the leaders of small elite fighting-teams. After Hawaii, my father took the submarine Grant through conversion to Poseidon missiles, and then took the sub to the Atlantic, to test the new system on May 11, 1971, out of Cape Canaveral, Florida – the same day as the Apollo 15 rollout, which I saw. Below is the submarine Grant, my father on deck in khaki, the right of the two on-deck officers, notable by his girth:
The “man down” knees-only view in the second shot, at the right, is Sam. Sam – the one whom many Tolkien fans consider the most heroic of any character in the story. Faramir’s men humiliate Sam by not even letting him stand. Faramir’s troupe looks like the Nazgul at Weathertop.
It is a shame. Our visual entertainment world could give us so much better, so much more of what we really want, if it could preserve for us our admirable Faramirs in place of just another beat of angry-face conflict that we can get in any shouting sports bar every time the refs don’t flag a foul.
But then, Fontenot continues:
Yes, there is an audience of screaming teens and 20-somethings who enjoy experiencing on the screen the stupid fights that they themselves start in the sports bars.
“He was daunted by his father … while retaining a power of command among men, such as a man may obtain who is evidently personally courageous and decisive, but also modest, fair-minded and scrupulously just, and very merciful.”
“I would see the White Tree in flower again in the courts of the kings, and the Silver Crown return, and Minas Tirith in peace” and “War must be, while we defend ourselves against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend: the city of the Men of Numenor; and I would have her loved for her memory, her ancientry, her beauty, and her present wisdom. Not feared, save as men may fear the dignity of a man, old and wise.”
“nothing moves my heart (beyond all the passions and heartbreaks of the world) so much as ‘ennoblement’.”
Faramir too is a scholar, as Beregond tells Pippin: Faramir is “wise and learned in the scrolls of lore and song.”
Tolkien in his first-above-quoted letter to Thompson (letter 180) added in a footnote that:
The danger is that the elite team leader comes to expect from his wife and children at the family dinner-table the same automatic subservience that he has received from the officers at the elite fighting unit dinner table – and if he doesn’t get it, he feels himself wronged, and feels that his own wife and children to have become immoral wrong-doers.
The officer at front center above is the same officer seen at second-from-the-right in the dining-table shot earlier. Below, they are tying-up in Guam, reverse line of sight from the above, now shot from the tower looking forward; my father among the men, in their whites, his back to the camera, left arm at hip:
“has a tendency to respond severely to Frodo’s remarks – and to Sam’s, even more so. He claims, much like Boromir, that evil follows those who enter the Golden Wood [LothLorien]; Faramir’s distinct respect for the Elves is missing. Pride and hardheadedness often marks Falborn’s tone … Falborn is far more like Boromir than Faramir turns out to be.”
In a 2012 essay in Mythlore, “Faramir and the Heroic Ideal,” Steven Brett Carter (MA in English Literature, The Citadel) develops the idea that
Such a leader must not be one who feels any personal temptation to “take the Ring” – in my father’s case, sixteen nuclear bombs fitted to intercontinental missiles with a range of 4,600 kilometers.
“Falborn becomes Faramir in draft C …. some of the important adjustments were made to Falborn’s temperament and tone that transformed him into the Faramir of the finished product. He responds less sharply; his reverence of the Elves is elaborated on; and he shows more respect for what we might call gentility. He is still a hard man in many ways, as Faramir is and must be; but nevertheless, he begins to develop that air of gentleness and kindness that ultimately sets Faramir apart from his father and brother.”
“Faramir was considerate of the risk he put his men to and sacrificed the idea of glorious face-to-face combat in favor of a weapon system that would be less desirable in the eyes of men such as Boromir, but also much more efficient.” Carter quotes the Gondorian guard Beregond, describing Faramir to Pippin: “a man of hardihood and swift judgment in the field. … Less reckless and eager than Boromir, but not less resolute.”
“Faramir exists as a means to establish a new definition of the heroic model for the twentieth century in contrast to the ancient heroic ideals which are dissolved in World War I … [which] created a new view of war and with it the necessity for a new heroic model … grounded more in humility and peace than in glory and combat.”
Faramir’s similar lines to Tom Hanks, in conversation with Frodo and Sam in the cave, are:
My father had his formal military moments, as in the following presentation of congratulations to men who had chosen to re-volunteer for the elite fighting band:
There has long been an admirable “push” in the entertainment world to not make degrading stereotypes of African-descent persons, or of gay persons, or of women, or of many other groups, despite the entertainment producers losing money by eschewing the degrading stereotypes; and I submit that the leaders of elite small-unit fighting forces must be added to the “no insult” list – so that societies can preserve the necessary vision in our real lives of the kind of persons those leaders must be.
“On Thursday I gave 2 lectures and had some troublesome business in town and was too tired to attend the Lewis seance. I hope to see him tomorrow, and read some more of ‘the Ring’. It is growing and sprouting again (I did a whole day at it yesterday to the neglect of many matters) and opening out in unexpected ways. So far in the new chapters Frodo and Sam … have been captured by Gondorians, and witnessed them ambushing a Swerting army (dark men of South) marching to Mordor’s aid. A large elephant of prehistoric size, a war-elephant of the Swertings, is loose, and Sam has gratified a life-long wish to see an Oliphaunt.”
The ideal leader remembers his family – the people he is on war patrol to protect, his own and all his men’s families – as symbolized by the family photos in the captain’s cabin – as we have below, in real life, from the same 1969 on-board submerged-on-patrol photo collection as the captain’s table photo above. I am the one at far right:
In a 1963 note to a reader (letter 244) Tolkien explains Faramir:
This inspirational speech would never have worked had the Captain delivered it when in his command uniform, surrounded by all uniformed officers. The uniforms would have made it obvious that there were profoundly important class distinctions between the speaker – the officers – and the men, and that this “England” was much more a welcoming, comfortable home to the officers than it was to the men.
Imagine if the leader of this band had instead been the Tom Hanks character in Saving Private Ryan, or the Scott Glenn character in Hunt for Red October, or the Russell Crowe character in Master and Commander, or even Leslie Howard’s Scarlet Pimpernel: there would have been a caring element, and an intelligent element, that this Faramir does not have.
And this is the reason that it is so important that Faramir, the archetypal elite small-team leader, not be susceptible to the temptation of the Ring.
But the movies dropped all of this from Faramir, and turned him back into Falborn. Why? Youtuber “Jess of the Shire” (previously named “Part-time Hobbit”) some months ago discussed the same Carter essay I have discussed above, in her piece “Faramir: Book vs. Movie:”