In the comments to Superfast Reader’s post Books to Film (Booking Through Thursday), I made offhand mention of the parallel I see between Lancelot and Galahad of Arthurian legend and Boromir and Faramir from The Lord of the Rings, and I’d like to expand on that a bit here. I’ve tried to make this somewhat coherent, but I warn you: I’m neither a theologian, nor a Christian, nor an expert on Arthurian legend.

I first saw The Two Towers with a bunch of people from my university residence, the day after it was released in theatres (because we were LotR geeks but not the really crazy ones), and the biggest disappointment was how many changes had been made in translating it to the screen, especially considering how faithful The Fellowship of the Ring was to its source text. Don’t get me wrong—The Two Towers is an incredible achievement, one of the best book-to-movie translations I’ve seen, and my favourite of the trilogy—but in adapting the book for the big screen, Jackson et al. made, in my opinion, their most significant, detrimental, and ultimately pointless change to a canon character: Faramir.

I don’t say they didn’t make some drastic changes to other characters, particularly the secondary and tertiary characters: Arwen and Haldir get vastly expanded roles; Figwit, back by popular demand, gets a speaking role in The Return of the King, while Elladan and Elrohir, who are given dialogue in the books, are entirely absent, as is Glorfindel. However, none of the other changes (with the exception, perhaps, of Arwen’s) made much of an impact on the audience’s understanding of the character.

In The Fellowship of the Ring (both the book and film), Boromir is an otherwise-noble, honourable man who cannot resist the lure of the Ring. His fatal flaws are his ignorant, arrogant belief that the Ring can be controlled by Men, and his desire to use it in the service of Gondor and his own glory, and it is through these flaws that the Ring is able to corrupt him. It is not, however, a total corruption: although he attacks Frodo when chance offers and the call of the Ring is strong, he immediately afterwards lays down his life without hesitation, to save his friends Merry and Pippin, and in the moment of his death confirms his allegiance to Aragorn. He is, in fact, very like Lancelot.

Lancelot was the best of King Arthur’s knights, but his uncontrolled passion for Guinevere proved him unworthy to be the finder of the Holy Grail—a quest later undertaken, and completed, by his son Galahad. Galahad, possessing a saintly character, is able to avoid his father’s sins. In this way Galahad, though he begins in his father’s shadow, eventually surpasses Lancelot, ending as the winner of the Grail and the world’s greatest knight.

In the books, the parallel between Galahad and Faramir is fairly clear. In The Lord of the Rings, the Ring is, of course, not the Grail but its opposite: sin and evil; not the vessel that holds the blood of the Messiah, but the one which holds the life-force and power of the Dark Lord. An anti-Grail. But the successful quest of the Grail and the successful rejection of the Ring require the same rejection of evil.

Faramir, perhaps more than any other character, is implicitly a Christian hero. In one of his earliest conversations with Frodo, he declares his allegiance to a code of honour from which he will not be swayed, no matter who he’s dealing with:

“Dead?” he said. “Do you mean that he is dead, and that you knew it? You have been trying to trap me in words, playing with me? Or are you now trying to snare me with a falsehood?”

“I would not snare even an orc with a falsehood,” said Faramir.¹

He deals honourably even with enemies whom he knows, without doubt, won’t extend him the same courtesy. For Faramir, virtue isn’t a path to follow or a means to an end; it’s an end in itself. He is also explicitly against killing:

“…I might have slain you long ago. For I am commanded to slay all whom I find in this land without the leave of the Lord of Gondor. But I do not slay man or beast needlessly, and not gladly even when it is needed.”²

Like the Knights of the Round Table, Faramir abjures murder and cruelty, and only kills when it’s for the right reasons. He goes on, a few pages later, to reject the Ring entirely:

“But fear no more! 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, Frodo son of Drogo.”³

This is interesting, because Faramir does not, as others do, reject the Ring out of fear, or even mere wisdom. Gandalf hears the call of the Ring and fears its power:

“But I have so little of any of these things! You are wise and powerful. Will you not take the Ring?”

“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. Do not tempt me! I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused. The wish to wield it would be too great for my strength. I shall have such need of it. Great perils lie before me.”⁴

Faramir’s reaction is very different. He may fear the Ring or he may not, but what stops him from taking it is the sure knowledge, not that using the Ring to do good is impossible, but that using the Ring for any purpose is wrong. Not because the Ring would do evil through him, but because the Ring is evil.

If the Ring is an embodiment of evil, by renouncing the Ring for its very nature, Faramir is rejecting evil. As I understand it⁵), Christians are called upon to reject sin, not because it’s wrong in effect but because it’s wrong in nature. Likewise, Faramir rejects the Ring, not because of the effects it will have, but because its nature is inherently evil.

In the movie version of The Two Towers, however, Faramir does not reject the Ring—at least, not right away. After capturing the Hobbits in Ithilien, he discovers what they are carrying:

“So this is the answer to all the riddles. Here in the Wild I have you, two Halflings, and a host of men at my call. The Ring of Power within my grasp. A chance for Faramir, captain of Gondor, to show his quality.” ⁶

What a difference this is from the Faramir of the book, who wouldn’t touch the Ring if he found it in a ditch! This Faramir makes unpleasant threats and abuses his power over the Hobbits to gain personal glory. He’s no longer Galahad; in fact, the person he now most resembles is…Boromir.

And it is because of this that I give the film’s creators the credit of, at least, having had a purpose in changing Faramir’s character, even if I think their decision to do so was a poor one. With Faramir’s motivations now parallelling Boromir’s, there is now a clear standard against which Faramir can be measured, and as we know, he clearly surpasses Boromir when he, of his own free will, lets the Hobbits go free in Osgiliath.

Besides the fact that I think the change in Faramir reduces him as a character, I also think it was unnecessary. We’ve already been told this story: only minutes after Boromir makes his failed bid for the Ring in The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo offers Aragorn the Ring, who rejects it:

“Stay away!”

“Frodo! I swore to protect you!”

“Can you protect me from yourself? Would you destroy it?”

“I would have gone with you to the end, to the very fires of Mordor.”⁷

What is the point in having Faramir go through the exact same experience in the very next film? The scene with Aragorn, coming as it did directly after Frodo’s flight from Boromir, was much more poignant. If the intent was merely to show that Faramir is more noble and compassionate than Boromir, the original events from the book would have served this purpose better.

In the books, Faramir embodies the same kind of virtue embodied by Galahad: possessing a noble character, rejecting all evil, and accomplishing goals that no one of lesser virtue could have.⁸

1. Tolkien, J.R.R. The Two Towers. London: HarperCollins, 1991. 649. [back]
2. ibid. 650. [back]
3. ibid. 656. [back]
4. Tolkien, J.R.R. The Fellowship of the Ring. London: HarperCollins, 1991. 60. [back]
5. My knowledge of Christianity comes primarily from Christian laypeople, mainly apologists and my own family members. Anyone who knows more on the subject than I do: please correct me if I err. (Or, as my Latin textbook would put it, MonÄ“ mÄ“, amābō tÄ“, sÄ« errō. For some reason Wheelock’s Latin, at least in the early chapters, is unduly concerned with sin, error, anger, the penalties of immoderate anger, and the like. [back]
6. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Dir. Peter Jackson. Perf. David Wenham, Elijah Wood, Sean Astin. New Line, 2002. DVD. New Line, 2003. [back]
7. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Dir. Peter Jackson. Perf. Elijah Wood, Viggo Mortensen. New Line, 2001. DVD. New Line, 2002. [back]
8. Although in Faramir’s case, it isn’t so much what he accomplishes as what he doesn’t accomplish: the total destruction of the forces of good by taking the Ring from Frodo or impeding Frodo’s mission. [back]