Posted: September 20, 1999 at 02:20:54: by David Freitag
One thing I like to do with the LR is try to figure who knows what when. Afterall, our side is playing a major deception game on Sauron, especially after Aragorn shows himself to Sauron in the Palantir. But the Dark Lord had several sources of information he seems not to have used effectively, for clues were there for the taking. For instance, there is Denethor.
Evidently Denethor has been looking into the Palantir periodically for some time. Sauron has not been able to seduce him, so he has tried another tack: wearing him down, misleading him as to relative dtrengths, leading him towards despair.
This contributed to Denethor's grim personality, but, when we first meet him, he clearly still has self-control. He only cracks after Faramir is wounded. He evidently has a major Palantir confrontation which breaks his mind, leaves him suicidal.
But Denethor knows of Frodo and the Ring prior to this confrontation. That info was there for Sauron's taking. As he did not alter his strategy, he evidently failed to pick through Denethor's ruined mind: another of Sauron's fatal oversights?
Sauron, that master psychologist, has tricked himself, being far too convinced of Aragorn's maskirovka, to check out alternative hypotheses. (Among Denethor's ravings is an accusation of Gandalf's "bringing a wild ranger from the north to supplant me." Pippin had let slip somethings about Aragorn's possible identity, but Sauron, fearing Aragorn had the Ring, must have driven those suspicions home (knowing Denethor's sensitivity on the point), hoping Denethor could do Aragorn some mischief. But he'd used too much mind power on D., or didn't realize how close D. was to breaking.)
Maybe Denethor had just enough self-control to deny Sauron this info: he might hate Gandalf and Aragorn, but he'd hate Sauron all the more, and just the effort of holding this tidbit back would have contributed to the breaking of his mind.
Denethor was a hero afterall.
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