Descent into Madness

The team at the Oxford Dictionary have upgraded their text visualization tool. The first beta version was the tool of some idiosophizing a few months ago. This new version still has the 500-word limit, but it’s gotten  better at guessing which meaning of a word the author had in mind, and it handles Elvish words and proper names much more gracefully. That is, it ignores them.

The madness of kings and the damage it can do to a country has been on my mind of late, so today I used the new tool to look at Denethor’s first and last speeches.  Long-time readers know I’m an admirer.

Here’s the first thing of any length we hear Denethor say, after removing all the things that aren’t Denethor:

Dark indeed is the hour, and at such times you are wont to come, Mithrandir. But though all the signs forebode that the doom of Gondor is drawing nigh, less now to me is that darkness than my own darkness. It has been told to me that you bring with you one who saw my son die. Is this he? …
Verily. And in my turn I bore it, and so did each eldest son of our house, far back into the vanished years before the failing of the kings, since Vorondil father of Mardil hunted the wild kine of Araw in the far fields of Rhun. I heard it blowing dim upon the northern marches thirteen days ago, and the River brought it to me, broken: it will wind no more. What say you to that, Halfling?

As before, the size of the circle is how common the word is in English, the horizontal position is the year the word entered the language, the vertical position is how many times the word appears in the text, and the color of the circle is the language family whence the word came into English. Blue is Germanic (dark for Old English, lighter for German or Norse), red is French (and other Romance languages). Other languages appear in other colors, but these passages don’t have any of those.

This is how a great leader of men talks

And here is the last speech Denethor makes before he ignites the pyre, similarly edited:

Pride and despair! Didst thou think that the eyes of the White Tower were blind? Nay, I have seen more than thou knowest, Grey Fool. For thy hope is but ignorance. Go then and labour in healing! Go forth and fight! Vanity. For a little space you may triumph on the field, for a day. But against the Power that now arises there is no victory. To this City only the first finger of its hand has yet been stretched. All the East is moving. And even now the wind of thy hope cheats thee and wafts up Anduin a fleet with black sails. The West has failed. It is time for all to depart who would not be slaves.
Hope on, then! Do I not know thee, Mithrandir? Thy hope is to rule in my stead, to stand behind every throne, north, south, or west. I have read thy mind and its policies. Do I not know that you commanded this halfling here to keep silence? That you brought him hither to be a spy within my very chamber? And yet in our speech together I have learned the names and purpose of all thy companions. So! With the left hand thou wouldst use me for a little while as a shield against Mordor, and with the right bring up this Ranger of the North to supplant me. But I say to thee, Gandalf Mithrandir, I will not be thy tool! I am Steward of the House of Anarion. I will not step down to be the dotard chamberlain of an upstart. Even were his claim proved to me, still he comes but of the line of Isildur. I will not bow to such a one, last of a ragged house long bereft of lordship and dignity’
I would have things as they were in all the days of my life and in the days of my longfathers before me: to be the Lord of this City in peace, and leave my chair to a son after me, who would be his own master and no wizard’s pupil. But if doom denies this to me, then I will have naught, neither life diminished, nor love halved, nor honour abated.

Not the words of a well man.

When we meet him, Denethor is sane. He is firmly in command of the defense of the West. In a speech of 140 words he uses only three of French origin: sign, river, and march. Those are good, short words. You can barely fault him.

But the palantir is a dangerous thing. One must have a great strength of will to use it without being deceived. Mighty as Denethor was, madness took him, and we can see it in his speech: 37 French words out of 370.  Alas for the son of Ecthelion!  Sauron’s lies turned him 10% French, and from that there is no return.

Caveat

The results of the visualizer can be sensitive to the date of the text. As you can see from the vertical red lines, I chose a date before the author started writing, not the date of publication. Using the later date means there’s a risk that the robot will discover some obscure technical term that came into existence just before the book hit the shelves. The OED knows everything, and that has negatives as well as positives. (In this case, the tricky word was “kine”.)