The ending of book five of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings primarily follows Gandalf, Merry, Pippin, and Aragorn and their experiences fighting Sauron’s soldiers in and around the city of Minas Tirith. It is a standard “good vs evil” battle, with the events of the battle showing the reader where many of the characters true loyalties lie. The actions of Gondor’s steward Denethor show how fear and power has corrupted him with his refusal to fight in the battle, therefore showing the relation to the description of many Soviet citizens in Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, who refused to help the condemned.
The second half of book five of The Lord of the Rings shows the Battle of Pelennor Fields and the outcome of this conflict. The forces of Sauron start out strong but are eventually repelled back when Aragorn and his army join the fighting. After the battle, the combined forces at Minas Tirith decide to launch an attack on Mordor itself, because they know the One Ring is there and they cannot let it fall in the hands of Sauron. During the fighting, Galdalf and Pippin confront Denethor, who locked himself away in a tower and attempted to burn his son on a pyre. Tolkien states that “He (Denethor) stood up tall and proud again, and stepping swiftly back to the table he lifted from it the pillow on which his head had lain. Then coming to the doorway he drew aside the covering and lo! He had between his hands a palantir” (853). His possession of a palantir symbolizes his connection to Sauron and the forces of darkness. Denethor is so scared of what would happen if he fought Sauron that he is willing to kill his son, and when he realizes that there is no escape from Gandalf and Pippin, he chooses to kill himself instead of facing his people. He is constantly hunting for more power, but at this current moment he is just trying to survive, until he realizes that he lost.
Part five of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago discusses the prisoners of the Soviet Union, expanding on how they were treated and the public’s reaction to those accused. His main point is a though on why the Soviet people allowed for the threat of constant imprisonment and did not, for the most part, rebel against the totalitarian regime. In chapter four, Solzhenitsyn states that “The reason for our(the prisoners) failure was that success depends in the later stages of the attempt on the altitude of the population. And our population was afraid to help escapers, or even betrayed them, for mercenary or ideological reasons” (354). Solzhenitsyn means that those not imprisoned did not help the “escapers” because of a combination of the power they felt over them and the fear of the Soviet government. This partially relates to the actions of Denethor, who, in a combination of fear and power, did not want to help those who may have needed it. Both were blinded by power and fear, which resulted in the totalitarian regime being able to use that to their advantage.