On 8/8/12 8:36 AM August 8, 2012, ss wrote:
On Wednesday 08 Aug 2012 12:47:58 pm Ramakrishnan Sundaram wrote:
Tolkien was a tedious read too, but the Peter Jackson movies made them
watchable, unlike the Rand movies. I read the books again with my son,
and realised that I had missed the racism completely the first time.
I am re reading those Tolkien books right now. I'm afraid I haven't yet got to
parts that I can say are definitely racist. I am about 30% through - with my
first reading having been done about 30 years ago.
Tolkien's world amazes me mostly for the class rigidity. Position in
society is largely determined by birth. For all Sam Gamgee's heroism,
he's still the hired help when he gets back home. Elves are the true
aristocracy in Tolkien's world, and they exist in a realm far above men
and hobbits. I guess you could see racist overtones in that, but I think
the class overtones are far more sinister.
To me, the most important aspect of Tolkien's work is the way he used it
to work out his own experience with early industrialized warfare. He
served in WWI, and many of the scenes from _The Two Towers_ (like the
trip through the dead marshes) are taken from his battle experience.
Years ago, I read that the Nazgul were based on the German Stuka
divebombers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89eRBGqtVBo
The Stuka were one of the tools of warfare tested by the Germans in the
Spanish civil war and used to terrorize in the blitzkrieg.
Sometimes it seems to me that British science fiction writers told the
story of the world wars over and over again in the 20th century. Even
Harry Potter seems like another retelling of WWII.
Tolkien is perhaps the prime example of the way the world wars gripped
the British imagination. He wrote much of _The Lord of the Rings_ under
the influence of WWII.
One of the overarching messages of _The Lord of the Rings_ is that evil
tools cannot be used for good ends. Many of the terrifying aspects of
Sauron's power are manufactured, a sort of evil technology that cannot
possibly be used for good. Even the orcs (which might be the basis of
some of the claims of racism) are an engineered species rather than a
natural one.
When Sam and Frodo return to the Shire, they discover that it has been
despoiled and polluted by the war. For the rest of their lives, they are
slowly poisoned by the evil they encountered on the war, much as WWI
veterans died slowly due to gas exposure and other aftereffects of
trench warfare.
So, for me, _The Lord of the Rings_ is mostly interesting because of
what it reveals about the interior experience of early industrial warfare.
--
Heather Madrone ([email protected])
http://www.sunsplinter.blogspot.com
Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its
best is power correcting everything that stands against love.
- Martin Luther King
