Regarding the class system that Tolkien depicts, it was the fairly rigid class system that still existed in his time which comes through without much conscious effort. That is the way it was, and a look at Sir Nigel or The White Company will tell us oodles more about it, again in spontaneous form.
Sent from my iPad On Aug 8, 2012, at 10:53 PM, Heather Madrone <heat...@madrone.com> wrote: > 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 (heat...@madrone.com) > 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 > >
