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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

"Lord of the Rings": Rightwing Book, Nazi Film?

  
  

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BioDynamo
14:12 / 31.12.01
Party with various radical-politics-types, with a lot of Lord of the Rings-fans, neo-hippies etc. Some of us more socially domineering people got ourselves worked up about how right-wing the Lord of the Ring is, both film and book. Not only in the 'oh Merrie England'-sense, but in huge amounts of details. Please shoot the following arguments to bits:

(starting simple)

* Black is Evil: Orcs are black, Moria is black, the only dark-skinned humans are servants of the Dark Lord. Obviously a very racist current running through the book.

* The Working Class is Dangerous: the only people shown as working class are very evil, easily led to evil things and come in huge hordes from the east. While the hobbits do a little farming in-between their second-breakfasts, the orcs slave away in mines, fell trees, forge iron. Obviously the book and especially the film both fear an organized working class.

* Evil is a Woman: in the film the Eye of Sauron clearly shows that the strongest tool of Evil is the sexual organs of a woman: fearsome, dangerous, threathening. The imagery of the film is clearly sexist.

Don't take this seriously, we didn't. But please offer further supporting evidence or counter-evidence...

[ 07-01-2002: Message edited by: Tom Coates ]
 
 
tSuibhne
16:53 / 31.12.01

* The Working Class is Dangerous: the only people shown as working class are very evil, easily led to evil things and come in huge hordes from the east. While the hobbits do a little farming in-between their second-breakfasts, the orcs slave away in mines, fell trees, forge iron. Obviously the book and especially the film both fear an organized working class.

Or a working class the blindly follows it's bosses. Two, you're looking at things out of context. The destruction of the earth is based on Tolkein's own experiences watching the country side where he grew up (very poor, mind you) being torn up by the industrial machine. A machine that Tolkien himself disliked. If memory serves Tolkein belonged to a sect of Catholocism that despised technology. The orcs represent, in my view, the blind 'progress' of industrialization.

* Evil is a Woman: in the film the Eye of Sauron clearly shows that the strongest tool of Evil is the sexual organs of a woman: fearsome, dangerous, threathening. The imagery of the film is clearly sexist.

or evil is just a big giant orange fucking eye. If evil is a woman, why is it constantly refered to as 'he?' Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
 
 
cusm
18:49 / 31.12.01
Black is evil, because darkness is black. The Bad Guys here are of the underworld, a place of darkness. When they blot out the sun and plunge the world into perpetual night, there'll be a lot of black about. Its dark, not black, that is shown as evil. Black is just fashion

And if anyone wants to make an argument about Tolkien and connections to Nazis, at least do it right. Most of the mytholody of Middle Earth is based on Germanic/Norse mythos. Ie, MiddleEarth = Mittgard. The idea of elves and dwarves comes right out of the sagas: Elves are forest and nature spirits from Alfheim, and Dwarves are greedy selfish miners that live underground in Swartzalfheim. Where do you think Tolkien got this stuff from, anyway? He was a mythologist as well as a linguist, after all.

Oh, and the Hobbits ARE the working class. And they save the Universe. Damn the man!
 
 
Tamayyurt
22:28 / 31.12.01
yeah, but the whole Black=Savage=Orcs and CrackerassCracker=Wise=Elves thing didn't go unnoticed at the theater...some *young* black kids sitting a few rows away seemed to have gotten that message and I felt really bad for them.
 
 
Tom Coates
16:57 / 01.01.02
I don't think there's really a case for simplicities of colour here. black / grey / white - it's kind of irrelevant. Gandalf starts as grey and later becomes white - and is always good. Saruman is evil and white etc. etc.

It is unfortunate that Lord of the Rings doesn't contain much in the way of what WE perceive as ethnic diversity - except of course that it's got VAST amount of racial diversity within it, and is based upon romanticising a traditional englishness fused with norse legend.

It seems to me that there is a real element of criticism of the dehumanising nature of the industrial revolution in the film - and in fact I think you could view the whole epic as a comment on the inadequacies of vast dehumanising organisations and governments in controlling individuals. And I agree completely that hobbits are as much working classes as anyone else.

Frankly while I DO think there is a responsibility to be ethnically sensitive in the making of films (just as I think that Hollywood has a duty not to portray all gay people as serial killers) - I think that there have to be places where the fact that something offends someone has to be separated from the fact that it is in itself offensive. ARE THERE GROUNDS, is the question. In this case it seems to me at least that there are none. But I would be delighted to be proven wrong.
 
 
grant
14:07 / 02.01.02
quote:Originally posted by BioDynamo:
* Black is Evil: Orcs are black, Moria is black, the only dark-skinned humans are servants of the Dark Lord. Obviously a very racist current running through the book.

The flag of Gondor is black: a white tree with seven stars against a black background.
One of the major villains is Saruman the White.

quote:
* The Working Class is Dangerous: the only people shown as working class are very evil, easily led to evil things and come in huge hordes from the east. While the hobbits do a little farming in-between their second-breakfasts, the orcs slave away in mines, fell trees, forge iron. Obviously the book and especially the film both fear an organized working class.


Nah. The whole story is about two agrarian syndicalists unseating an industrial king who ruthlessly exploits the working class.
The final battle of the books, the Cleansing of the Shire, has a global technocrat being thrown from power by a mass uprising of exploited laborers.

quote:
* Evil is a Woman: in the film the Eye of Sauron clearly shows that the strongest tool of Evil is the sexual organs of a woman: fearsome, dangerous, threathening. The imagery of the film is clearly sexist.

This is actually a symbol of appropriation of the feminine by masculine forces (the "false" creation of the industrial technocrat - compare with Saruman's Uruk Hai being "born" directly out of the ground, with no female involved). Compare with the empowered female figures of Arwen, who outruns and destroys the representatives of a fading, evil patriarchy, and Galadriel, who presents an alternative, nature-based lifestyle to the brutal economy of power and pain presented by Sauron or Saruman.

(On the other hand, Shelob is a pretty dodgy female figure, and the Swarthy Men are downright racist.)

[ 02-01-2002: Message edited by: grant ]
 
 
pantone 292
14:41 / 02.01.02
one of the quibbles i had with the film was that it had Saruman as bad pretty much straight away rather than as demonstration of the power of the ring to delude people into thinking that they could use it for good - donch'all recall the scene in the book when he claims to be Saruman of the coat of many colours [something like that...] and Gandalf tartly replies, well then, your coat is no longer white [i.e. pure/good etc]
 
 
Cat Chant
08:43 / 04.01.02
It did strike me in the film that the elves were very, very white (blonde, etc) and the Orcs were dark-skinned/pierced/scruffy-haired (and other cultural signifiers for "black" in terms of race, not in terms of the colour or hue or whatever the hell it is): me, I would have tried to play that down.

Hobbits are *not* all working class. Some families, eg the Bagginses, do fuck-all all day and employ other families, eg the Gamgees, to do all their work for them. Class is then represented in a typical monarchical-feudal structure of people accepting their given place in the Order of Things, those lower down being devoted to the 'superior' people above them, cf Boromir accepting Aragorn as his "king" in the redemptive deathbed moment, or Frodo's willingness to abandon Sam (the officer protecting his men) as against Sam's unwillingness to abandon Frodo (the men serving their officer).

One thing I am really interested in, is the way in which historical agency works in LotR and the fantasy genre more generally. Certainly no Marxist ideas of the proletariat being the agent of history: in fact history is usually out of the hands of the actors, and is shaped either by transcendental forces of Good and Evil, or by objects. The Ring and commodity fetishism? Hmmm....
 
 
Rollo Kim, on location
08:53 / 04.01.02
I'm with Bio. LOTR = fear of the masses = fear of the working classes. And that old toff Tolkien was gutted when it became succesfull because it meant people [including working class people] wanted to talk to him. He didn't like that, no sir.

It's just the same old 'be a good christian' bollocks - and he never took any chances, working with the same old 'elves and pixies and dwarves' models. Bloody cuntservative if you ask me. But then you didn't so I'll shut up now. Thank you.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
14:47 / 04.01.02
quote:Originally posted by Deva:
It did strike me in the film that the elves were very, very white (blonde, etc) and the Orcs were dark-skinned/pierced/scruffy-haired (and other cultural signifiers for "black" in terms of race, not in terms of the colour or hue or whatever the hell it is): me, I would have tried to play that down.

See, I couldn't help thinking that this was deliberate... It's like Peter Jackson gathers up all the racial subtext that's floating around insidiously in the book, and sticks it right in your face, centre-stage in the film. His Uruk-Hai have dreadlocks, for fuck's sake. Near the end of the film, the courageous white travellers are going down a river in canoes, whilst the big black scary orcs run around in packs somewhere on the banks (with Legolas spying them thorugh the bushes and worrying that the natives are getting restless...). Whether this makes things 'better' or 'worse', I don't know, but it is interesting that it pretty much clears up any confusion: yes, these particular bad guys are quite obviously the product of colonial/racist paranoia...
 
 
cusm
15:00 / 04.01.02
Funny, i had always thought the Elves more an analog to Asians than Arians.
 
 
shava
17:13 / 04.01.02
As far as the black vs. white thing, I remember reading the books and them talking about how some of the hobbits are "swarthy," some of the men are "swarthy" or "dark" -- and I imagined that the only "white" folks were the elves.

Perhaps you need to think about how you imagined them and go back and check the book. My assumption is that most of the folks were "brown," because the Roharim and the elves were so *NOTABLY* pale.

Also, as far as working class goes, Sam is as salt of the earth blue collar as they come, and as good as they get. Craftsmen are lionized, rank and file warriors are praised, and loyalty to and from the royalty types and the "reg'lar folks" is praised not as some caste system, but as an interdependent web.

In fact, as classism goes, the whole story is as much about Aragorn's reluctant rise from the cascadian hippie warrior that he starts as (my background is showing right?) to the regal king of Gondor, Isuldur's heir, as it is about the nobility of good, gallant, brave hearts to gain recognition over birth.

Shava
hippie, dammit, no neo- about it.
 
 
The resistable rise of Reidcourchie
17:32 / 04.01.02
Firstly I think the book is largely a product of it's times rather than having a racist/classist criteria. Most "genre" writing in those days is dodgy when analysed today but was not neccessarily meant as intrinsicly racist. (Except Howard, I'm convinced he was a nazi, oh and Wheatley seems to have had a thing for Goering and facism but I haven't read enough to seriously comment).

Secondly I believe Tolkein tried to avoid anologies. As we can see above this enables the modern audience to read all sort of dastardlyness into his works.

Originally posted by Deva

"Orcs were dark-skinned/pierced/scruffy-haired (and other cultural signifiers for "black" in terms of race..."

What the fuck? In whose culture? Dark skin obviously but scruffy hair and piercing?

In the film and I believe in the book the Uruk Hai bore the symbol of the White Hand, which strikes me as an ayrian/white power symbol.

I'm interested for proponents of the LOTR=racist (well it is (the book anyway) but I would suggest as a sign of it's times) what is going to be the effects of it?
 
 
Tom Coates
08:44 / 05.01.02
I think dreads and jewelry are definitely interpretable as black iconography - particularly in America...
 
 
Cat Chant
08:44 / 05.01.02
quote:Originally posted by The resistable rise of Reidcourchie:
"Orcs were dark-skinned/pierced/scruffy-haired (and other cultural signifiers for "black" in terms of race..."

What the fuck? In whose culture? Dark skin obviously but scruffy hair and piercing?


On the piercing thing I was thinking of the whole thread about how piercing/tattoos on white people are a form of cultural appropriation of maori/African tribal practices - this was a while back in the "help" forum, I think. By 'scruffy hair' I meant 'dreadlocks' or similar forms of non-traditionally-white hairstyling, ie not straight or wavy in 'Friends' stylee. Sorry, it was lazy (and racist - Aragorn's hair was hardly a masterpiece of tidy coiffure) phrasing - I'm interested in the racial significance of hair at the moment, having read some stuff about legal cases in the US where African-American female employees weren't allowed to come to work with cornrowed hair: they sued for racial discrimination but it was disallowed because hairstyling was not an 'inherent characteristic' of ethnic identity and therefore not grounds for racial discrimination. But I don't really know enough about it, hence lazy phrasing.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:05 / 05.01.02
(Contains Spoilers)


Shava - Sam is "as good as they come" precisely because he faithfully follows Frodo, who employs him. Frodo's sort of hobbit seem to be a squirarchy - rustic landowners who are small-c conservative and form a backbone of solidity and respectability, but are fundamentally self-absorbed and isolationist - NIMBYs, basically, a sort of Countryside Alliance. There are indeed "swarthy" peoples - the Haradrim, who are swarthy, untrustworthy and cowardly, prone to riding elephants and wearing exotic garb, and the "Southrons", who are swarthy....untrustworthy...hmmmm. Bill Ferney, who is "swarthy" and slitty-eyed to boot, is, IIRC, a narc in Bree and subsequently a lieutenant of the bad guys in the Shire.

Meanwhile, Boromir, the heir to the Stewardship of Minas Tirith, refuses to acknowledge the right of the line of Kings and as such must die. Faramir, the next in line, accepts his role as placeholder and as such is allowed to live, and even gets some, neatly turning Eowyn back into a hausfrau just in time to lend a hand with the party cakes. Denethor himself, of course, is corrupted by a power he should never have had and ends up going bonkers. Hmmm-mmmm.

[ 05-01-2002: Message edited by: The Haus under the Ocean ]
 
 
The resistable rise of Reidcourchie
13:12 / 05.01.02
Originally posted by Tom Coates

"Tom Coates I think dreads and jewelry are definitely interpretable as black iconography - particularly in America..."

Because only black people where jewelery? Thank god we're making generalisations about Americans now and not just black people. Could you please explain how the style of jewelery in the film was obviously black?

Piercing I've always considered to be a tribal/sub-culural identifier and not exclusivly black. As far as I'm aware most (but not all) of the body piercing styles came from non-African tribal cultures (South America, Asia and as you pointed out Maori/Polynesian, who incidently many of the actors who played Uruk Hai were). I think you're really stretching here. I noticed that Jackson got rid of most of the humans in Sauron's forces and changed the colour of the orcs. I suspect this was to avoid just these kind or criticisms. It would seem for people to make the case of the film as a racist text they're having to stretch and make some rather clumsy generalisations. We're going looking for racism.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:19 / 05.01.02
quote:Originally posted by The resistable rise of Reidcourchie:
Piercing I've always considered to be a tribal/sub-culural identifier and not exclusivly black.

There's a very amusing cartoon in a copy of Nottingham arts mag CIA from way back when, in which two white girls are eagerly discussing the jewelled nose stud one of them has recently got. They are cooing over how trendy it is, how cool, and so forth. Then an Indian girl appears, with a similar jewelled nose stud.

"Shit," observes one white girl to the other, "Now everybody's getting one."

That is all.
 
 
The resistable rise of Reidcourchie
14:09 / 05.01.02
Very amusing.
 
 
Cat Chant
18:10 / 05.01.02
quote:Originally posted by The Haus under the Ocean:
(Contains Spoilers)

Faramir, the next in line, accepts his role as placeholder and as such is allowed to live, and even gets some, neatly turning Eowyn back into a hausfrau just in time to lend a hand with the party cakes.

Much as I agree with you about all of this post - we don't diss Faramir in this house. Thank you.
 
 
Cat Chant
18:22 / 05.01.02
quote:Originally posted by The resistable rise of Reidcourchie:
Piercing I've always considered to be a tribal/sub-culural identifier and not exclusivly black.

I think this might just be a terminology problem, in that 'black' is sometimes used as a unifying identity term for all sorts of non-white ethnicities, sometimes more specifically for various African/Caribbean ethnicities.

I just don't think you need to go looking for racism *that hard* in a film in which all the good guys are white and all the bad guys... aren't. I don't think this invalidates either the book or the film, I just think it's there. Like in Buffy. Or even Blake's 7, come to that.

[ 05-01-2002: Message edited by: Deva ]
 
 
odd jest on horn
07:56 / 15.01.02
quote: by cusms:
And if anyone wants to make an argument about Tolkien and connections to Nazis, at least do it right.


Where do you think Tolkien got this stuff from, anyway? He was a mythologist as well as a linguist, after all.



So is this the right connection between Mahatma Gandhi and nazis?
Mahatma Gandhi was a hindu, hindus use the swastika extensively, so do nazis. we have a connection folks!

like all icelanders who went to high school (college? ages 16 - 20) and many others who didn't, i studied the sagas, most of which, incidentily were put in written form by icelanders. i actually quite enjoyed them, too, along with most of my classmates. does that make me nazi connected, too? *gasp*

[Edited to make spelling of Gandhi the same in both places and to put the verb "to be" in the past tense to reflect that he is no longer with us]

[ 15-01-2002: Message edited by: odd jest on horn ]
 
 
klint
18:18 / 23.01.02
It doesn't look like we're the only ones to think about this, here's a Yahoo! story about a right wing Italian group using LOTR to promote their ideals.

Also, here's a look at the issue of women in LOTR.

[ 23-01-2002: Message edited by: klint ]
 
 
The Monkey
18:57 / 23.01.02
Someone remind me of the original publication date of LOTR, and the period over which Tolkien wrote it. If I remember properly, Tolkien would living be smack in the middle of the Victorian/Edwardian/colonial period. In which case, how much does his representation of women and race reflect the mores and governing philosophy of the time...and perhaps the current events, too, eh? Things like the Black Hole of Calcutta and the Mahdi Revolt. Have NO proof on any of that, but it's just something I wanna chuck out to be gnawed on.
Atop that, Tolkien was borrowing both form and plot elements from a vast variety of mythic sources--Norse sagas, Greek, Celtic, and Hindu mythology, etc.--so how much do his biases reflect that derivation?
 
 
The Monkey
19:28 / 23.01.02
Everything below is speculation.

And to pull out something someone mentioned earlier, isn't the big conflict sort of pastoral (good) versus industrial (bad)?
And isn't part of the tragedy of the book that the sort of supersymbol of industrial oppression--Sauron--defeated, YET the degradation of the pastoral continues, led by Man [and Dwarves], while the Elves pass over and the Ents pass away.

Let's put it this way: the really, really, goods guys are the Elves, the Hobbits, and the Ents...these three groups piss rosewater, practically.

The Elves are very much Norse spirits of the wilderness. Implicit in Tolkien's work is that the Elves are in some way more integrated into the ecology of Middle Earth than Man...there is no struggle of "Elf versus Nature" in the fashion that there is "Man versus Nature." Even their habitats--I intentionally do not use the term city, because of its implicit industrial tone--integrate Nature (big N, this is a Victorian talking, who thinks of Nature as something warm and fuzzy and easy to take promenades through) and the technology of sedentary existence. IF I remember properly [and stop me if I don't], the Elves are never even described as having fields or herds...is this absensce simply a matter of plot/descriptive focus, or does it have larger ideological/thematic implications?

The Hobbits live under hills. Soil ecology aside, we again have this image of integration into the natural environment. The Hobbits live by garden horticulture and nonmechanical agriculture, plus some herding.
They absolutely REEK of being some urbanite's idealized vision of the average small village in Britain and its population. "Simple folk" who want only to drink, dance, and stay in one place. Sound familiar? And...

SPOILER
*
*
*
*
*
*
what of Saruman's Revenge at the end of Return of the King?
*
*
*
*
*
*

The Ents are fucking giant, talking trees who take care of other trees: this is pretty damn heavy-handed. Note, however that all of the female Ents have disappeared...thus they are essentially an extinct species unless the females are "found."
 
 
tSuibhne
19:31 / 23.01.02
quote:Originally posted by [infinite monkeys]:
Someone remind me of the original publication date of LOTR, and the period over which Tolkien wrote it. If I remember properly, Tolkien would living be smack in the middle of the Victorian/Edwardian/colonial period.

Don't know exact times, but Tolkien fought in WWI, and wrote LOTR over a period of time that included WWII. The stories go that the battle scenes are based on his experiences in WWI. He denies this though. Course, is there anything Tolkien didn't deny? Did he ever admit to acctually writing the book?
 
 
tSuibhne
19:34 / 23.01.02
quote:Originally posted by klint:
It doesn't look like we're the only ones to think about this, here's a Yahoo! story about a right wing Italian group using LOTR to promote their ideals.


Reaction here

I haven't read all of it yet, but I did read the paragraph where Tolkien promotes Anarchism and the imprisonment of people who want to keep the State.
 
 
The Monkey
20:13 / 23.01.02
Still speculating. Wouldn't defend anything I'm writing in court, so feel free to pick me apart. Be Gentle Though.

In the "morally ambiguous" territory we have Men, Dwarves, and Wizards. In this hypothetical pastoral-industrial dichotomy, these species (?right word?) fall into greyscale.

Men are suspect in that they are divided by the forces of good--those allied with Elves-- and those of evil--Sauron and the Orcs. It can't be coincidence that the most powerful servants of Saurons, the Nazgul, are all Men, in the species sense, and furthermore, that the Mouth of Sauron (in RotK)is too. Furthermore, all of them are High Men (Nummenorians, sp?) rather than swarthy men. It is the Low, or Swarthy, Men, though, who make up the rank and file of Saurons Human allies. Perhaps, then, their physical description is not precisely racial, but rather describes the physiological traits of an urban, industurial (macro-capitalist) laborer who unintentionally contributes to the degradation of "country"/pseudo-communal/ petty-capitalist society? Or perhaps they represent colonial subjects or emigres working in the industrial context?
On the other side, the "goodest" humans are the Rangers, with full outdoor-sy semantic load in effect. The people of Rohan, associated closely with horses and the outdoors, are marked as "good-guys" bar none [excepting the baleful infuence of Grima Wormtongue, an against of Saruman, upon their leader], while the Gondorians are a bit more ambiguous, what with the problems posed by Boromir and Denethor only resolved by the death of both.

[BTW: both Denethor and Saruman are corrupted by excessive handling of Palantir, which time them directly to Sauron. Room for interpretation?]

Dwarves seem to most clearly represent the coin-toss inherent to industrialization. On one level they are clearly marked as greedy and materialist, and they are further characterized by their misappropriation of natural resources...hence the Ent dislike of the Dwarves. Yet the Dwarves produced some of the most amazing material objects in Middle Earth, and no one can deny the beauty and value of those achievements. Moria acts as a sort of metonym for this conflict: here you have this magnificent architectural achievement, yet its creation has unleased some evil that has overrun the city. Is Moria in some way a dystopic vision of the industrial city, built by technologists with good intentions but considerable greed [the Dwarves], but overrun by the base corruption inherent to tightly-packed urban life?

Finally, we got Wizards. Radagast hangs about with animals and plants, is easily manipulable (errand boy for Saruman), and doesn't turn up in the plot for more than an eyeblink. Galdalf is named Elf-Friend, and hangs out with hobbits and Rangers, too.
--(BTW, everybody should go to the Conversation and read the "Lord of the Rimming" threads and links. I died laughing. No--really, I did.)--
Gandalf doesn't have an abode, but moves almost constantly. He wields a sword and is typically neck-deep in foiling a plot by Sauron. Saruman hangs out with Men; he's the smartest of the Wizards. He rarely travels, preferring to spend his time holed up in Orthanc, an impenetrable tower of fascinating architectural design, where he does "experiments" of many types. He advocates "watching" Sauron, but never gets involved. He has no friends, just a servant he treats like crap.
Saruman is obviously the "industrial" Wizard, and Gandalf "pastoral" one, as suuggested by their demeanors and social habits. Or perhaps Saruman just doesn't have a pervy hobbit thing.
[speaking of which, what, then is the symbolic value of the transfer of "the White" from Saruman to Gandalf?]
Radagast doesn't really fit the spectrum...he's almost like an "noble savage" or an "uncultured innocent" who does what the guy in white wants without question. Note, though, that he affiliates with Nature in it's "purest" form...its nonsentient inhabitants...and perhaps reflects the pristineness/innocence of the State of Nature (a la Locke, Kant ,etc.)
 
 
The Monkey
20:18 / 23.01.02
Oh man, the bbs just screwed up and ate about a page worth of analysis on how Man, the Dwarves, and the Wizards, represent the pros and cons of both the industrialization process and the authoritarian state. It fits in really well what you were just talking about, I Am.

And please tell us more about Tolkien righting about the State and anarchism. This is news to me.
 
 
The Monkey
20:19 / 23.01.02
Or maybe the BBS didn't. Oops.
 
 
grant
13:52 / 24.01.02
quote:Originally posted by I Am:
Don't know exact times, but Tolkien fought in WWI, and wrote LOTR over a period of time that included WWII. The stories go that the battle scenes are based on his experiences in WWI. He denies this though. Course, is there anything Tolkien didn't deny? Did he ever admit to acctually writing the book?

His son was fighting in WWII when he was writing the bits in the end of Two Towers and the beginning of Return of the King that are kind of bleak and hard to get through.
 
 
grant
14:14 / 24.01.02
On the Men, there's a third kind of Man in Tolkien; neither High nor Swarthy.
They're called Woses, the Wild Men of the Woods.
There are worn statues of them outside Rohan, you can hear their distant drumming, and they pop up on rare occasions in the Silmarillion. They're short, and kind of a cross between Pict, Pygmy and Noble Indian - well on the way out, and nearly invisible.

Geographically, the Wild Men sprang up in Middle Earth, the Swarthy Men come from elsewhere (north and east, i think) and the Numenoreans came from an island in the western sea, closer to the kind of Promised Land that all the Elves come from/return to.

Also, in the Silmarillion, the creation of the Dwarf race is natural (they spring from the Earth) but a violation of the rules (the chief god created Elves to be the living creatures of the world). Men pop up only after the fall of the evil god, Melkor.

Melkor creates Orcs out of Elves, and Trolls out of Ents. It's unclear how this is accomplished, but points out that he can't create, only reshape radically.

<<<<

I hate to bring it up, also, but this page quotes Tolkien as saying, "And there are a few basic facts, which however drily expressed, are really significant. For instance I was born in 1892 and lived for my early years in ‘the Shire’ in a pre-mechanical age."
This may have been rural England, but he was born in pre-apartheid South Africa and left there when he was three.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
14:25 / 24.01.02
Actually, if we come down to it, the Rohirrim aren't high men - they aren't descended from the Numenoreans (though I have a faint recollection that they may have sprung from one branch of the Edain...) and it is quite clear in LOTR that they are not as 'High' as the men of Gondor and Arnor...

Don't forget the Beornings and the men in Dale, neither of which groups are either 'swarthy' like the Easterlings or the Haradrim or 'High'.

[/big fat fatbeardy pedant]
 
 
The Monkey
19:43 / 24.01.02
Mmmm. New info and old.
It's been yonks since I'm actually read the whole of Tolkien, and the bits and pieces of the cultures and their migrations have gotten really fuzzy.
 
 
The Monkey
19:47 / 24.01.02
And consider the fact that dragons seek out giant piles of treasure and just roll in them...not unlike Scrooge McDuck, but that's a line of analysis that even I'm not gonna to go down.
 
  

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