As an alien to English culture, I always wondered why LOTR is so popular amongst all sorts of non-conformists and bohemians. I had an impression that the essence of the book is racism and classism: how good a person is, is pretty much determined by his birthplace and pedigree.
I realize that it is written in the Norse epic style, and Norse mythology is naturally pretty racist, but it still escapes me why an academic linguistic experiment got such a wide audience.
Another motif, about a small guy doing things greater than himself, is nice though.
As an alien to English culture, I always wondered why LOTR is so popular amongst all sorts of non-conformists and bohemians. I had an impression that the essence of the book is racism and classism
It isn't: if you have to pick a political/social philosophy to define the novel, pick one closer to non-conformist libertarianism. Do whatever you want to do as long as it doesn't impose on others.
The "racism" probably comes from description of the black riders, but black describes their clothes; on Weathertop, for example, when Frodo can briefly see the other side because he's wearing the ring, they're described as white. White and black are chiefly used as synonyms for light and dark, as in the day and the night.
how good a person is, is pretty much determined by his birthplace and pedigree.
Given Saruman's pedigree (a powerful spirit from Valinor) and Sauron's (another Maiar), this is somewhat odd; the nominally highborn often behave badly (Saruman, Sauron, Boromir), while those of low birth (all the hobbits) often do quite well. Notice too that Aragorn and the other characters are scrupulous about the limits to their power. I actually wrote a paper on this called "The Paradox of Power and Defining Good and Evil in The Lord of the Rings."
> The "racism" probably comes from description of the black riders, but black describes their clothes; [...]
I think you're hung up on the wrong idea for 'racism' here -- I don't believe that Tolkien was necessarily drawing explicit parallels to skin color, and I don't think that's the right place to look for racism.
I do, however, believe that the single trait which is most fully described any given character is that of their race (as in 'hobbit/orc/human/elf'). It's usually the first thing you learn about them, often before their name. When an important character acts, the author nearly always takes care to point out their action as (a)typical of their racial tendencies. And so on.
In other words, LoTR is deeply racist in the simple sense that the author prioritised race above individuality.
>I do, however, believe that the single trait which is most fully described any given character is that of their race (as in 'hobbit/orc/human/elf'). It's usually the first thing you learn about them, often before their name. When an important character acts, the author nearly always takes care to point out their action as (a)typical of their racial tendencies. And so on.
Funny but I assume that the different character groups are species and not races of one species. Species tend to have specific traits that define them.
But in a fictional world where different races have various magical powers and vastly different anatomies, a character's race (or rather species) rather does define a lot about them from the reader's perspective.
I mean do episodes of Star Trek go 'this is Bob, the sentient space nebula - he has two kids and likes to drink with his friends at the weekend' ?
LoTR no doubt does have some collectivist/nationalist/whaterverist trappings, but I find it completely unfair the way people call Tolkien racist by juxtaposing some modern and inanalagous ethnicity debate onto his fictional world.
I think you can fairly call Tolkien racist without bringing an external debate into it -- the fact is that as an author he spent an inordinate number of pages establishing racial heritage, and his characters are deeply straitjacketed by their race.
> Given Saruman's pedigree (a powerful spirit from Valinor) and Sauron's (another Maiar), this is somewhat odd; the nominally highborn often behave badly (Saruman, Sauron, Boromir), while those of low birth (all the hobbits) often do quite well. Notice too that Aragorn and the other characters are scrupulous about the limits to their power. I actually wrote a paper on this called "The Paradox of Power and Defining Good and Evil in The Lord of the Rings."
Tolkein grew up largely in and around Birmingham, which likely gave him a mix of good decent country folk (farmers) and the powerfully rich city folk (given Birmingham has largely been Englands second biggest city and for a long time - IIRC the 70's is when this ended - it had the highest household income, even exceeding London).
He likely got a first hand look at the corruption of the powerful and the earnestness of country folk.
I think he's refering to all the 'lesser men' especially all the men who allied with Sauron. Basically, the book discribes them all as short and with darker skin.
Not just the Haradrim (who basically equate to Africans, geographically speaking), although there is a wonderful description of them as "black men like half-trolls with white eyes and red tongues." The Easterlings are also evil.
And Aragorn is noble and powerful and should be followed unquestioningly because he's distantly descended from royalty.
And Denethor is crazy and wrong because he has the audacity to disagree with Aragorn despite not having royal blood.
And elves are all naturally good and pure by nature of their race — to the point where they are basically immune to Sauron's corruption.
And orcs are their inherently evil cousin race. There is not a single good orc in the whole world. You can feel OK about killing them with impunity.
The only race that seems to actually have any moral subtlety is the Maiar, who can be good or evil with no obvious genetic reason. (I mean, they're still inherently superior beings, but they can at least be evil.)
lord. you're welcome to your interpretation of Tolkien's racism, but since you reference the Maiar, I'm going to assume you're being purposefully reductive to make your point.
> And Aragorn is noble and powerful and should be followed unquestioningly because he's distantly descended from royalty.
He's basically the archetypal benevolent dictator. He may get his claim to rule from his heritage, but he has practically the world's crappiest life until Sauron is destroyed, not out of circumstance but out of a sense of duty. He clearly believes that a king is in service to his subjects.
> And Denethor is crazy and wrong because he has the audacity to disagree with Aragorn despite not having royal blood.
a) Denethor had royal blood b) he was considered very wise and a great king of Gondor. It was only when he took up the tools of the enemy that he had his fall
> And elves are all naturally good and pure by nature of their race — to the point where they are basically immune to Sauron's corruption.
you reference the Maiar but you say this. have you read the silmarillion?? (perusing the wikipedia article will suffice)
> And orcs are their inherently evil cousin race. There is not a single good orc in the whole world. You can feel OK about killing them with impunity.
Will they are a fictional race specifically constructed to be a defilement of life. no, there's not a whole lot of subtle moral ambiguity there, but that's why it's good that there's more than one author ever.
> The only race that seems to actually have any moral subtlety is the Maiar, who can be good or evil with no obvious genetic reason. (I mean, they're still inherently superior beings, but they can at least be evil.)
This is the dumbest part. Look at the inherent contradictions of the numenoreans: benevolent and exploitive, generous but envious, and -- the ultimate sin in tolkien's universe -- so very proud. the dwarves often fought for good, but just as often did so for vengeful or petty reasons. the elves were just totally fucked, and even when they finally grew wise to the morgoths and the saurons of the world, they could find no peace in it, only weariness. the maiar, as you note, were often tempted to evil ways. and who caused all this? The ainur, the highest order of beings. And I don't just mean Melkor, though he of course sewed evil into every living thing. The Ainur were selfish with the elves, they were petty with Feanor and his sons, and they were cruel to humans. They might have wisdom "now," but, like the elves, they screwed everything up in the process.
The point isn't which attributes the different races have, it's that their race defines them as a person -- not their upbringing, their experiences or their values. Their race.
Given that they mostly appear to grow up in racially homogeneous surroundings, can you really tell which attributes are genetic and which are environmental?
It's not just the races, but the geographical descriptions as well which seem to be grounded in reality.
*Middle Earth* - Europe
*Numenor* (island to the west of ME) - Great Britain
*Valinor* (distant land of the 'fair' elves, west of ME) - North America viz. USA
*Mordor* (south of ME) - Area around Turkey
*Harad Desert* (south-east of ME) - Middle East
A quick look at the map of middle earth in LOTR and the Silmarillion kind of confirms this suspicion
If you really want to analyze things like that (which I don't think is very wise) I'm pretty sure The Shire had to map to a Merry Olde England that probably never was.
Having said that, I always wondered if Tolkien traveled by train through North East Scotland and the Tap o' Noth influenced Weathertop... but that is just me being silly.
> As an alien to English culture, I always wondered why LOTR is so popular amongst all sorts of non-conformists and bohemians. I had an impression that the essence of the book is racism and classism: how good a person is, is pretty much determined by his birthplace and pedigree.
It's not just LOTR & fantasy; SF has problems of its own. I mean, there's obviously _The Iron Swastika_, which everyone knows was written explicitly as a parody.
But Frank Herbert says over and over again in interviews and whatever* that in _Dune_, Paul was a terrible horrible no good thing to happen to the human race and we were not supposed to be rooting for him - but fans do anyway. Paul is supposed to be a deconstruction of the superhero myth, but instead, even the fans swallow it hook line & sinker. It's no surprise that _Dune Messiah_, which really rubs our nose in this, is one of the least popular Dune books.
* He says this explicitly in 2 or 3 interviews, and repeats himself in the mini-essays on the backs of the vinyl LPs of him reading excerpts from the Dune books (which I saw today in the SF public library)
I just finished reading the original Dune two weeks ago, so allow me to digress for a moment...
How is it possible that someone could have rooted for any character /other/ than Paul in the original Dune novel?
The Harkonnens were portrayed as selfish plotters who nearly bankrupted themselves to murder Paul's father. The Space Guild was mysterious and were shown as being utterly dependent on their prescience. The Bene Gesserit were complete manipulators, to the point where they created religions across the galaxy to further their political points. House Corrino was scheming with the Harkonnens.
It's nice that Paul was depicted as being flawed in Dune Messiah, but his being an evil character does not follow from the original Dune, unless you take extreme care to see certain changes in his character (such as the aside about him being worried about spice equipment and ornithopters).
Was someone seriously supposed to root for Duncan Idaho or the Mentats? Or the Queen/Concubine? Or were we "supposed to" wash our hands of the book and leave saying "They were all scum"?
No, I'm with you. I think Herbert's point was not that Paul was bad -- we wanted him to succeed -- but how naturally seductive the idea of a messiah or superhero is to us. Characters even explicitly say that a real messiah is about the worst thing a people can get.
I think Dune Messiah (which is rather disappointing even outside of how marginalized Paul becomes after focusing so much on him) is more about how the artifice built up around him becomes evil and does just fine without his actual presence.
i think the original plan for Dune was that it would encompass the events of the first three novels, but there was some scope creep that prevented this. Therefore, the long-term impression/memory of Paul is probably a lot different than it would have been if the original Dune had contained all these events. It's a 'rise and fall' kind of thing and Herbert himself was mostly interested in the 'fall' part, philosophically.
> How is it possible that someone could have rooted for any character /other/ than Paul in the original Dune novel?
If I may, that you think that is an example of the problem. When you read _The Iron Dream_ (I realize now I gave the wrong title, but I can't edit my original comment, grr.), how can you not root for Feric Jaggar (Adolf Hitler)?
How can a German not root for Hitler, trying to restore Germany to greatness and hold back the tide of communism? (Let's not forget how the body count of Stalin and Mao run into the dozens of millions, as opposed to 'only' the 6 million or so of the Holocaust. The Nazis were right about one thing - Communism was awfully evil.)
> Or were we "supposed to" wash our hands of the book and leave saying "They were all scum"?
Maybe we should have! Sometimes no one is right. The Atreides are noble and everything, but their nobility consists pretty much of not murderously mistreating their slaves - I mean, serfs.
> Was someone seriously supposed to root for Duncan Idaho or the Mentats?
You could make a good case for Idaho, given how central he is to the later books.
> It's nice that Paul was depicted as being flawed in Dune Messiah, but his being an evil character does not follow from the original Dune, unless you take extreme care to see certain changes in his character (such as the aside about him being worried about spice equipment and ornithopters).
Paul is not cackling evil like the Baron. He is evil, even in _Dune_, like the Nuremberg Trials, an evil that is more passive than active - he knows how hideous the Jihad will be, he has seen all the futures. He knows what he is later told:
> "Very good, Stil." Paul glanced at the reels in Korba's hands. Korba stood with them as though he wished he could drop them and flee. "Statistics: at a conservative estimate, I've killed sixty-one billion, sterilized ninety planets, completely demoralized five hundred others. I've wiped out the followers of forty religions which had existed since -- "
Paul's evil is one of cowardice and a refusal to do the right thing. He knows all he has to do is die or vanish into the desert, or even just go into exile on Tupile (paying with the family atomics). But he selfishly tries to stay alive and stay with Chani, and the only path prescience reveals that does that is the one that also unleashes the Jihad and makes him Emperor.
(Note how deep his cowardice or selfishness runs; we see it again in _Children of Dune_, where Paul refuses to do the sandworm transformation even to save all humanity because he would lose his own humanity. Some hero!)
As an alien to English culture, I always wondered why LOTR is so popular amongst all sorts of non-conformists and bohemians. I had an impression that the essence of the book is racism and classism: how good a person is, is pretty much determined by his birthplace and pedigree.
I realize that it is written in the Norse epic style, and Norse mythology is naturally pretty racist, but it still escapes me why an academic linguistic experiment got such a wide audience.
Another motif, about a small guy doing things greater than himself, is nice though.