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I dislike how much for Tolkien being good means the same thing as obeying the right authority. However, I think that his work does not really suffer much from t

I dislike how much for Tolkien being good means the same thing as obeying the right authority. However, I think that his work does not really suffer much from this because he does not try to rub his moral attitude into the reader in the way that a cheap propagandist would. Unlike so many modern political writers of various ideological persuasions, he does not write paragraphs upon paragraphs trying to convince you, with all the nuance of a sledgehammer, that the bad guys are bad and that you yourself are bad if you disagree. He is more subtle than that. I would probably find his morality insufferable if he was not, given that so much of his worldview boils down to the idea that what is truly good is to serve and obey a god no matter how much suffering that god puts one through. I also suspect that many of the people who accuse Tolkien of having too much of a black and white sort of morality would be offended if they read, for example, a history of World War 2 that humanized the Nazis. I understand the common criticism that he basically depicted entire races/species as being evil but after all, this is fantasy. Having read some of his letters, I doubt that he actually believed that there were any human ethnic groups that were essentially evil.

gausswho 3y ago
I've not read it myself, but your post leads me to think that you may enjoy The Last Ringbearer. The premise, according to Wikipedia: Eskov bases his novel on the premise that the Tolkien account is a "history written by the victors". Mordor is home to an "amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle-earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic", posing a threat to the war-mongering faction represented by Gandalf (whose attitude is described by Saruman as "crafting the Final Solution to the Mordorian problem") and the Elves.
- TheGigaChad 3y ago
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- qwytw 3y ago
  I did read it years ago and it's bad... I mean even ignoring what he did to Tolkien word and the whole premise it's still poorly written.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  I read it. It's a good premise but I didn't enjoy it. Even so, I still recommend that every LotR fan to read it.
TheGigaChad 3y ago
[dead]
dale_glass 3y ago
Tolkien wrote a world that functions the way a Catholic wants the real world to work, even though it doesn't. Morality is uncomplicated, there is a clear black and white divide and nobody ever wonders if say, Sauron might be coexisted with in some way. Morality is deontological. Good actions are good, period. Furthermore, they don't backfire. When Gandalf lets Grima go, or when people take pity on Gollum, that's not naive idealism, that's the objectively right thing to do. Such actions just don't backfire on people in this world. On the other hand, evil is a path to ruin and misery. Grima is miserable with Saruman, Saruman doesn't like him either. Saruman dies by Grima's hand once Grima has had enough, and Grima dies too. Villains don't get happy endings. Mercy has a magical power of sorts. Frodo only succeeds because of his mercy on Gollum. There's also an essentialism to things. Tom Bombadil is this weird thing, and that's that. You can't convince him to take care of the Ring, it's just not in his nature to care about that sort of thing, and it's completely non-negotiable. Evil never creates, it only spends chunks of itself to corrupt perfection. If you read it from the standpoint of "what if Catholicism was true, and the world functioned in the way the religion says it does", it's quite interesting.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  > Morality is deontological. Good actions are good, period. Furthermore, they don't backfire. Looks like you never read the scouring of the Shire
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    Neither Gandalf, nor Theoden nor Treebeard are harmed by it. In the Shire, the trouble started when Lotho took over, before Saruman showed up. Lotho then got deposed and killed by Saruman. So without Saruman getting there, the Shire was already in some trouble anyway.
    - zabzonk 3y ago
      saruman was deeply influencing the shire before he was chucked out of isengard
- 3y ago
watwut 3y ago
> I also suspect that many of the people who accuse Tolkien of having too much of a black and white sort of morality would be offended if they read, for example, a history of World War 2 that humanized the Nazis. History that humanizes Nazi still ends up with them as bad guys who knowingly and intentionally committed genocide.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  Humanizing the nazis make them even more horrifying. It tells us we're not protected from doing the same things just because we imagine ourselves to be good people. The abyss is at our feet.
zabzonk 3y ago
gandalf says that even sauron was not evil at first - entities become evil in tolkien's world, they are not created so.
bell-cot 3y ago
> I dislike how much for Tolkien being good means the same thing as obeying the right authority. Yes and no. At least in LoTR, Tolkien's various Team Evil groups are pretty authoritarian. Often with the under-baddies ready to disobey or rebel the moment they think that they can get away with it. Under threat of war or violence, the various Team Good groups also tend to military-flavored authoritarianism. But consider the start-of-story societies of the hobbits and the ents. Both have enjoyed centuries of fairly idyllic peace. The hobbits' authority figures - King, Thain, and Mayor - have faded to mythical and ceremonial offices. And their law enforcement officers seem to have been nothing but the Sherriffs - a dozen hobbits, armed only with walking sticks, with a feather in their caps as their "uniform". When the ent leader (Fangorn) is finally roused to action, he has to think long and hard to recall what other able-bodied ents there even are. Having two such societies prominent of LoTR suggest to me that Tolkien had some quite un-authoritarian ideals. (Yes, I'm omitting the Bounders, and Buckland's High Hay hedge, and ...)
- watwut 3y ago
  > Tolkien's various Team Evil groups are pretty authoritarian. Often with the under-baddies ready to disobey or rebel the moment they think that they can get away with it. It is always framed as a result of their badness. They do not rebel because they would plan to do something good - they rebel because they are selfish.

gausswho 3y ago

I've not read it myself, but your post leads me to think that you may enjoy The Last Ringbearer. The premise, according to Wikipedia: Eskov bases his novel on the premise that the Tolkien account is a "history written by the victors". Mordor is home to an "amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle-earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic", posing a threat to the war-mongering faction represented by Gandalf (whose attitude is described by Saruman as "crafting the Final Solution to the Mordorian problem") and the Elves.

TheGigaChad 3y ago
[dead]
qwytw 3y ago
I did read it years ago and it's bad... I mean even ignoring what he did to Tolkien word and the whole premise it's still poorly written.
lelanthran 3y ago
I read it. It's a good premise but I didn't enjoy it. Even so, I still recommend that every LotR fan to read it.

TheGigaChad 3y ago

[dead]

dale_glass 3y ago

Tolkien wrote a world that functions the way a Catholic wants the real world to work, even though it doesn't. Morality is uncomplicated, there is a clear black and white divide and nobody ever wonders if say, Sauron might be coexisted with in some way. Morality is deontological. Good actions are good, period. Furthermore, they don't backfire. When Gandalf lets Grima go, or when people take pity on Gollum, that's not naive idealism, that's the objectively right thing to do. Such actions just don't backfire on people in this world. On the other hand, evil is a path to ruin and misery. Grima is miserable with Saruman, Saruman doesn't like him either. Saruman dies by Grima's hand once Grima has had enough, and Grima dies too. Villains don't get happy endings. Mercy has a magical power of sorts. Frodo only succeeds because of his mercy on Gollum. There's also an essentialism to things. Tom Bombadil is this weird thing, and that's that. You can't convince him to take care of the Ring, it's just not in his nature to care about that sort of thing, and it's completely non-negotiable. Evil never creates, it only spends chunks of itself to corrupt perfection. If you read it from the standpoint of "what if Catholicism was true, and the world functioned in the way the religion says it does", it's quite interesting.

ekianjo 3y ago
> Morality is deontological. Good actions are good, period. Furthermore, they don't backfire. Looks like you never read the scouring of the Shire
- dale_glass 3y ago
  Neither Gandalf, nor Theoden nor Treebeard are harmed by it. In the Shire, the trouble started when Lotho took over, before Saruman showed up. Lotho then got deposed and killed by Saruman. So without Saruman getting there, the Shire was already in some trouble anyway.
  - zabzonk 3y ago
    saruman was deeply influencing the shire before he was chucked out of isengard
3y ago

watwut 3y ago

> I also suspect that many of the people who accuse Tolkien of having too much of a black and white sort of morality would be offended if they read, for example, a history of World War 2 that humanized the Nazis. History that humanizes Nazi still ends up with them as bad guys who knowingly and intentionally committed genocide.

pfdietz 3y ago
Humanizing the nazis make them even more horrifying. It tells us we're not protected from doing the same things just because we imagine ourselves to be good people. The abyss is at our feet.

zabzonk 3y ago

gandalf says that even sauron was not evil at first - entities become evil in tolkien's world, they are not created so.

bell-cot 3y ago

> I dislike how much for Tolkien being good means the same thing as obeying the right authority. Yes and no. At least in LoTR, Tolkien's various Team Evil groups are pretty authoritarian. Often with the under-baddies ready to disobey or rebel the moment they think that they can get away with it. Under threat of war or violence, the various Team Good groups also tend to military-flavored authoritarianism. But consider the start-of-story societies of the hobbits and the ents. Both have enjoyed centuries of fairly idyllic peace. The hobbits' authority figures - King, Thain, and Mayor - have faded to mythical and ceremonial offices. And their law enforcement officers seem to have been nothing but the Sherriffs - a dozen hobbits, armed only with walking sticks, with a feather in their caps as their "uniform". When the ent leader (Fangorn) is finally roused to action, he has to think long and hard to recall what other able-bodied ents there even are. Having two such societies prominent of LoTR suggest to me that Tolkien had some quite un-authoritarian ideals. (Yes, I'm omitting the Bounders, and Buckland's High Hay hedge, and ...)

watwut 3y ago
> Tolkien's various Team Evil groups are pretty authoritarian. Often with the under-baddies ready to disobey or rebel the moment they think that they can get away with it. It is always framed as a result of their badness. They do not rebel because they would plan to do something good - they rebel because they are selfish.