The Secret Jews of the Hobbit
September 3, 2016 5:15 PM Subscribe
There is one tribe that offers a perfect real-world parallel to Tolkien’s dwarves... "We have, then, a bunch of short, bearded beings exiled from their homeland, who have dreamed forever of returning. They are linked to a place they lost long ago, dwell in other realms throughout the earth, and yet are so profoundly connected to their own kingdom that it remains vivid to them while for others it is a fading memory."
It's AdBlock Plus that was causing the problem for me, if anyone else has an issue.
posted by howfar at 5:24 PM on September 3, 2016
posted by howfar at 5:24 PM on September 3, 2016
Yeah, and the Ferengi are your space jews.
posted by percor at 5:30 PM on September 3, 2016 [8 favorites]
posted by percor at 5:30 PM on September 3, 2016 [8 favorites]
Yes, I find that ABP interferes with my reading too, but it works fine on my iPhone.
The equation of dwarves and Jews is even clearer in the works of Tolkien's friend, C S Lewis. There, too, dwarves are greedy and grasping; worse, they repeatedly serve Narnia's enemies. At the end of the series they are literally unable to see Aslan (Lewis' stand-in for God) and, in the Narnian heaven, they imagine that they are eating filth in a stinking stable. I still enjoy Narnia fan-fiction, but I think it's clear that Lewis didn't resile from any part of Christian theology, not even the nasty bits.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:37 PM on September 3, 2016 [17 favorites]
The equation of dwarves and Jews is even clearer in the works of Tolkien's friend, C S Lewis. There, too, dwarves are greedy and grasping; worse, they repeatedly serve Narnia's enemies. At the end of the series they are literally unable to see Aslan (Lewis' stand-in for God) and, in the Narnian heaven, they imagine that they are eating filth in a stinking stable. I still enjoy Narnia fan-fiction, but I think it's clear that Lewis didn't resile from any part of Christian theology, not even the nasty bits.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:37 PM on September 3, 2016 [17 favorites]
I think there are a couple of points that might have been added to this article, that would overall strengthen, rather than undermine it's main argument (which is a good one, I think).
Firstly, the Semitic quality of Tolkien's dwarves does not emerge in one piece, and certainly was inchoate at the time of the writing of The Hobbit. The names of the dwarves echo more those of the dwarfs of the Prose Edda ("Norðri, Suðri, Austri and Vestri) than anything else, and many of the characteristics that Tolkien ascribes to dwarves are drawn primarily from Norse myth, rather than any other source.
Secondly, rather conservative applier of deconstruction that I am, I think it's worth considering taking Tolkien (to some extent) at his word when he says this in his preface to later editions of Lord of the Rings:
It is, then, perhaps not so much that the dwarves are Jews, but that, for Tolkien, we are all living in the world of myth, even in the midst of modernity - look at hows the anachronistically 19th century Shire becomes embroiled in the pseudo-medieval world that surrounds it. One might reverse the formulation, and suggest that, for Tolkien, in a certain sense Jews are dwarves, in the same sense that Englishmen are Hobbits rather than Hobbits Englishmen. Tolkien's books seem to reflect how he truly believed the world to be, not in its specifics, but in its moral, spiritual and historical structure. It seems that, for Tolkien, any goodly and godly world must have in it the structures that comprise the basis of the Jewish story and the Christian story, because these are reflections of the character of God.
Tolkien's divergence from Lewis is, in some senses, absolute. Lewis seems to have believed the real world a poor echo of a more beautiful, hidden reality - only to be reached those few who submit to the purposed domination of its author. Tolkien seems to have believed in the real world as the most sublime, rich and beautiful of creations, and made it his work to point this out to us, by means of a feigned history that incorporates rather than allegorises the structures of reality.
And that, very much, seems to be the point of this essay - that Jews have a right to understand their place in world history in mythic terms, with all the wonders that entails.
I seem to have written a bit of an essay of my own. I dare say I could rewrite it to make more sense, if it weren't so late. I hope what I'm trying to get at is somewhat clear, in any case.
posted by howfar at 6:15 PM on September 3, 2016 [195 favorites]
Firstly, the Semitic quality of Tolkien's dwarves does not emerge in one piece, and certainly was inchoate at the time of the writing of The Hobbit. The names of the dwarves echo more those of the dwarfs of the Prose Edda ("Norðri, Suðri, Austri and Vestri) than anything else, and many of the characteristics that Tolkien ascribes to dwarves are drawn primarily from Norse myth, rather than any other source.
Secondly, rather conservative applier of deconstruction that I am, I think it's worth considering taking Tolkien (to some extent) at his word when he says this in his preface to later editions of Lord of the Rings:
I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.Tolkien's creations are not intended to be allegories of the real world. Gandalf is not Christ, despite his death, rebirth and hasty departure from the world of Men - indeed, in light of Tolkien's theological views, I suspect he would have regarded such a reading as blasphemous. But the very fact that he has to mount such a defence is revealing of his way of working. He was a strange mystic, this stuffy and apparently conservative old don, who seems to have seen all history as myth writ small, and to have seen his own myth-making as a pale but loving imitation of the work of God in creating and directing the world.
It is, then, perhaps not so much that the dwarves are Jews, but that, for Tolkien, we are all living in the world of myth, even in the midst of modernity - look at hows the anachronistically 19th century Shire becomes embroiled in the pseudo-medieval world that surrounds it. One might reverse the formulation, and suggest that, for Tolkien, in a certain sense Jews are dwarves, in the same sense that Englishmen are Hobbits rather than Hobbits Englishmen. Tolkien's books seem to reflect how he truly believed the world to be, not in its specifics, but in its moral, spiritual and historical structure. It seems that, for Tolkien, any goodly and godly world must have in it the structures that comprise the basis of the Jewish story and the Christian story, because these are reflections of the character of God.
Tolkien's divergence from Lewis is, in some senses, absolute. Lewis seems to have believed the real world a poor echo of a more beautiful, hidden reality - only to be reached those few who submit to the purposed domination of its author. Tolkien seems to have believed in the real world as the most sublime, rich and beautiful of creations, and made it his work to point this out to us, by means of a feigned history that incorporates rather than allegorises the structures of reality.
And that, very much, seems to be the point of this essay - that Jews have a right to understand their place in world history in mythic terms, with all the wonders that entails.
I seem to have written a bit of an essay of my own. I dare say I could rewrite it to make more sense, if it weren't so late. I hope what I'm trying to get at is somewhat clear, in any case.
posted by howfar at 6:15 PM on September 3, 2016 [195 favorites]
This article's parody right? Oh God I hope so. What are we saying here? That we're going to map the story and experience of a people whose history spans 3500 years, whose achievements, tragedies, glories and defeats can scarcely be grasped in their entirety by anyone studying it for their entire lives; we're going to map that universe of complexity not just onto a fantasy novel, but onto a minor clique of curmudgeon-characters in said novel.
posted by storybored at 7:14 PM on September 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by storybored at 7:14 PM on September 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
Absolutely, storybored - we Jews, whose achievements, tragedies, glories and defeats can scarcely be grasped in their entirety even by such utterly insignificant and irrelevant writers as this so-called Rabbi Meir Soloveichik of Yeshiva University - we should stand up as one against mere essays of this sort that dare to purport to draw such vague and tenuous literary comparisons with our ineffably and endlessly noble history of having our heads so far up our asses we lay tefillin for breakfast and use our kippot as napkins.
posted by motty at 7:40 PM on September 3, 2016 [21 favorites]
posted by motty at 7:40 PM on September 3, 2016 [21 favorites]
There is one tribe that offers a perfect real-world parallel to Tolkien’s dwarves... "We have, then, a bunch of short, bearded beings exiled from their homeland,
hipsters?
posted by msalt at 8:06 PM on September 3, 2016 [27 favorites]
hipsters?
posted by msalt at 8:06 PM on September 3, 2016 [27 favorites]
Y'all know this is old, old news, right? “The dwarves of course are quite obviously, [sic] couldn’t you say that in many ways they remind you of the Jews?” he asked. “Their words are Semitic obviously, constructed to be Semitic.” has been in circulation for 40 years. The resemblance between Khuzdul and Hebrew was obvious to Jewish readers long before that interview, with the one example of it starting out with a Hebrew berakhah. There's a lot of really unfortunate racism or just weird racial caricatures kicking around in Tolkien, as much as I love the books, and this is one of the most uncontestable examples of it.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 8:09 PM on September 3, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by moonlight on vermont at 8:09 PM on September 3, 2016 [4 favorites]
There is one tribe that offers a perfect real-world parallel to Tolkien’s dwarves... "We have, then, a bunch of short, bearded beings exiled from their homeland,
hipsters?
So I'm looking for this stone; really cool. You probably haven't heard of it.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:11 PM on September 3, 2016 [29 favorites]
hipsters?
So I'm looking for this stone; really cool. You probably haven't heard of it.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:11 PM on September 3, 2016 [29 favorites]
Honestly? Having read the Silmarillion, I'd be more inclined to consider the elves to be Jews, rather than the dwarves. The elves come first in Illuvatar's plan, making a covenant with his agents and are offered a beautiful land to inhabit always in the midst of peace and plenty. They rebel against Illuvatar (via his Valar agents), seek to make their way in the world by conquest, and are ultimately, after creating their own (doomed) secular kingdoms,* overwhelmed by the surrounding forces of evil and forced into a life of restless exile, dwindling as the people of the second dispensation (Men) thrive around them.
The dwarven language always seemed more Germanic to me than Semitic (harsh consonants and long words, written in "runes" for Illuvatar's sake!), never mind the beards and axes (a stereotype which fits barbarian Teutons better than the assimilated and/or liberal Jews Tolkien would have encountered and which anti-Semites of the time most feared**). Whereas elven speech is specifically described as older, and as in a sense sacred (the names of the Valar are spoken in Elvish, and shouting or singing in Elvish has power to drive back the dark). It's worth noting, as further evidence that Tolkien wasn't particularly into the whole Aryan shtick, that his "ideal language" wasn't particularly Germanic - Finnish and Welsh were bigger influences.
The author of the article seems to be taking all his evidence from The Hobbit, in which elves don't play that large a role (and weren't quite a well-thought-out as they became later), and I guess that Tolkien's worldbuilding evolved considerably in the interim. But even there the dwarves, as well as the hobbits, Smaug, and the orcs always struck me as fundamentally English, as essentially class-based stereotypes mediated primarily through language:
Hobbits: country folk, living in good-natured paternalistic hierarchies, closest to the moral core of what Tolkien viewed as the good life and not surprisingly speaking plainly but clearly
Orcs: lumpenproletariat, much like the ferrets and stoats of The Wind in the Willows, capable of aping morality (as in the Great Goblin's complaints about "trespassing") but fundamentally dishonest and conniving, violent yet cowardly, speaking in a crude and uneducated way (the trolls likewise)
Smaug: old-school aristocratic miser, someone who (from Tolkien's perspective) either predates or postdates the ideal "aristocratic" values of his hobbit squirearchy, viewing his power as stemming from and justified by main force (similiar to the moat pike in The Once and Future King), speaking in polished, upper-class phrases and demonstrating at first a false politeness which rapidly gives way to suspicion and violence
Dwarves: the aspirant middle class, fond of money but nevertheless yearning for something beyond it, and torn in that search between the pursuit of aristocratic values based around honor and violence (it's no surprise that their main task involves overthrowing Smaug, a task in which they would essentially be aping his values and in which they end up failing) and, as Thorin comes to advocate in the end, the other set of anti-modern values that the hobbits represent
I can see reaching for Dwarves = middle class = Jewish, that was an idea floating around at the time, but I don't think that that identification is as clear or easy as the author tries to make it. The search for a lost home, I think, is more a search for the old values that middle-class modern Englishmen like Tolkien himself saw their society as having lost in the hustle and bustle of industry and Empire.
*Seriously, the tales of the elven kingdoms of the West as told in the Silmarillion are pretty much a mash-up of the stories of the Jewish conquest and Exile, with your patchwork of tribes led by great heroes giving way to organized kingdoms which fall out with each other and are conquered piecemeal, after which the elves dwindle into the background as the march of history is taken up by a new Chosen People
**I do remember one really amazing bull session at the University of Chicago in which a friend of a friend spent almost an hour ranting about how the elves/dwarves distinction in Tolkien matched the problematic historical relations (with which she seemed to have had some personal experiences) between Sephardic and Ashkenaz (Eastern European) Jewish groups. Mutual antipathy between one group whose formative experience of exile (Judea, Spain, etc.) had been integrated into their identity and another, rooted in ancient, often insular communities whose traumatic physical annihilation only a few had survived and who were looked down upon in various ways by a (self-regarded) more culturally sophisticated Sephardic elite. Which fascinated me, since I was unfamiliar with pretty much all of that, but I don't know that Tolkien would have been aware of intra-Jewish community conflict enough to put it into his first novel.
posted by AdamCSnider at 8:16 PM on September 3, 2016 [45 favorites]
The dwarven language always seemed more Germanic to me than Semitic (harsh consonants and long words, written in "runes" for Illuvatar's sake!), never mind the beards and axes (a stereotype which fits barbarian Teutons better than the assimilated and/or liberal Jews Tolkien would have encountered and which anti-Semites of the time most feared**). Whereas elven speech is specifically described as older, and as in a sense sacred (the names of the Valar are spoken in Elvish, and shouting or singing in Elvish has power to drive back the dark). It's worth noting, as further evidence that Tolkien wasn't particularly into the whole Aryan shtick, that his "ideal language" wasn't particularly Germanic - Finnish and Welsh were bigger influences.
The author of the article seems to be taking all his evidence from The Hobbit, in which elves don't play that large a role (and weren't quite a well-thought-out as they became later), and I guess that Tolkien's worldbuilding evolved considerably in the interim. But even there the dwarves, as well as the hobbits, Smaug, and the orcs always struck me as fundamentally English, as essentially class-based stereotypes mediated primarily through language:
Hobbits: country folk, living in good-natured paternalistic hierarchies, closest to the moral core of what Tolkien viewed as the good life and not surprisingly speaking plainly but clearly
Orcs: lumpenproletariat, much like the ferrets and stoats of The Wind in the Willows, capable of aping morality (as in the Great Goblin's complaints about "trespassing") but fundamentally dishonest and conniving, violent yet cowardly, speaking in a crude and uneducated way (the trolls likewise)
Smaug: old-school aristocratic miser, someone who (from Tolkien's perspective) either predates or postdates the ideal "aristocratic" values of his hobbit squirearchy, viewing his power as stemming from and justified by main force (similiar to the moat pike in The Once and Future King), speaking in polished, upper-class phrases and demonstrating at first a false politeness which rapidly gives way to suspicion and violence
Dwarves: the aspirant middle class, fond of money but nevertheless yearning for something beyond it, and torn in that search between the pursuit of aristocratic values based around honor and violence (it's no surprise that their main task involves overthrowing Smaug, a task in which they would essentially be aping his values and in which they end up failing) and, as Thorin comes to advocate in the end, the other set of anti-modern values that the hobbits represent
I can see reaching for Dwarves = middle class = Jewish, that was an idea floating around at the time, but I don't think that that identification is as clear or easy as the author tries to make it. The search for a lost home, I think, is more a search for the old values that middle-class modern Englishmen like Tolkien himself saw their society as having lost in the hustle and bustle of industry and Empire.
*Seriously, the tales of the elven kingdoms of the West as told in the Silmarillion are pretty much a mash-up of the stories of the Jewish conquest and Exile, with your patchwork of tribes led by great heroes giving way to organized kingdoms which fall out with each other and are conquered piecemeal, after which the elves dwindle into the background as the march of history is taken up by a new Chosen People
**I do remember one really amazing bull session at the University of Chicago in which a friend of a friend spent almost an hour ranting about how the elves/dwarves distinction in Tolkien matched the problematic historical relations (with which she seemed to have had some personal experiences) between Sephardic and Ashkenaz (Eastern European) Jewish groups. Mutual antipathy between one group whose formative experience of exile (Judea, Spain, etc.) had been integrated into their identity and another, rooted in ancient, often insular communities whose traumatic physical annihilation only a few had survived and who were looked down upon in various ways by a (self-regarded) more culturally sophisticated Sephardic elite. Which fascinated me, since I was unfamiliar with pretty much all of that, but I don't know that Tolkien would have been aware of intra-Jewish community conflict enough to put it into his first novel.
posted by AdamCSnider at 8:16 PM on September 3, 2016 [45 favorites]
Absolutely, storybored - we Jews, whose achievements, tragedies, glories and defeats can scarcely be grasped in their entirety even by such utterly insignificant and irrelevant writers as this so-called Rabbi Meir Soloveichik of Yeshiva University - we should stand up as one against mere essays of this sort that dare to purport to draw such vague and tenuous literary comparisons with our ineffably and endlessly noble history of having our heads so far up our asses we lay tefillin for breakfast and use our kippot as napkins.
I deserved that. :)
posted by storybored at 8:34 PM on September 3, 2016 [9 favorites]
I deserved that. :)
posted by storybored at 8:34 PM on September 3, 2016 [9 favorites]
It's weird that Tolkien seems to get a pass from the same people who get annoyed by C.S. Lewis. They were close friends, deeply influenced each other, and had very similar ideologies and methods. I expect it's because people feel that Lewis pulled a fast one somehow with Aslan. Tolkien's Christianity is all through Middle Earth too, but you can read the Hobbit and LOTR without really seeing it (not so much the Silmarillion).
Tolkien's dwarves seem to me to owe much more to Germanic mythology than to Jewish history, though at least there's that offhand comment of his to back up the idea. I'm not aware of anything in Lewis to suggest that his dwarves have anything to do with Jews. FWIW he married a Jewish woman. The dwarves in The Last Battle are a parody of materialists. (Not a very nice parody, but no worse than Philip Pullman's parodies of Christians.)
Lewis was strongly influenced by George MacDonald's Universalism-- the doctrine that in time everyone will be saved. (This is explicit in The Great Divorce, which explicitly argues that hell is not permanent. If they notice this, fundamentalists would probably consider this unorthodox.)
There's a disturbing element of racial (or species) essentialism in Tolkien that I don't think Lewis shared. You never meet a nice orc. I don't think they represent any class of human beings, but it's a rather unpleasant bit of worldbuilding.
posted by zompist at 8:36 PM on September 3, 2016 [4 favorites]
Tolkien's dwarves seem to me to owe much more to Germanic mythology than to Jewish history, though at least there's that offhand comment of his to back up the idea. I'm not aware of anything in Lewis to suggest that his dwarves have anything to do with Jews. FWIW he married a Jewish woman. The dwarves in The Last Battle are a parody of materialists. (Not a very nice parody, but no worse than Philip Pullman's parodies of Christians.)
Lewis was strongly influenced by George MacDonald's Universalism-- the doctrine that in time everyone will be saved. (This is explicit in The Great Divorce, which explicitly argues that hell is not permanent. If they notice this, fundamentalists would probably consider this unorthodox.)
There's a disturbing element of racial (or species) essentialism in Tolkien that I don't think Lewis shared. You never meet a nice orc. I don't think they represent any class of human beings, but it's a rather unpleasant bit of worldbuilding.
posted by zompist at 8:36 PM on September 3, 2016 [4 favorites]
Thank you for saying so, storybored - I'll be honest - I've never been so close to flagging one of my own comments as offensive; immediately after posting I really did think I'd probably crossed a line...
posted by motty at 8:56 PM on September 3, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by motty at 8:56 PM on September 3, 2016 [6 favorites]
I'm not aware of anything in Lewis to suggest that his dwarves have anything to do with Jews.
Short, bearded men (do we see female dwarfs?) with red or black hair?(*)
Ones who can mix with society, but are dark and dapper and very conscious of their ancestry?
People who rejectChrist Aslan?
People who are spiritually blind?
People who want to bring back the good old days before thecrucifixion binding on the Stone Table?
I mean, the only way it could be clearer would be if he called them things like Yankel or Moshe instead of Nikabrik or Poggin.
(*) Red hair was a standard signifier for Jews in English drama and literature. In popular discourse, though, Jews stereotypically had dark hair.
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:01 PM on September 3, 2016 [4 favorites]
Short, bearded men (do we see female dwarfs?) with red or black hair?(*)
Ones who can mix with society, but are dark and dapper and very conscious of their ancestry?
People who reject
People who are spiritually blind?
People who want to bring back the good old days before the
I mean, the only way it could be clearer would be if he called them things like Yankel or Moshe instead of Nikabrik or Poggin.
(*) Red hair was a standard signifier for Jews in English drama and literature. In popular discourse, though, Jews stereotypically had dark hair.
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:01 PM on September 3, 2016 [4 favorites]
>There's a disturbing element of racial (or species) essentialism in Tolkien that I don't think Lewis shared. You never meet a nice orc. I don't think they represent any class of human beings, but it's a rather unpleasant bit of worldbuilding.
Yeah, I've always thought it was widely unremarked-on for such an obvious element of such a popular series of books. There are no smart orcs who love music, and there are no elves with bad teeth. He covers a few millennia and several continents, and there's hardly a character about whom you need to know more than what race they are.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 9:11 PM on September 3, 2016 [5 favorites]
Yeah, I've always thought it was widely unremarked-on for such an obvious element of such a popular series of books. There are no smart orcs who love music, and there are no elves with bad teeth. He covers a few millennia and several continents, and there's hardly a character about whom you need to know more than what race they are.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 9:11 PM on September 3, 2016 [5 favorites]
Possible spoilers I guess... Warning and all that...
It's weird that Tolkien seems to get a pass from the same people who get annoyed by C.S. Lewis.
I don't purport to be an expert on either, and admit to a fair bit more exposure/familiarity with Tolkien as opposed to Lewis (along with any bias that may entail), but I don't agree. Again, maybe this is wrongheaded of me to even speak to this since I really try/default to consuming literary work for what it is rather than intentionally seeking out allegory and anything but the most obvious references so, sure.... but I mean this is the Lewis that wrote a The Pilgrim's Regress as a nod to The Pilgrim's Progress we are talking about right?
I expect it's because people feel that Lewis pulled a fast one somehow with Aslan.Tolkien's Christianity is all through Middle Earth too, but you can read the Hobbit and LOTR without really seeing it (not so much the Silmarillion).
I mean, Aslan screamed "the christ is slain/risen" to me but not so much the return, after his pagan bosses sent him back with a other wizard's job, of Gandalf after his fall, while MMA fighting a minor-fallen-past-coworker by invoking crazy spells and waving a lightsaber crafted by old (if badass) treehuggers and then insulting his friends for being silly heads before inventing BASE jumping, for various and sundry reasons.
The hobbit? Uh, I guess Thorin's and Co could be the children of Israel following a Gandalf Moses or something but I felt zero Christian stuffs on my various reads of that delightful childhood tale.
As to the Silmarillion being, apparently, even more Christian, I don't get that either as I felt like it was much more akin to Roman/Greek/Norse mythology with all the sub-gods and goddesses. I mean Eru was at the party for for a moment and the first chapter does read a bit like a crazy cult rewrote Genesis, and there are 2 trees (but also a huge world eating spider and sexy jewelery and jealousy so not so much Adam and Eve remix there?)
There's a disturbing element of racial (or species) essentialism in Tolkien that I don't think Lewis shared. You never meet a nice orc. I don't think they represent any class of human beings, but it's a rather unpleasant bit of worldbuilding.
I had a pretty easy time with the orcs and accepting them as, I think, they were intended. To me that was as a set piece of evil in the battle of good and evil. There's plenty of nuance in the other non Morgoth spawned races / species to go around. I mean, I don't go into any given story looking for it to express each and every motif that embodies what humanity should attempt to embody and strive for. I'm ok with the bad guys being bad guys be it orcs an evil super computer (totally not a front for the evils of automation as progress) or aliens/zombies (I am not anti immigration or xenophobic, thank you very much).
posted by RolandOfEld at 9:16 PM on September 3, 2016 [3 favorites]
It's weird that Tolkien seems to get a pass from the same people who get annoyed by C.S. Lewis.
I don't purport to be an expert on either, and admit to a fair bit more exposure/familiarity with Tolkien as opposed to Lewis (along with any bias that may entail), but I don't agree. Again, maybe this is wrongheaded of me to even speak to this since I really try/default to consuming literary work for what it is rather than intentionally seeking out allegory and anything but the most obvious references so, sure.... but I mean this is the Lewis that wrote a The Pilgrim's Regress as a nod to The Pilgrim's Progress we are talking about right?
I expect it's because people feel that Lewis pulled a fast one somehow with Aslan.Tolkien's Christianity is all through Middle Earth too, but you can read the Hobbit and LOTR without really seeing it (not so much the Silmarillion).
I mean, Aslan screamed "the christ is slain/risen" to me but not so much the return, after his pagan bosses sent him back with a other wizard's job, of Gandalf after his fall, while MMA fighting a minor-fallen-past-coworker by invoking crazy spells and waving a lightsaber crafted by old (if badass) treehuggers and then insulting his friends for being silly heads before inventing BASE jumping, for various and sundry reasons.
The hobbit? Uh, I guess Thorin's and Co could be the children of Israel following a Gandalf Moses or something but I felt zero Christian stuffs on my various reads of that delightful childhood tale.
As to the Silmarillion being, apparently, even more Christian, I don't get that either as I felt like it was much more akin to Roman/Greek/Norse mythology with all the sub-gods and goddesses. I mean Eru was at the party for for a moment and the first chapter does read a bit like a crazy cult rewrote Genesis, and there are 2 trees (but also a huge world eating spider and sexy jewelery and jealousy so not so much Adam and Eve remix there?)
There's a disturbing element of racial (or species) essentialism in Tolkien that I don't think Lewis shared. You never meet a nice orc. I don't think they represent any class of human beings, but it's a rather unpleasant bit of worldbuilding.
I had a pretty easy time with the orcs and accepting them as, I think, they were intended. To me that was as a set piece of evil in the battle of good and evil. There's plenty of nuance in the other non Morgoth spawned races / species to go around. I mean, I don't go into any given story looking for it to express each and every motif that embodies what humanity should attempt to embody and strive for. I'm ok with the bad guys being bad guys be it orcs an evil super computer (totally not a front for the evils of automation as progress) or aliens/zombies (I am not anti immigration or xenophobic, thank you very much).
posted by RolandOfEld at 9:16 PM on September 3, 2016 [3 favorites]
That said, it is pretty fucking dark to think about the fact that orcs are actually the product of thousands of years of torture and, as I took it anyway, selective breeding (with maybe even a dash of Morgoth's godly magic/genetic manipulation) of captured elves.
Ditto that Balrogs, not to mention Sauron (not Daytona, screw you autocorrect), are basically mid level manager gods that said screw this noise we want fiery BDSM toys/weapons to play with. Or in Sauron's case he just wanted to play Diplomacy the home game, for keeps.
...oh and dragons are just lizards that got too close to Morgoth's radioactive jewelery I guess.
posted by RolandOfEld at 9:29 PM on September 3, 2016 [3 favorites]
Ditto that Balrogs, not to mention Sauron (not Daytona, screw you autocorrect), are basically mid level manager gods that said screw this noise we want fiery BDSM toys/weapons to play with. Or in Sauron's case he just wanted to play Diplomacy the home game, for keeps.
...oh and dragons are just lizards that got too close to Morgoth's radioactive jewelery I guess.
posted by RolandOfEld at 9:29 PM on September 3, 2016 [3 favorites]
Can't believe I am the first to note in this thread that Terry Pratchett built on and exaggerated the dwarfs as Jews trope, complete with legalistic religion and fundamentalism.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 9:40 PM on September 3, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 9:40 PM on September 3, 2016 [5 favorites]
There are no smart orcs who love music, and there are no elves with bad teeth.
There are actually some pretty spectacularly horrible elves (Maeglin, Feanor, a big chunk of Feanor's direct descendants) in the Silmarillion. And the wood elves of the Hobbit are xenophobic, greedy jerks. Orcs are universally evil but sometimes surprisingly human as well (orc dialogue during Frodo's time in Mordor and Pippin/Merry's travels with the Uruk Hai are kind of interesting trips through the minds of evil creatures whose minds are mostly occupied not so much by I Am Evil Let's Evil Some Moar and more with petty rivalries, group pride ("we are the fighting Uruk Hai!"), and, for lack of a better term, interdepartmental politics). They could have been so much more but also could easily have been so much less.
Which actually brings me to one of the most frustrating aspects of C.S. Lewis and Tolkien - and also more recently another of my favorite authors, China Mieville: these are all writers who very much felt that their writing had to include their personal to philosophical commitments. That they were part of a broader conflict (religious in the case of Lewis and Tolkien, social and historical in Mieville's case), and that their works had to play a role, however minor, in that conflict. Lewis was the worst at this sort of integration, or maybe Tolkien was just less driven to it (I suspect as a result of his much quoted hatred for allegory).
Even reading through the Narnia books as a kid, I knew that Aslan shouldn't be there. He's an element that could be excised with absolutely no loss to the story and his appearance kills any dramatic tension in the plot or need for personal growth in the main characters. And his scenes are so joyless - when Lewis is writing about talking animals or pagan gods or even his relatively unidimensional human characters, there's a spring in the step of his prose. His Aslan scenes, on the other hand, remind me of something the late Tony Judt once said about the (also late, goddamnit) Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm's memoirs: that he writes in places as if the censor was looking over his shoulder. Lewis writes his Aslan scenes as if a particularly straightlaced archangel was looking over his.
Because Aslan doesn't belong there, he just has to be there, because Lewis was a deeply committed man who believed that commitment had to inform his work directly, that art had a broader social and religious purpose. Tolkien did too, but he was more subtle about it and also less evangelical by nature and possibly by descent - evangelical wasn't, historically speaking, a wise thing for an English Catholic to be. Which is why The Lord of the Rings is hands-down better as a whole than The Chronicles of Narnia (even if a few parts of the latter soar).
posted by AdamCSnider at 9:42 PM on September 3, 2016 [16 favorites]
There are actually some pretty spectacularly horrible elves (Maeglin, Feanor, a big chunk of Feanor's direct descendants) in the Silmarillion. And the wood elves of the Hobbit are xenophobic, greedy jerks. Orcs are universally evil but sometimes surprisingly human as well (orc dialogue during Frodo's time in Mordor and Pippin/Merry's travels with the Uruk Hai are kind of interesting trips through the minds of evil creatures whose minds are mostly occupied not so much by I Am Evil Let's Evil Some Moar and more with petty rivalries, group pride ("we are the fighting Uruk Hai!"), and, for lack of a better term, interdepartmental politics). They could have been so much more but also could easily have been so much less.
Which actually brings me to one of the most frustrating aspects of C.S. Lewis and Tolkien - and also more recently another of my favorite authors, China Mieville: these are all writers who very much felt that their writing had to include their personal to philosophical commitments. That they were part of a broader conflict (religious in the case of Lewis and Tolkien, social and historical in Mieville's case), and that their works had to play a role, however minor, in that conflict. Lewis was the worst at this sort of integration, or maybe Tolkien was just less driven to it (I suspect as a result of his much quoted hatred for allegory).
Even reading through the Narnia books as a kid, I knew that Aslan shouldn't be there. He's an element that could be excised with absolutely no loss to the story and his appearance kills any dramatic tension in the plot or need for personal growth in the main characters. And his scenes are so joyless - when Lewis is writing about talking animals or pagan gods or even his relatively unidimensional human characters, there's a spring in the step of his prose. His Aslan scenes, on the other hand, remind me of something the late Tony Judt once said about the (also late, goddamnit) Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm's memoirs: that he writes in places as if the censor was looking over his shoulder. Lewis writes his Aslan scenes as if a particularly straightlaced archangel was looking over his.
Because Aslan doesn't belong there, he just has to be there, because Lewis was a deeply committed man who believed that commitment had to inform his work directly, that art had a broader social and religious purpose. Tolkien did too, but he was more subtle about it and also less evangelical by nature and possibly by descent - evangelical wasn't, historically speaking, a wise thing for an English Catholic to be. Which is why The Lord of the Rings is hands-down better as a whole than The Chronicles of Narnia (even if a few parts of the latter soar).
posted by AdamCSnider at 9:42 PM on September 3, 2016 [16 favorites]
Can't believe I am the first to note in this thread that Terry Pratchett built on and exaggerated the dwarfs as Jews trope, complete with legalistic religion and fundamentalism.
was the scone unleavened
posted by poffin boffin at 10:19 PM on September 3, 2016 [11 favorites]
was the scone unleavened
posted by poffin boffin at 10:19 PM on September 3, 2016 [11 favorites]
The dwarven language always seemed more Germanic to me than Semitic (harsh consonants and long words, written in "runes" for Illuvatar's sake!)
See this is where you're underestimating what a colossal conlang nerd JRRT was (and I say that with the greatest affection and respect). The writing system is just frosting; the meat of the cake (uh, or mince pie? note to editor: (a) can mince pies be frosted; (b) can i have one if so) is construction. We don't know that much about Khuzdul, but one thing we do know and would know even if JRRT hadn't said "yeah, it's Semitic" in an interview is that it is super Semitic. The triconsonantal roots give the game away.
posted by No-sword at 10:37 PM on September 3, 2016 [14 favorites]
See this is where you're underestimating what a colossal conlang nerd JRRT was (and I say that with the greatest affection and respect). The writing system is just frosting; the meat of the cake (uh, or mince pie? note to editor: (a) can mince pies be frosted; (b) can i have one if so) is construction. We don't know that much about Khuzdul, but one thing we do know and would know even if JRRT hadn't said "yeah, it's Semitic" in an interview is that it is super Semitic. The triconsonantal roots give the game away.
posted by No-sword at 10:37 PM on September 3, 2016 [14 favorites]
>There are actually some pretty spectacularly horrible elves (Maeglin, Feanor, a big chunk of Feanor's direct descendants) in the Silmarillion.
I don't know, I think Feanor gets a free pass for having created the Silmarils and the Palantiri and for having thereby done a bunch of shit that even the Valar were supposed to be incapable of. He still possesses the standard elf traits--brilliant artisanship, a finely honed sense of honor--he just possesses them to such a degree that even elves can't stand him. He has a destiny that nobody could bear, and his descendants all get strangled up in it too, but at the end of the day it's not really his FAULT. There's a great scene where Feanor is getting ready to go chasing after Morgoth, who's stolen one of the Silmarils, and somebody--maybe Manwe--shows up as a messenger from the Valar, and says, "Dude, you can't really hope to win against Morgoth." Feanor says, "Yeah, but at least I don't hesitate to assail him, unlike y'all who are supposed to be my betters," and Manwe "bows his head as one full-answered" or something like that. Even if you're one of the Valar, if Feanor tells you where to get off, that's where you get off...
I don't remember who Maeglin is so I'll have to take your word for it.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 10:47 PM on September 3, 2016 [4 favorites]
I don't know, I think Feanor gets a free pass for having created the Silmarils and the Palantiri and for having thereby done a bunch of shit that even the Valar were supposed to be incapable of. He still possesses the standard elf traits--brilliant artisanship, a finely honed sense of honor--he just possesses them to such a degree that even elves can't stand him. He has a destiny that nobody could bear, and his descendants all get strangled up in it too, but at the end of the day it's not really his FAULT. There's a great scene where Feanor is getting ready to go chasing after Morgoth, who's stolen one of the Silmarils, and somebody--maybe Manwe--shows up as a messenger from the Valar, and says, "Dude, you can't really hope to win against Morgoth." Feanor says, "Yeah, but at least I don't hesitate to assail him, unlike y'all who are supposed to be my betters," and Manwe "bows his head as one full-answered" or something like that. Even if you're one of the Valar, if Feanor tells you where to get off, that's where you get off...
I don't remember who Maeglin is so I'll have to take your word for it.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 10:47 PM on September 3, 2016 [4 favorites]
The Noldor definitely were a proud and stiff-necked people.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:19 PM on September 3, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:19 PM on September 3, 2016 [2 favorites]
It's only Thorin and his gang who are wandering exiles, isn't it? Not dwarves as a race. There's no single dwarvish homeland. Nobody tries to wipe out dwarves or make them convert to tall belief systems.
There's a danger here of using stereotypical qualities to reidentify a group in someone's fiction and then berating the author for the racist stereotypes you actually interpreted into the work yourself.
posted by Segundus at 12:34 AM on September 4, 2016 [20 favorites]
There's a danger here of using stereotypical qualities to reidentify a group in someone's fiction and then berating the author for the racist stereotypes you actually interpreted into the work yourself.
posted by Segundus at 12:34 AM on September 4, 2016 [20 favorites]
Going down that road, Segundus, you've got Moria, literally the promised land, created by the essentially the founding father figure of the Dwarves, Durin, which the Dwarves have been forced out of. The Lonely Mountain is another of their homes, similarly taken from them. The image I had of the dwarves of the Iron Hills was that, specifically, of a home in exile. I mean, hills, not mountains? Iron, not gold, or mithril? And yeah, the dwindling of the dwarves, while not as pronounced as the ents and elves, is definitely hinted at.
posted by Ghidorah at 1:17 AM on September 4, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by Ghidorah at 1:17 AM on September 4, 2016 [4 favorites]
Per Segundus's thoughtful comment, there's also a real danger in self-mythologizing by recasting the messiness of the real world into fantasy tropes (sort of the converse of reading simplifying tropes into messy fictions). Opting for quick narrative satisfaction is dangerous. To wit: I love good stories as much as the next guy, but the author of this article, by making the Jews dwarves makes Israel Erebor-- and so makes the Palestinians goblins or orcs (servants of the dark powers in any event).
No thanks. The Jewish tradition I prefer to claim is the one of exile and cosmopolitanism-- if I have to pick a narrative, I'll go with the one that doesn't give me a divine entitlement to any particular piece of land, or turn sometime adversaries into monsters.
posted by SandCounty at 1:27 AM on September 4, 2016 [13 favorites]
No thanks. The Jewish tradition I prefer to claim is the one of exile and cosmopolitanism-- if I have to pick a narrative, I'll go with the one that doesn't give me a divine entitlement to any particular piece of land, or turn sometime adversaries into monsters.
posted by SandCounty at 1:27 AM on September 4, 2016 [13 favorites]
The thing about Tolkien is that his characters, by and large, lack free will. Feanor is incredibly two dimensional - any time he walks into a scene the flow chart of his decision tree is like:
"determine the most chloeric thing possible to do" → "do that"
So much so that his name is literally fire. Of course Manwe doesn't argue with him. It's like arguing with a Bernie Bro about game theory and elections.
Yeah, he gets a lot of credit for the silmarils and what not, but about the time he gives his entire race a severe case of PTSD at Alqualondë, he's pretty much pissed that away.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 5:16 AM on September 4, 2016 [6 favorites]
"determine the most chloeric thing possible to do" → "do that"
So much so that his name is literally fire. Of course Manwe doesn't argue with him. It's like arguing with a Bernie Bro about game theory and elections.
Yeah, he gets a lot of credit for the silmarils and what not, but about the time he gives his entire race a severe case of PTSD at Alqualondë, he's pretty much pissed that away.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 5:16 AM on September 4, 2016 [6 favorites]
Tolkien was wonderfully unambiguous when, before World War II, a German publisher asked him whether he was "Aryan." From IYOV [quoting from the introduction to Beowulf and the Critics]:
In 1938, Tolkien had written a razor-tongued reply to the German firm Rütten und Loening Verlag, who, upon negotiating the publication of a German translation of The Hobbit, dared to ask Tolkien if he was "arisch" [Aryan]. Tolkien replied with insulting philological precision that since he was not aware that any of his "ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects," he could not claim to be Aryan. He adds, "but if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people."
posted by Postroad at 7:39 AM on September 4, 2016 [16 favorites]
In 1938, Tolkien had written a razor-tongued reply to the German firm Rütten und Loening Verlag, who, upon negotiating the publication of a German translation of The Hobbit, dared to ask Tolkien if he was "arisch" [Aryan]. Tolkien replied with insulting philological precision that since he was not aware that any of his "ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects," he could not claim to be Aryan. He adds, "but if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people."
posted by Postroad at 7:39 AM on September 4, 2016 [16 favorites]
We're not short.
posted by 1adam12 at 10:13 AM on September 4, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by 1adam12 at 10:13 AM on September 4, 2016 [2 favorites]
He was a strange mystic, this stuffy and apparently conservative old don, who seems to have seen all history as myth writ small, and to have seen his own myth-making as a pale but loving imitation of the work of God in creating and directing the world.
I love the resonance of this formulation with the story of Aule's creation of the Dwarves. (He did so in secret, because he was too impatient to await the awakening of Iluvatar's firstborn, i.e. the Elves. Iluvatar, as a very fine allegory of the Abrahamic God, of course found out, and Aule apologised profusely and offered to destroy his creations to appease Iluvatar's will. Iluvatar, again as a very fine allegory of the Abrahamic God, of course had pity and said no, no, it's fine, but they can't awaken until after the Elves do.)
I think howfar's excellent comment really touches on the truth of it. There's no one Tolkien race that you can identify as Definitely Fantasy Jews, because his world is built on a series of motifs that echo down the ages. Moria is Israel but so is Valinor but so is Numenor but so is Gondor but so is Erebor (and also Dale), etc, etc.
The really nasty racial thing in Tolkien is not the Dwarves (for all their flaws, they're the bloody heroes in both his completed books) but the Easterlings and Southrons. Even the Orcs, despite being repeatedly described as "swarthy" can, if you're being charitable, get kind of a pass because we see Men and Hobbits growing Orcish under Sharkey's influence during the Scouring of the Shire, suggesting that Orcishness is as much a character flaw as a racial one. But the blatant Central Asian and African/Indian peoples we see are universally portrayed as easily-duped servants of Sauron. Some of the apocryphal stuff speculates that maybe there was a non-evil faction of Easterlings under the Blue Wizards that hampered the efforts of Sauron's minions, but that's both apocryphal and pretty weak tea.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:02 AM on September 4, 2016 [6 favorites]
I love the resonance of this formulation with the story of Aule's creation of the Dwarves. (He did so in secret, because he was too impatient to await the awakening of Iluvatar's firstborn, i.e. the Elves. Iluvatar, as a very fine allegory of the Abrahamic God, of course found out, and Aule apologised profusely and offered to destroy his creations to appease Iluvatar's will. Iluvatar, again as a very fine allegory of the Abrahamic God, of course had pity and said no, no, it's fine, but they can't awaken until after the Elves do.)
I think howfar's excellent comment really touches on the truth of it. There's no one Tolkien race that you can identify as Definitely Fantasy Jews, because his world is built on a series of motifs that echo down the ages. Moria is Israel but so is Valinor but so is Numenor but so is Gondor but so is Erebor (and also Dale), etc, etc.
The really nasty racial thing in Tolkien is not the Dwarves (for all their flaws, they're the bloody heroes in both his completed books) but the Easterlings and Southrons. Even the Orcs, despite being repeatedly described as "swarthy" can, if you're being charitable, get kind of a pass because we see Men and Hobbits growing Orcish under Sharkey's influence during the Scouring of the Shire, suggesting that Orcishness is as much a character flaw as a racial one. But the blatant Central Asian and African/Indian peoples we see are universally portrayed as easily-duped servants of Sauron. Some of the apocryphal stuff speculates that maybe there was a non-evil faction of Easterlings under the Blue Wizards that hampered the efforts of Sauron's minions, but that's both apocryphal and pretty weak tea.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:02 AM on September 4, 2016 [6 favorites]
Tolkien's dwarves seem to me to owe much more to Germanic mythology than to Jewish history
Well, obviously; that's true of the whole genre. Tolkien was just riding a wave of post-Wagnerian Nibelung revivalism. But it's not as if there's no crossover between that very revival at that very time, and Jewish history.
The dwarven language always seemed more Germanic to me than Semitic (harsh consonants and long words, written in "runes" for Illuvatar's sake!)
Germanic language written in an ancient script? So... kinda like Yiddish?
posted by Sys Rq at 11:21 AM on September 4, 2016 [3 favorites]
Well, obviously; that's true of the whole genre. Tolkien was just riding a wave of post-Wagnerian Nibelung revivalism. But it's not as if there's no crossover between that very revival at that very time, and Jewish history.
The dwarven language always seemed more Germanic to me than Semitic (harsh consonants and long words, written in "runes" for Illuvatar's sake!)
Germanic language written in an ancient script? So... kinda like Yiddish?
posted by Sys Rq at 11:21 AM on September 4, 2016 [3 favorites]
It's weird that Tolkien seems to get a pass from the same people who get annoyed by C.S. Lewis.
As a kid who read lots of Tolkien and C.S Lewis starting at age eight, I always thought Lewis' agenda was to shove a bunch of Christian nonsense down my throat, and he did it explicitly in books like The Screwtape Letters (my dad was an Anglican priest, so that was one of the books I got for Christmas) the Narnia books, and The Red Planet. I'm sure he was a fine writer, but I found his work fundamentally dishonest in that everything happens in the service of a Nineteenth Century Christian morality. It's like the painting of an English country church that hung on the wall when I was little; when I looked at it years later it's clearly got an eye embedded in the ivy, implying that "I'm watching you." I found Lewis to be that same bullying voice.
Tolkien, on the other hand, seemed content to situate his Christianity within a much larger set of mythologies and within a more respectful view of Nature, in which I still find food for thought. He showed me a larger world than Lewis ever imagined, and I'm very grateful for that.
posted by sneebler at 11:24 AM on September 4, 2016 [7 favorites]
As a kid who read lots of Tolkien and C.S Lewis starting at age eight, I always thought Lewis' agenda was to shove a bunch of Christian nonsense down my throat, and he did it explicitly in books like The Screwtape Letters (my dad was an Anglican priest, so that was one of the books I got for Christmas) the Narnia books, and The Red Planet. I'm sure he was a fine writer, but I found his work fundamentally dishonest in that everything happens in the service of a Nineteenth Century Christian morality. It's like the painting of an English country church that hung on the wall when I was little; when I looked at it years later it's clearly got an eye embedded in the ivy, implying that "I'm watching you." I found Lewis to be that same bullying voice.
Tolkien, on the other hand, seemed content to situate his Christianity within a much larger set of mythologies and within a more respectful view of Nature, in which I still find food for thought. He showed me a larger world than Lewis ever imagined, and I'm very grateful for that.
posted by sneebler at 11:24 AM on September 4, 2016 [7 favorites]
look i just want gloin getting all agitated because gimli wants to marry legolas the elven goy
posted by poffin boffin at 11:26 AM on September 4, 2016 [8 favorites]
posted by poffin boffin at 11:26 AM on September 4, 2016 [8 favorites]
You don't have to speculate, you can read Tolkien's own words about it in this article.
“I didn’t intend it, but when you’ve got these people on your hands, you’ve got to make them different, haven’t you?” said Tolkien during the 1971 interview. “The dwarves of course are quite obviously, wouldn’t you say that in many ways they remind you of the Jews? Their words are Semitic, obviously, constructed to be Semitic. The hobbits are just rustic English people,” he said.posted by Joakim Ziegler at 12:40 PM on September 4, 2016 [4 favorites]
According to Tolkien scholar John Rateliff, author of a two-volume “Hobbit” history published in 2007, Tolkien drew inspiration from Hebrew texts and Jewish history when developing the dwarves. As craftsmen exiled from a bountiful homeland, the dwarves spoke both the language of their adopted nations and – among themselves – a Hebrew-influenced tongue developed by Tolkien.
The really nasty racial thing in Tolkien is not the Dwarves (for all their flaws, they're the bloody heroes in both his completed books) but the Easterlings and Southrons.
I don't know...there are certainly problems with the portrayal of the Easterlings and Haradrim. But there's that scene in the Two Towers, right after Sam sees the oliphaunts, where a dead Haradrim collapses in front Sam, and Sam reflects that he's just a human like anyone else, and probably caught up in things beyond his understanding:
He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil at heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace.
As for the Orcs, it's clear that Tolkien struggled throughout his life to balance the narrative need for some kind of evil army with his Christian values that all creatures could be redeemed. A lot of it gets mentioned in the History of Middle-Earth books, but you can see even on this Wiki page how many different times Tolkien changed his mind on where they came from.
posted by kingoftonga86 at 12:58 PM on September 4, 2016 [4 favorites]
I don't know...there are certainly problems with the portrayal of the Easterlings and Haradrim. But there's that scene in the Two Towers, right after Sam sees the oliphaunts, where a dead Haradrim collapses in front Sam, and Sam reflects that he's just a human like anyone else, and probably caught up in things beyond his understanding:
He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil at heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace.
As for the Orcs, it's clear that Tolkien struggled throughout his life to balance the narrative need for some kind of evil army with his Christian values that all creatures could be redeemed. A lot of it gets mentioned in the History of Middle-Earth books, but you can see even on this Wiki page how many different times Tolkien changed his mind on where they came from.
posted by kingoftonga86 at 12:58 PM on September 4, 2016 [4 favorites]
One thing's for sure: Dwarves are round and elves are pointy.
posted by Soulfather at 3:15 PM on September 4, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by Soulfather at 3:15 PM on September 4, 2016 [6 favorites]
And dwarves have a guess culture while elves have a stare witheringly at you for thirty seconds before saying something condescending culture.
posted by No-sword at 3:41 PM on September 4, 2016 [11 favorites]
posted by No-sword at 3:41 PM on September 4, 2016 [11 favorites]
Isn't this just the way for Askenazi Jews. Too European to get credit for being Middle Easterners, too Middle Eastern to be European. Depending on the antisemite, we're either an invading horde of rootless Israelites or Khazars passing ourselves off as authentic Jews.
Weird that this dialectic shows up even when talking about Middle Earth's dwarves.
posted by maxsparber at 4:00 PM on September 4, 2016 [4 favorites]
Weird that this dialectic shows up even when talking about Middle Earth's dwarves.
posted by maxsparber at 4:00 PM on September 4, 2016 [4 favorites]
if we get to choose then i wanna be in the horde
posted by poffin boffin at 4:09 PM on September 4, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by poffin boffin at 4:09 PM on September 4, 2016 [2 favorites]
do we get to pillage samarkand
posted by poffin boffin at 4:12 PM on September 4, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by poffin boffin at 4:12 PM on September 4, 2016 [1 favorite]
The "dwarves were created first but elves were the real favorites of the gods" thing also uncomfortably echoes the whole "mud people" Preadamism insanity of the Christian Identity people, but that's surely just coincidence, or maybe William Potter Gale was a Tolkien fan (there's a fucking weird image if I ever thought of one).
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 9:53 AM on September 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 9:53 AM on September 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
I suppose this letter from Tolkien to his German publishers should be in the thread for posterity:
Dear Sirs,
Thank you for your letter. I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject — which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.
Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.
I trust you will find this reply satisfactory, and
remain yours faithfully,
J. R. R. Tolkien
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 9:11 PM on September 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
Dear Sirs,
Thank you for your letter. I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject — which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.
Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.
I trust you will find this reply satisfactory, and
remain yours faithfully,
J. R. R. Tolkien
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 9:11 PM on September 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
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posted by howfar at 5:22 PM on September 3, 2016