A few words about J.R.R. Tolkien

I was walking down the beach the other day and I thought, this place could use some more sand. So, here I am with a short article about a certain writer of the rather crowded British Literary Pantheon, who, perhaps more than any other, inspires constant debates over his work. Not only because of its undisputed artistic quality, but also because that despite being a century old now, it continues to make a lot of money. I am of course talking about JRR Tolkien.

There was a time in my life when I admired Tolkien’s books so much that I considered them a glittering symbol of perfection. Now, being a bit older, I came to assume a less uncritical position. Now I am of the opinion that the stories have some interesting flaws, one of them being certain… inconsistency. It seems to me that when Tolkien began writing The Lord of the Rings he wanted to create an altogether different story but, as time went by, his imagination went out of control and instead of writing a light, playful children tale he found himself telling a heroic saga of epic proportions. That’s how I explain to myself the transformation of the Elves, who started up as cheerful, fun-loving playful spirits of the forest and ended up as serious angelic beings, mythical warriors of the Light and ancient guardians of high wisdom.

Speaking of The Hobbit, another great story of Tolkien’s, here we have a different problem. The story begins with a kind but somewhat lazy and home-loving chap being visited not by one or two but twelve dwarves who soon turn his life upside down and inside out. What a great joke.

Knock-knock, hello, what? Another dwarf? Come in, have a seat, there are some biscuits, help yourself, excuse me, someone’s knocking, I wonder who it could be this time.

I believe the good professor was laughing out loud when he was writing it. However, when he wiped the tears of laughter from his smart, sparkling eyes, he had twelve pretty much identical characters on his hands and he had a hard time giving them something to do and carry them through the story. Finally, he got tired of them and killed some of them in a bloody battle, totally forgetting who his readership was.

Despite what I have just written, I hold J.R.R. Tolkien in great esteem and for every ounce of criticism, there are tons and tons of marvellous things I might say about his work. There are, however, people who criticize Tolkien so harshly that it makes me wonder whether they do so because they wish to add something new to the pool of current understanding of his literary work or whether they might have different motivation.

There is one such guy in particular, Andy Duncan. I have a reason to suspect he might be the kind of a person who kicks the giants in the shin in order to promote their own endeavours. Duncan has apparently written a book of his own and hopes to sell more of it by making it “controversial.” To cut a long story short, Andy accused Tolkien of one of the biggest crimes of today, the racism.

And seemingly, Andy has a bit of a point. All the Orcs in Tolkien’s books are evil, ugly, smelly, and their only ambition is to wreak as much havoc as possible. They seem kind of obsessed on this issue. And on the top of that, they do tend to be somewhat dark-skinned. The Elves, on the other hand, are good, beautiful, noble, and they dedicate themselves to art, learning and singing in the woods. No wonder they don’t see eye to eye with the Orcs. No need to mention that as far as the Elves are concerned, the whiter, the better.

So, was Tolkien indeed a racist? To answer that question, let’s not forget that the MiddleEarth does not contain only Orcs and Elves. There are also Men, Dwarves and Hobbits, not to mention Ents and many other creatures. They all differ one from another as much as Elves and Orcs. No wonder that racism is an issue, especially the Elves and Dwarves have rich history of occasional conflicts, however, in the face of mortal danger they put aside all their differences and ancient feuds and form an alliance against the Orcs. Does it make all of them racist? Strangely enough, they are not racist in relation to each other, only in relation to the Orcs. Maybe it has little to do with their race as such but rather with the fact that the Orcs are EVIL. Yes, it might be a bit unfair that it was the Orcs who got to play the role of personified Evil, but frankly, someone had to. Good vs. Evil is at the core of all fairy tales, myths, legends and pretty much all stories in general.

Maybe it is time to ask ourselves the question: “Don’t we all discriminate against Evil? Aren’twe all good-and-evil-istic? There has never even been such a word in the dictionary, maybe it is time for it to enter into existence. It is not fair to accuse Evil of all the bad things happening in the world. (Or is it??) Who says that only Good has the right to be? Have any of you ever asked yourselves how the poor Evil feels when it keeps getting its ugly ass kicked in all the great stories since times unmemorable?

But let’s get serious again. Of course, Tolkien generalizes and oversimplifies things. The real world does not contain only black and white, or even only various shades of grey, but pretty much all the colours of the rainbow. However, this does not make Evil any better, even though it is seldom encountered in its pure form.

What is more, Tolkien, like all great storytellers, uses metaphors. There is no such thing as Orcs. Tolkien just used them and other characters of his books to paint a picture of the contemporary world as he saw it and as he understood it. And it is a disturbing and strikingly modern-looking picture. There is a whole bunch of real people who seem to have escaped from Tolkien’s books and assume active roles in the real world.

Namely the characters of Grima Wormtongue, whose words are so poisonous that he might work as a presidential spokesperson. Then there is Saruman, who pretends to play for the White team but in fact does the bidding of Barad Dur, just like a certain witty statesman. And of course, there is Sauron himself, who attempts to resurrect a supposedly dead evil empire of the East.

The point is that all the great works of literature can be interpreted in many ways and it depends pretty much exclusively on the reader’s education, imagination and political affiliation what he chooses to find. When The Hobbit was going to be published in Nazi Germany, Tolkien was asked to provide evidence of his Aryan origin. In response, the writer pretty much called the Nazi a bunch of imbeciles who have no idea what they were talking about. It’s no wonder that The Hobbit was published in Germany only in 1953.

In conclusion, whatever flaws The Lord of the Rings or other books by Tolkien may have, they are metaphorical, not racist. And it might just be that our interpretation of such work of literature says more about us than the actual book or its writer.

Comprehension questions: Check here

1. The author believes that Tolkien’s work should be studied more.
2. The author considers The Lord of the Rings a children story.
3. All the races of The Middle Earth lived in harmony, except for the Orcs.
4. The author claims that the concept of Good and Evil is flawed.
5. The Lord of The Rings can still serve as a metaphor for the modern world.
6. The Hobbit was never published in Nazi Germany.

For more exercises like this and for further improvement of your English/Spanish, feel free to contact me and arrange some online lessons.