The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the new Tolkien-inspired TV series on Amazon Prime is already the most expensive television series in history.
Amazon paid $250 million up-front for the rights, and has reportedly committed a billion dollars to future production. The fact a business as canny as Amazon would commit that much money to develop the appendices of a novel — which is what The Rings is based on — shows just how much cultural heft Tolkien’s works continue to have. The wild success of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film trilogies is matched by the popularity of the books behind them.
Tolkien’s books and their adaptations have never attracted the scale of controversy that became attached to the Harry Potter saga, ever since J.K.Rowling broke with progressive orthodoxy on trans rights, or Game of Thrones, due to the sheer level of violence and misogyny portrayed. But this being the 2020s, the recent series has at least managed to raise a few complaints. Some fans are concerned that modern ‘woke’ themes are being crowbarred into Tolkien’s thoughtfully crafted world. Elon Musk suggested Tolkien would be turning in his grave.
On the other end of the ideological spectrum, Tolkien’s world has for years received criticism from progressives who fear its popularity represents a victory for reactionary propaganda. Particularly, accusations of racism have been periodically raised against Tolkien and his works, a charge angrily denied by fans.
The anger behind these denials is understandable. Tolkien and his Middle-Earth are revered by many, not just as entertainment, but as a source of moral inspiration.
In an era when some progressives have even suggested it is impossible to be a conservative and a true artist, Tolkien is one of the most prominent conservative, Christian writers, academics and creative figures of the 20th Century. Accusations of racism are not meant as a mere acknowledgement of common human fallibility. They are an attempt to strip Tolkien, his work, and his ideas, of the prestige they enjoy, both as entertainment and as moral inspirations.
The accusation has been made often enough that serious Tolkien fans can reel off the facts to refute it almost by rote. Tolkien explicitly rejected racism both in his personal life and his work, in a period when it was not mere conventional piety to do so. He responded angrily to requests for confirmation of Aryan descent from a German publisher in the 1930s, referring to ‘the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine’. He suggested that he send a response expressing his regret at a lack of Jewish ancestry. He spoke warmly of serving alongside Jewish colleagues as an Air Warden in WW2, comparing one incident, when a Jewish friend woke him to attend mass, to a glimpse of the Garden of Eden. He condemned Apartheid in South Africa in the retirement address from his Oxford Chair in 1959, long before it was a popular issue.
Both Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are centred around groups of heroes that deliberately span the different peoples of Middle Earth. Within his work, obsession with blood purity, or contempt for other races is always, at best, a character flaw, and at worse, the sign of an outright villain. Sometimes the accusation of racism is made more specific, such as suggestions of a ‘moral geography’ in Middle-Earth, where evil covers the south and east, while heroes come from the north and west. This accusation is presumably based on Lord of the Rings, since it makes no sense applied to Tolkien’s other works. In The Silmarillion, his legends of the earlier ages of Middle Earth: The Devil Incarnate makes his great base in the North and is fought from South of there; and in his story of Numenor, a great Atlantean island in the far-west falls into evil and is eventually destroyed.
Most bizarre, is the suggestion Tolkien’s dwarves are an antisemitic caricature. Particularly bizarre, because they are clearly heroes in both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. They might be a philosemitic caricature, except they’re actually based on the dwarves of Germanic & Scandinavian mythology. He admitted to basing the Dwarvish language on Hebrew, just as he based forms of Elvish on Welsh and Finnish; but that was certainly a compliment, if anything.
The silliness of these attempts to smear Tolkien as a racist obscures a much more interesting question: what moral framework is Tolkien’s Middle Earth built around? What does define virtue, talent and nobility in Tolkien’s world and, and what do his different ‘races’ of free peoples actually mean? Critics correctly sense that Tolkien’s world operates on a very different moral framework to the mix of individualism and identity politics that defines modern progressivism. Reducing this to race is nonsense.
In Tolkien’s world there are a multitude of races and nations, and there are good and bad people of every race. In the situation of Lord of the Rings, the armies of men from the far South and East are seen are servants of Sauron, but that is a matter of politics and ideology, their cultures have become dominated by a powerful evil force, not a failing of genetics or racial inferiority. In one famous passage from Return of the King, Sam reflects on one of Sauron’s dead soldiers:
‘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.’
Words, no doubt, from Tolkien’s own heart, perhaps a thought that came to him while serving in the trenches of France, or watching the bombers fly overhead in the same weeks he wrote those lines. One might also say that is a generous thought about an enemy coming to kill you, especially compared to today, when the merest disagreement in politics or religion can result in accusations of fascism, racism, or Nazism.
The strongest potential grounds for criticism of Tolkien comes in the differences between the non-human races of Middle Earth, such as the Elves and Orcs. The Elves are described as gifted with powers of skill, magic, and sheer beauty beyond any man; while the Orcs are uniquely aggressive, violent, animalistic, and hostile. But it is a misunderstanding to see these as reflections of different races of mankind.
Tolkien’s Middle Earth represents an aestheticized view of creation and purpose that reflects Tolkien’s own creativity and love of art and beauty. Tolkien’s elves and orcs (and his other ‘races’) are abstractions of the best and worst of human qualities.
Tolkien’s orcs, like his elves and dwarves, originally derive from Germanic mythology, but they represent mankind twisted into embracing brutality, selfishness, hostility and other evils.
Elves, on the other hand, are blessed with gifts of craft, beauty and art, but this does not mean they are individually morally superior to mankind.
In Tolkien’s world, the primary difference between the Elves and Mankind is that the Elves are effectively immortal, whereas men die; but even death, in the theology of Tolkien’s own imagined world is seen as a gift from God to mankind.
This idea, though without doubt a statement of faith for Tolkien, did not come easy, and towards the end of his life his reflections on the inevitability and cost of death produced some of his most profound reflections, in the form of a dialogue between an elf prince and a wise-woman of mankind.
The elf-prince, Finrod explains the view he was taught, but which, as an immortal elf, he cannot possibly fully appreciate that death is an intended gift to Mankind, turned into a thing of fear by evil.
Whereas the wise-woman, Andreth, struggles to see this as anything more than bitter condescension from a race who do not have to experience it; and expresses the hope of her people, that they were intended to be immortal in their beginning, and that God may yet reach down into the world and repair their fallen state.
When he wrote this, Tolkien himself was feeling old-age and awareness of the end of his own life creeping closer, and it feels like in this moment his Elves represented the naïve hope we might all have, of a life of creativity, beauty and skill that goes on, almost forever, and just deepens with the ages. While in the dialogue, he struggles to reconcile this with the deep and profound Christian faith, with its trust in God’s ultimate providence. That faith had carried him through the darkness of the First and Second World Wars, the other troubles of life, and eventually the loss of his beloved wife.
As could be expected from someone who lived through both World Wars, Tolkien’s understanding of war and suffering is not simple at all. All Tolkien’s main works are about war, wars portrayed as justified, because they are necessary wars of defence against aggressive and destructive evil.
Suffering in Tolkien’s world can ennoble, and offers chance for heroism, but his view of this is not trite or empty. War hurts, the innocent suffer, fear robs people of dignity and hope, works of beauty are lost forever, and even those who survive bear the bitter scars. Tolkien’s portrayal of the continuing toll the Ring takes on Frodo after its destruction, a pain only relieved by departure into the Undying Lands of the Far West, movingly depicts the ongoing cost of war even on its victorious heroes. It is reflection of Tolkien’s own experience of the First World War, and the impact it continued to have on the generation who came home.
Complexity exists at every level of Tolkien’s world. His vision was patriotic and local, not monolithic or simplistic. His beloved Hobbits are bucolic, mono-ethnic, simple and suspicious of strangers. Tolkien is immensely fond of them, but also criticises their parochial stupidity and makes clear their simple life can only exist because it is protected by others.
Tolkien’s world differs from our own moral assumptions not just in the differences between the various peoples of Middle Earth, but also that within each people, certain individuals and families do have greater gifts of wisdom and beauty — a glamour that is not just subjective, but objective and intrinsic. These are features that can be genuinely read in the face and appearance of characters such as Gandalf, Aragorn, Elrond and Galadriel. That is to say, Tolkien’s world is what you would have if medieval ideas about the superiority of the nobility or aristocracy – Greek for ‘Rule of the Best’ – were objectively true in reality, rather than merely a matter of superior wealth and power.
Importantly, this is not a matter of innate biological superiority, but rather a blessing that in the long-term it is dependent on experience and action. Tolkien makes clear that these gifts do not make one person morally better than another, but rather they place a burden of responsibility, or self-sacrifice and leadership. And a risk of falling into arrogance, self-regard and selfishness that is both eventually fatal, and can lead to those gifts being withdrawn entirely.
Aragorn’s people, the Numenoreans, were blessed with long life and great skill, not because they’re racially superior in some Darwinian sense, but because their ancestors made incredible sacrifices in the wars against evil in the distant past, and so as a people they were rewarded.
But the Numenoreans’ gifts are dependent on retaining a humble awareness of the reason for those gifts, and the courage, loyalty and generosity that led to them. When later generations became proud, violent imperialists rather than ‘friends and teachers’, those gifts are gradually withdrawn. When they turn to worshipping evil, embracing human sacrifice, enslaving men, and violently persecuting the minority who remained loyal to God, they are eventually destroyed for their crimes. But that minority who remain true to the ways, the culture, that made them heroic in the first place retain those gifts for many generations.
This model draws on the Bible, particularly the Old Testament designation of the Jews as God’s Chosen People. Far from this being a declaration of their inherent superiority, it is a burden they are required to bear, a higher standard to live up to, with the expectation they will be judged all the more harshly should they fail to act worthily.
The important thing about good literature is that it can describe the human condition with a detail and nuance that political slogans and ideological doctrines rarely achieve.
So, what lessons from Tolkien’s moral vision are relevant to us now?
Firstly, the importance of culture, which can be genuinely good or bad, can promote decency, heroism, compassion and self-sacrifice; or else can turn a whole society towards evil in its many forms. But culture does not dictate individual worth or responsibilities, in every culture people can choose good or evil.
Personal courage, integrity, humility and a willingness to make sacrifices do make a difference, whether individuals are deemed great or small by society’s standards. With privilege comes the responsibility to use those gifts in the service of others, but also an awareness that just as individuals of every kind may choose good or evil, so do individuals carry different burdens and griefs regardless of how privileged or not their position appears.
Then there’s that appreciation of wisdom and beauty. Tolkien was both a conservationist and an artist. Indeed, he saw both nature, art and craft as forms of creation, either the original creation of God, or the sub-creation of mankind, in which we mostly closely fulfil our creator’s image. And finally, an awareness that beauty, safety and security can only endure as long as people are prepared to fight for them spiritually and physically.
This is the Ethos of Middle-Earth and, for all the criticism of Amazon, these themes have been somewhat evident in the The Rings of Power so far. Without them, the series cannot faithfully represent Tolkien.
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