December 24, 2001

 

WORSE THAN THE LORD OF THE RINGS (NOT A FILM REVIEW)

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It took John Ronald Reuel Tolkien 14 years to write his tremendously popular Lord Of The Rings trilogy. A prodigious technical achievement, this 500,000 word tome takes place in fictional Middle-earth, mentioning hundreds of place names, and features multiple types of human, human-like, and supernatural creatures, speaking a variety of languages. Tolkien's hyper-scholarly desire to establish authentic detail in his fantasy world will overwhelm the reader at times, and, in my mind, robs the work of emotional level.

That said, the trilogy became a huge hit in the 1960's, still fondly remembered by virtually all aging baby boomers, who will no doubt help assure the success of the newly released movie version.

Tolkien always insisted that Lord Of The Rings was not an allegory, but it is hard to avoid characterizing the plot as a gigantic struggle between good and evil. Indeed, there are few soft edges in this work. Even though certain characters are tempted, and even fall, there is absolutely no doubt as to who is good and who is evil. Tolkien, a devout Catholic, had little room for shades of gray in his fantasy. Yet, it somehow appealed to the founders of situational morality and non-judgmentalism at the most impressionable time in their lives.

Years later, many of these same boomers, and many of their children, 9/11 in their faces, would still question the very existence of evil. But Tolkien made no bones about it, naming the entire work after its most evil character, Sauron, the Lord Of The Rings.

This was a purposeful and unprecedented move. There are almost no novels named after the antagonist, especially if he doesn't have too many lines--and Sauron has precious few lines. Instead, his is an overarching presence, hanging like a dark cloud over each and every page.

One wonders how Tolkien, who died in 1973, would react to this world of 2001. The hard edges of right, wrong, and good and evil, so obvious in his Middle-earth in the Fourth Age, have long disappeared from polite society. Tolerance has given way to an intolerance of any sentiment beyond pure pablum.

An illegal alien is still an illegal alien even if we now call him "undocumented." God forbid that we give offense, although a criminal is now an "offender." A "hearing-impaired" individual is still deaf, and a "disabled" person is crippled, nonetheless. As the language is bled dry of expression, and as too many men are made fearful of appearing insensitive, the great holy day of Christmas becomes merely a holiday, and Merry Christmas morphs into "Happy Holidays."

It matters not that only a minuscule number of people would actually take offense at any of these harder-edged terms of discourse. It matters only that a brood of vipers, lurking mostly in the shadows, is able to control and pervert the popular culture.

While Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, Aragorn, Gandalf, Gimli, Legolas, and Boromir--the Fellowship of the Ring--were wary of the shadows, their opponents were usually clearly identified, and they knew very well whom they were fighting, and what they were fighting for.

As some of us attempt to put our society back on track, aided, it is true, by the 9/11 wake-up call, we face an opponent far worse than the Lord of the Rings.


 

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