@i-gwarth Tumblr is not letting me reply to messages anymore????? (???)
But YEAH, Yes. Exactly. I cannot afford NOT to be wary of that sort of language. That kind of language is responsible for an immense amount of harm, to the world and to me personally.
AND INSULTINGLY, Tolkien frequently holds up wishy-washy, “Let’s-Hear-Both-Sides-And-See-What-Happens” councilors and propagandistic language as tools of the enemy– things to beware of. And I’d like to agree with him! Except that he clearly shows both sides using the same or similar tools to achieve their ends.
Tolkien’s protagonists rely on is this *sense* of evil; when Evil speaks it does so in fair words which cannot be trusted, while Good speaks the truth, whether or not it seems fair (which is why Gandalf gets shit everywhere he goes for being the Bearer of Bad News). In theory, right and wrong should therefore be easily parsed: Objective Reality ought to be the focal point of the text’s moral compass. Mordor is untrustworthy and bad because what Mordor DOES is bad; they tear up trees and torture people and Sauron has is historically and personally opposed the Edain in all they do. Meanwhile, what Gondor does is good because they have libraries and trees and value wisdom and peace and kittens, while valiant warmongering is listed as a trait gained in the decline of its wisdom.
But it just ain’t always so! The text frequently tells us one thing and shows us another, usually muddier, reality.
If you run down a side-by-side list of “Things Sauron Has Done” and “Things Numenor/Gondor/Gandalf Have Done”, they come out looking disturbingly similar, right down to bullet-points such as: Torture, Cursing People with Undeath (”I only made NINE! Isildur made a whole tribe into ghost zombies!”), violent total slaughter and disrespectful treatment of enemy dead, slavery (not depicted but frequently mentioned), destroying enemy cities, keeping vassal states and people, conquering territories both peaceful and belligerent–
And on the flip side, both sides can also claim: having the loyal and willing service of kingdoms generations after their initial rise to power, creating things of lasting functionality and worth, giving due notice to enemies before invasion and offering fairly reasonable terms of surrender and reparation, not discriminating on a basis of skin color, religion, species, or class– OH WAIT, THAT ONE WAS JUST MORDOR.
The actual reality of the situation is that neither side is wholly despicable or wholly trustworthy. They each have a particular aim– and that is keeping their respective dynasties in power. And we are told to believe that one side is better than the other mostly because it is being held up as a Symbol Of Good, and for me, that rings all kinds of alarm bells; especially when the text leaves so much obscured.
Yes, yes, one side loves books and singing and waterfalls, and the other side looks like Hell On Toast. But Mordor has been at war for literal Ages with the entirety of the West, forced back into itself, cut off from trade and probably forced to mine its own resources, to the point of making the already sparse volcanic environment unsalvageable. Last time it had occupancy, it was on the losing end of a protracted siege, after which, the forces of Gondor razed everything to the ground! And we never get to see Sauron’s empire in the East. We only know a couple of things about his rule there, and those are: A) he was worshiped, B) people followed him into battle generations after his previous rule, and C) the local populace really, really hated Numenorian/Gondorian rule but tolerated Sauron’s.
What was THAT kingdom like? How successful and prosperous was it in its heyday? Does the East also have citadels and libraries and music? They must! They’re humans! We only see how Sauron treats his enemies (specifically the Edain and Elves), and his troops. (His orc troops, who we’re told are slaves, seem like they’ve actually got a pretty standard deal as far as foot soldiers go, and from their dialogue we can presume they won’t be forced to serve after Sauron wins the war.) This is meant to provide us with all the evidence we need to reject him as an unlawful tyrant. (Also, he doesn’t have a shiny rock.)
Humanity in Real-Life Non-Fantasy Earth has done far worse things in the last century than Sauron ever did given thousands of years’ time to cause trouble. It’s not enough evidence for me to be comfortable with a Biblical condemnation of one side of what appears to be a fairly complex struggle– especially when it bears uncomfortable resemblance to historical and contemporary excuses made by western imperialists to justify the conquest of eastern territories, and the erasure of their “barbaric” cultures, due to the threat of their “spreading tyranny” and non-Christian religions.
And in fact, propagandistic language is used most excessively by the narration to justify the author’s choice of rightful authority. …And all I can say to that is, in the words of the wise mud-farmer: “I didn’t vote for you”.
Saying ‘the enemy will always reveal himself to be a fraudulent coward and a liar despite all appearances otherwise’ is every bit an untrustworthy statement, even if it’s coming from the mouth of Gandalf or the voice of the Narrator.
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