Beside the courage of ordinary men, the carnage of war seems also to have opened Tolkien’s eyes to a primal fact about the human condition: the will to power. This is the force animating Sauron, the sorcerer-warlord and great enemy of Middle-earth. “But the only measure that he knows is desire,” explains the wizard Gandalf, “desire for power.”
The elements of lust for power that Tolkien recognized then are even more prominent today-witness just about any leftist politician. Tolkien also captured the deceptive language that the power-hungry use to mask their true motivations. For example, the language that Sauron's lieutenant used when parlaying with the representatives of Gondor. It was full of self-serving dissembling: how Sauron is merely minding his own business, and all the people of Middle Earth are unfairly arraying themselves against him, yada yada yada.
I started reading The Hobbit in 6th grade, but it wasn't until high school that I really was able to read it with comprehension. I was fifteen the first time I read The Hobbit and LOTR all the way through--my, what an exciting adventure! And I read it again every few years. Each time, I pick up on a new nuance that I've never seen before. Those books are truly classics.
“The elements of lust for power that Tolkien recognized then are even more prominent today-witness just about any leftist politician.”
With all due respect. I think that lust for power is a nearly absolute universal and is not significantly different anywhere along the political scale or at any point in human history. The very few who WEREN’T consumed by it are so extraordinary as to be of note thousands of years later. I think it’s implied at many points in the Old Testament. It’s more a force like hunger, thirst or sex drive - part of the basic human condition and one of the very things that civilization exists to deal with. Not that *currently* leftist political beliefs are more accommodating to those with a lust for power...