Posted on 01/07/2005 12:20:53 PM PST by Caleb1411
Saruman did create some sort of bomb (the book is not as clear as the movie is), and used it to breach the walls of Helms Deep. He also started clear-cutting the forest around Isengard, and had actually started earlier in the book than he did in the movie. In the book, the Ents were already aware of Saruman's cuttings before the arrival of Pippin and Merry, though in the book many of the clearcuts were simple maliciousness on the part of orcs.
It was not allegory. Tolkien said so.
It was JUST a good story. Jeez...
Also, Orthanc was a dark tower, made of black stone, and Saruman originally was a good guy with the same charge to combat Sauron, but was turned to evil by the lure of the One Ring.
When Saruman realized that Sauron would probably acquire the ring first, then he allied himself with Sauron.
Eisenhower?
Tolkien was not writing "allegory", that is, he was not writing a fake "history" that paralleled what was going on in 1944 (he started writing it in 1938, and in 1944 was writing the Two Towers section of the novel).
However, he was writing imagined "history"...and did note that historical stories had APPLICABILITY to the present day world.
So anytime we confront evil, we see similarities. Islamofascism is no different from the evils of Naziism or communism: They seek to take over the world with power to remake simple human beings, and to replace God (Eru in the books) with themselves...there is no place in these utopias for simple hobbits who seek merely a normal family life and simple pleasures like beer and parties...
Ironically, Tolkien compared Saruman with the materialistic West, including the USA, which gloried in mechanics and industry but ignored nature and having fun (hobbits). That is why the "greens" love him...
Very well put!
I really think you have that backwards. No doubt their was some "political" allusion, but IMHO, it is a timeless Biblical good vs evil epic and very much in the the Catholic tradition --- evil is 100% evil yet seductive and powerful far beyond the ability of flawed humanity to resist. Only the most innocent, pure and humble spirit could possibly defeat the evil.
Although not written as an allegory, there are times in history when the themes of The Lord of the Rings leap out at us from history books or front pages. Today is one of those times.
I think it is appropriate to ask ourselves "How is the war on terror like the war against Mordor? If we were casting the roles from current public figures, who would most fit in what role?"
Tolkien had no way to know that we would be in a struggle with Islamic terrorists. However, evil often has the same face, and his novels are eerily prescient in their themes.
Ike it was.
Brilliantly put.
You know, now that you mention it Michael Moor does remind me of Griga Wormtongue.
But I wouldn't call Ike a "liberal." He was correct on his warnings about the "military industrial complex" that tended to spend for the sake of spending as opposed to spending to meet realistic threats. Ike understood the military better than an president and he understood the Congress and their penchant to pork.
Although Ike's warning was picked up and distorted by the left to oppose any spending, his point was valid. Kennedy (of the "Missile Gap" election) ignored Ike's warning and opened the spigots, Johnson was overwhelmed by providing guns and butter, (sweet & sour pork) and in the 70's "butter" (social pork) won. By the 80s, we needed radical spending to catch up from the 70s maladministrations and come the 90s, we over reacted in the opposite direction with the so-called "peace dividend" diverting military spending to feed the powerful and ever hungry "bureaucratic-institutional complex."
Now, Rummy is taking heat from both the left and right for attempting to rationalize threats and spending. Maybe 50 years after Ike asked for some rationality on the most deadly serious portion of the budget, we will take his words seriously and we will quit making the DoD budget a political yo yo.
You make fun of this, and then comment in another post about the implications of the relationship between Sam and Frodo? Just what is it that YOU are reading into that relationship? I read about two characters who were a team in bringing about the destruction of the Dark Lord, but reading your statement makes me think you read something a bit more salacious! Vapid indeed!
AMEN! I agree!
I always thought of Moore more as the Uruk Hai type...
The Islamakazis are obviously the orc hordes and IMO the author is correct in analogizing the left as Saruman, I'd like to add Denethor to that analogy, because so many people have run around for so many years, thinking only THEY understood the threat of terrorism. Then when it happened in the US, those same people insisted that we all might just as well give up now and do whatever the terrorists want because everything was all over.
He was writing a myth, in which certain truths about human nature and human interaction are captured in a fictional setting which has no direct correspondence to any actual events.
Eisenhower, right?
Exactly how the Urak-hai are made is not described, but GE is as good a guess as anything else.
I don't see much "reading into" of Tolkien here, jmho.
No way. Moore is too fat, lazy, and (my impression) and chicken to be an Uruk-hai. Maybe he could be a rabble-rouser amongst the Easterlings or Wild people.
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