Posted on 12/22/2002 2:53:12 PM PST by HighRoadToChina
December 18, 2002 9:00 a.m.
Tolkien’s Clash of Civilizations
Two Towers’s eerie relevance.
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f you think about it, making the connection between the obliterated Twin Towers and The Two Towers is a dime-store synchronicity. The World Trade Center was a morally neutral symbol of commercial dynamism (though Tolkien himself would have taken a darker view of those towers). In contrast, the towers of the film's title are twin projections of unambiguous evil. Still, the comparison is irresistible — even director Peter Jackson says he gets an "eerie" feeling thinking about it — because audiences see Jackson's first-rate film versions of the Tolkien books, and immediately grasp the relevance the stories have for our convulsive times.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy explores the nature of individual heroism in the midst of an epic clash of civilizations, one that pits freedom-loving peoples of the West against merciless totalitarians from the East. As the hobbits Frodo and Sam make their way through the bleak and hostile land of Mordor to destroy the Ring of Power, which would bring about the enslavement of the world if it fell into the hands of the Dark Lord Sauron, their companions in the West rally a coalition of tribes to wage war against Sauron's minions living among them.
Some Western peoples of Middle Earth, for reasons of bourgeois comfort, selfishness, or cynical despair, want no part of the coming war, and think mistakenly that they can avoid trouble if they simply lay low. It falls to the good wizard Gandalf, the ascendant king Aragorn, and their followers to convince the West to stand fast and fight for its freedom and way of life. As many of us do when we read stories of the hideous weapons that could be in the hands of terrorists, we know how Frodo feels when he tells Gandalf that he wishes he had not been born into such a time as this.
The old prophet-wizard counsels Frodo to turn away from such futile and self-defeating conjecture, because no man can choose the times in which he lives. Says Gandalf, "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
The Lord of the Rings is about how men, including the humblest of men, choose to act in the face of moral urgency and engulfing peril. It is about the power of humility, the wisdom of mercy, the glory of self-sacrificial valor, the false glamour of evil, the workings of grace, and above all, the necessity of faith. Put more plainly, LOTR screenwriter Phillippa Boyans tells NRO, it's about goodness — an idea that leaves many moderns skeptical and confused.
"We come from a generation that has never had that question put to us," she said in an interview. "It was put to the generation of World War I. It was put to the generation of World War II. 'What are you prepared to do?' 'Are you going to hold on?' 'Are you going to keep going?' 'Do you have to live?' 'Is this a world worth fighting for?' All of this is in there."
In The Two Towers, when a weary Frodo begins to lose faith in his ability to succeed on his mission, and in the prospects for the West's survival, we hear an echo of our own sophisticated cynics and cultural pessimists, who despair of defending our civilization from its enemies because they do not believe we have anything worth defending.
"There are things that people hold onto to keep them going," says his faithful servant Sam Gamgee.
"What are we holding onto?" Frodo asks.
"That there is some good in this world, and that's worth fighting for," Sam replies.
That looks banal on the printed page, but the line has great force in the film. Sam is a simple man, but he knows a few things well, and his chief virtue is loyalty. He doesn't trouble himself with the big picture; all he knows is that his homeland and its people are worth defending against those who would destroy them. That is enough; indeed, it is more than many more intelligent men and women of our day know. It is the wisdom of the common man, the kind of English infantrymen Tolkien knew in the trenches of the Great War. The Hun is still at our borders, which still must be defended.
When Saruman masses his troops in The Two Towers, before the Battle of Helm's Deep, it is tempting to look upon the battalions of Orc-slaves ready to slaughter the men of the West at the command of the Sauron's wizard servant Saruman, and think of the fanatical slaves of Islamism, under the command of mad mullahs. And there would be some truth to that. But as Russell Kirk observed, you cannot pin Tolkien down to any specific historical allegory. "His three volumes are a picture of the perpetual struggle between good and evil; his concern is the corrupting intoxication of power." Tolkien believed in good and evil, but also held with Solzhenitsyn, and traditional Christianity, that "the line between good and evil runs straight through every human heart."
This is why it is a mistake to view The Lord of the Rings films as merely inspirational movies into which we can neatly read self-congratulatory, pro-Western messages in a time of war. Bradley J. Birzer, author of the recently published J. R. R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth, asserts that Tolkien's message included "a call to defend all that was best in the long history of Western civilization." But Birzer reminds us that for Tolkien, "Evil does not always come in the form of war or totalitarian terror. Tolkien saw in the impersonal, machine-driven capitalism of the twentieth century, and especially its handmaiden, the democratic bureaucracies of the Western world, a form of soft tyranny almost as oppressive as fascism or communism."
The orthodox Catholic Tolkien saw pride, and the all-consuming craving for power it fosters when unchecked, as the root of human evil. In LOTR, Sauron and his servant Saruman desire to gather all power unto themselves so they can subjugate the natural world and every living creature within it, rather than seek to find their rightful place as reverent stewards of an ordered creation. They were slaves of their desire for raw power, which was symbolized by the Ring. With perfect power comes total enslavement, Tolkien teaches; this is why not even those who think they would use the Ring to do good are lying to themselves.
I want to be careful when I say this, but it seems clear to me that Tolkien would have looked upon the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center as symbols of a form of tyranny to which prosperous and free Western man is susceptible. Of course, there can be no doubt that he would have seen the attack upon them as monstrous, and would have backed some kind of military response to combat the Islamic barbarians. Whatever the contemporary West's sins, there is plenty of good in this world we have made for ourselves, and there is no question that it's worth fighting for.
That said, Tolkien does not let us off the hook easy. We will be judged by how we use the power we accumulated, by what we have done with the time that was given us. Are we an arrogant and materialistic people? Do we restrain ourselves in accordance with principles of justice, mercy, decency, and reverence for life, or do we seek knowledge and riches for the sake of imposing our will on things that ought to be left undefiled? Will we tolerate the intolerable rather than limit our freedom of choice? Is our seemingly unstoppable march to globalization unwisely concentrating power in the hands of the few? Do we see the natural world as merely ours for the taking and selling?
These are the kinds of questions Tolkien's great narrative puts to both the serious reader, and despite the surfeit of action, to the viewer of the films. Both the author and his cinematic interpreter inspire the LOTR audiences to stand firm in defense of our civilization, despite its flaws, without rewarding them with a sense of unearned triumphalism. There is far too much at stake for that: only the souls of individuals, and the soul of Western civilization. Prof. Birzer quotes Tolkien writing that Gandalf was wholly dedicated to "the defence of the West against the Shadow," and the same is true for Tolkien. We are fortunate to have these books, and now these films, in the present moment, to give us hope and a reason to dig in for the long fight ahead.
And yet, even as the shadow cast by Islamofascist minarets is the most immediate source of this present darkness across our civilization, it is by no means the only one.
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Tolkien himself was never really clear on this either. In one of his letters to the publisher, he states:
The Two Towers ... can be left ambiguous - it might refer to Isengard and Barad-dur, or to Minas Tirith and Barad-dur, or Isengard and Cirith UngolAnd in another:
I am not at all happy about the title 'the Two Towers'. It must if there is any real reference in it to Vol II refer to Orthanc and the Tower of Cirith Ungol. But since there is so much made of the basic opposition of the Dark Tower and Minas Tirith, that seems very misleadingIn the end, it is open to interpretation.
Actually you are right that the movie is wrong, but you are wrong too! ;~D... The Two Towers title actually refers to Orthanc (Isenguard), which dominates the first half of the story, and Cirith Ungol, the watchtower of Mordor where Frodo and Sam end up at the end of Book 4. You are right, however, that the title was not Tolkien's, and he knew it would be confusing. He was opposed to packaging the story in three books.
The movie presents Sauruman as a minion of Sauron, carrying out the will of his master. My interpretation of their relationship is that while Sauruman has clearly been corrupted by Sauron, especially after using the palantír, he is not completely under his control and is actually trying to acquire the Ring for himself, thus creating a third power opposed both to Sauron and the forces of the Wise.
In the book and in the film, Saruman begins as a minion of Sauron with delusions of grandeur. It is subtle in both the book and the film, that he slowly drops the facade of working for Sauron. We know he does it in the book, but in the film, we haven't gotten that far yet. Even so, in FoTR, Saruman is ordered to build an army for Mordor, but when Saruman is sending Lutz out, he asks, "Whom do you serve?" and the answer of course, is "Saruman". PJ is playing it subtle, but is on about the same timetable that the change became apparent in the book. Remember, Sauron did not know that Saruman had captured hobbits in the hope of getting the ring for himself until Pippin sneaks a look into the pilantir later on in the story. Saruman plays his cards close.
Although generally I'm inclined to agree with you, despite recalling the hoopla when they were built, I will observe that the symbolism needn't be in the mind of the creator in order for it to be valid to others.
That the Islamists perceived the buildings as a symbol of something evil and tried to destroy them on that basis, in '93? and '01, is at least evidence of that
Nope.
Maybe before they got knocked down, with people jumping out of the top floors you could make such a statement. But, now, such seems a little...cranky(?)
I was going to say the same thing in my message to you above. I haven't seen it yet, but hope to do so soon. I'm just fascinated with the production and the people who are involved in it. They are a different crowd from the Hollywood gang, and I'm very happy that it is such a commercial success. MAYBE, some could learn a lesson from it!
When you build the tallest building on the NY skyline, and build 2 of them side by side, then you are making a statement by that simple fact alone, regardless of design and appearance. Your statement is "I want this to be the most important building complex in this city." Those buildings, dominating the skyline, then become a visual image, or symbol for some, of the city itself.
The reason that the terrorists attacked the WTC is because it symbolizes NY, not because of what was going on inside. If they hated stockbrokers, they could target the NYSE. If they hated insurance, they could bring down a building that housed a big insurance company. If they didn't like usurers, they could bring down a bank building. But the WTC had firms in all those industries and more. It wasn't an attack on any specific business, it was an attack on New York. They couldn't blow the whole damn city up, so they went for the biggest thing in New York they could destroy, that's all.
What the buildings symbolize must depend on what their purpose is. Is it a jail? A seat of government? A library? A university? An apartment building? What the building qua building symbolizes depends on what goes on inside. How could Tolkien be so stupid as to consider a tall collection of offices as symbolic of Tyranny, unless he hated commerce in general?
I have never read these books, and never studied Tolkien, but from what I have learned about Tolkien's background, it appears that he was principled in his defense of core western values. Dreher's assumption that Tolkien would have considered the WTC a symbol of tyranny offends me, because I think it shows a great writer in a bad light without factual basis.
You are confusing the WTC as a symbol of NYC because of its place on the skyline, with its symbolism based upon on its function as an office building. Dreher seemed to be implying that because it is a place where trade was conducted, it is a symbol of tyranny. That is crap, IMO, and if Tolkien would have thought such, he would have been full of crap. I think Dreher is the one full of crap, though, not Tolkien.
As I said, otherwise an excellent article. I don't know why he felt the need to put in this attack on Tolkien's logic.
Dreher says that they Tolkien would have thought they were symbols of Tyranny. He says this after 9/11. I'm the cranky one? Explain to me how this peripheral statement in his otherwise good article needed to be made? It's not true that they are symbols of tyranny, and I doubt it's true that Tolkien would have thought them so. The Shah's prison, or the Kremlin under the Soviets, or the Tower of London, or even the Confederate Flag could all be said to be symbols of tyranny. But an office building? Only to someone who reads way too much into height.
Then why are you posting to a thread like this?
Back away from the keys for a while and read the books.
From what I have read about Tolkien, I think Dreher wrongly portrayed his views. That's all I'm saying. If someone comes on here and says they are a Tolkien Ph.D, and they believe that Tolkien would have thought the WTC was a Symbol of Tyranny, then I will have to revise my view of Tolkien downward.
For more insight into Tolkien, read The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.
"Of course my story is not an allegory of Atomic power, but of Power (exerted for domination)"
--J.R.R. Tolkien
_The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien_ p. 246 (1995)
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