[lbo-talk] USA 2003

[Brad DeLong]

>On Mon, 15 Sep 2003 16:25:25 -0700 (PDT), Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
>
>>On Mon, 15 Sep 2003, Brad DeLong wrote:
>>
>>>  >one thing not mentioned in this discussion of THE LORD OF THE RINGS
>>>>is that the bad guys in Tolkein all seem to be dark or "swarthy,"
>>>>while the good guys are light or "fair."
>>>
>>>Dwarves are good guys. So are the hairy men of the
>>>woods--Ghan-Buri-Ghan and campany. And the ents... the ents are
>>>definitely non-Aryan mongrels...
>>>
>>>But in broad sweep you are right: it's somewhat creepy...
>>>
>>Even more telling are the regions the evil enemies reside in:
>>The East and the South.  Our heroes the Hobbits, in contrast,
>>live in the innocent, bucolic North of Middle Earth.
>
>One could reply that Tolkein's novel is "simply a story," and that 
>one needn't try to find analogies to current events. Of course, it's 
>_fun_ to do this, to read Sauron as Hitler and the Ring as some 
>weapon, and one might even work up some interesting insight out of 
>the process.

In one of his prefaces Tolkein talks about what the plot of the novel 
would have been if it had been allegory. The ring would have been 
used against Sauron. He would have been smashed and Mordor occupied. 
The West and Saruman would have entered into an uneasy alliance to 
smash Mordor, and in the ruins of Mordor Saruman would have learned 
how to make his own ring. In tha tworld hobbits would not have 
survived long, even as slaves.

Sounds like old Tolkein was a believer in "moral equivalence" between 
teh U.S. and the U.S.S.R.: both nasty industrial nuclear-armed...

Brad DeLong