I was a bit harsh in my previous post. I’m rephrasing the thing in more appropriate form now
Me (or maybe even “we”?) and Mr. Brin seem to disagree in the core of things concerning Tolkien. I honestly hold an opinion we all live in Present, as well as believe Tolkien shared this opinion. As a back up of an argument:
"Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule"
quote by Gandalf in the Last Debate chapter. All [good] characters are conforming to this motto, performing their great and small duties
now,whatever consequences, whatever personal benefit/loss for themselves. The pinpoint is made on Frodo, who knows he will fail and die, but goes on
nevertheless. (The happy ending is quite another thing and can not be perceived form Frodo's viewpoint, even if the reader may guess that hobbits will be saved. The rescue is to represent the thing Tolkien called
"Eucatastrophe", and is humbly meant to parallel the real Eucatasrophe -Christ's birth into this World
The stress falls on a simple truth - time is not created by us, and can not belong to us. The only thing we have a faint claim of possesion on is a present moment, slipping through our fingers so we have no pportunity to grasp it. In this light that Golden Future of Mr. Brin's (no sarcasm intended,
English is not my mothertongue, so perhaps some of my expressions fall short of my intentions, alas) is as much a Romaticism and Escapism as Mr. Brin imposes on Tolkien. Or, to use C.S.Lewis' Screwtape's quote:
"We have trained them to think of the Future as a promised land which favoured heroes attain-not as something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is"
Another point:
Mr.Brin mentions equal rights for orks. But orks are soulless - automata, perverted beasts dominated and controlled by remnants of Morgoth's will in Middle Earth. Some may be/may be not tortured elves, and small numbers are cross-breedings with men. The majority however is of beast origin. Killing of a beast-ork (technical term) is not a crime. Killing of human/elf-ork (another technical term) may be considered as a release of its
fea (soul) of bonds imposed by tortured and perverted
hroa(body). So there by definition may not be coalition goverments with ork participants (in case Mr. Brin is interested, he can check out my research on orks (not yet finished, I hope to post it in here as well once it is completed) following
the link:
All about Orks
Sauron can not be shown as an active hero/villain since Tolkien is a Christian. Official Christianity holds as proved truth that evil is not a self consisted entity, but merely lack, absence of Good, i.e. God (Boethius for the Western, Pseudo Dionisis Areopagitus for the Eastern Churches).
Though supernatural being, Sauron is
less of a person than any even of his servants, since he went the longer way down form the light. Though his Ring is in some aspect just asking to be seen as a symbol of technology, it is not quite so - it represents also another (though unofficial, but very firm as a tradition) Christian pensee - that however technically impersonal, evil sometimes has it's own face, is an active force and should be fought (for there were some followers of the former who preached some "neutral position"
for Christians, since "it all will settle by itself" The truth is somewhere in between (I believe) - Evil is nothing, but not to withstand it is a deriliction of one's duty.
Though in any case Mr. Brin is free to stick to his opinions (those being respected) I nevertheless believe Mr. Brin’s perception of Tolkien's world is erroneous. He sees a mere allegory in LoTR, but there is much more to Tolkien than allegories of Nazis, Nuclear Weapons, WWII, whatever...
[ December 19, 2002: Message edited by: HerenIstarion ]