Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Raynor
I never argued they were thick enough to be intolerant about people. Only that they were thick enough not to recognise drugs as sentient beings.
|
It's the same thing.
I think Tolkien has firmly grasped hold of the concept of the 'Noble Savage' with the Drugs. This is not so fashionable today, as it is a view seen as slightly patronising towards native and tribal peoples, but it had been around for a long time. This is the view that native people live a simple life in harmony with the earth and that their very simplicity can teach us a thing or two. Which they do with the Rohirrim. In so many ways they prove themselves to be better than them and they teach them a valuable lesson.
Maybe after the war they return and give lands back to the Dunlendings and after Eomer learns his lessons from Gamling he learns to treat his near neighbours as human as much as himself. They are a culture on the cusp of becoming literate, and at the verge of becoming fully civilised.
The interesting thing is the resemblance they do bear here to the real Anglo-Saxons who arrived here and immediately fell to practices such as apartheid in an attempt to drive/wipe/breed the Britons out. And its also interesting how much Tolkien loved Welsh, the modern descendant of the old languages of the Britons (including Cymric), languages which to the Anglo-Saxons, Normans and all further invaders were to be driven underground or wiped out. Tolkien would have personally found an attitude like the one expressed by Eomer unforgivable.