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Old 02-22-2008, 09:24 PM   #9
littlemanpoet
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: The Edge of Faerie
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littlemanpoet is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.littlemanpoet is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
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Originally Posted by skip spence View Post
I'm not convinced Tolkien had these two concepts in mind and tried to balance them. In Tolkien's Eä Eru is allmighty and created everything in it, good or bad, as Raynor pointed out.
As Tolkien points out through the words of Elrond, nothing was evil in the beginning.

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I guess what we were debating was the orgin of evil. Did Eru create Melkor with knowledge that he would rebel and torment the earth, to test the children and give them the choice to freely choose their path in life? Or did evil arise independently in the mind of Melkor to the dismay of Eru?
These questions are unanswerable from the texts. Tolkien's own beliefs no doubt informed his writing, however, and from these one may discern that nothing came into being as a "surprise" to Eru. Foreknowledge is not, however, the same thing as predetermination. Be that as it may, I still think you're wasting your time.

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And as for the ringwraiths, I don't believe these concepts are applicable on them. Tolkien separates between the spirit world (or a similar term), which concerns the 'fea' (cf. soul) and the physical world which concerns the 'hroa' or the body. The wraiths operate mainly in the spirit world and that's where their powers are greatest. The fear they can put into the mind of others is therefore a more important weapon for them than for example swords. When Frodo puts on the One ring he also enters the spirit world and that's why he can see them clearly.
Of course they're applicable. There are only so many modes that Evil can take:
  • evil is the negative of good
  • good is the negative of evil (perhaps impossible)
  • evil & good co-exist from the beginning
One or more of these modes necessarily inform any story ever written about good and evil; it simply cannot be otherwise. Therefore, every event in a story that involves evil is necessarily going to describe the evil in these terms, perhaps with great nuance such as is found in LotR: the word wraith is related to writhe, wreath, wrath, even write; these words all are derived from an ancient Germanic proto-word meaning "bent-ness". Evil as "bent" fits the description of "evil as the negative of good" while simultaneously keeping the idea of evil squarely in the real world. Anything bent must necessarily have a material form. Thus the very word Tolkien uses to describe the Ringwraiths combines both views of evil at once. It forms what I call a mythic unity.

Yet the Lord of the Nazgul is also described, at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, thusly. He throws back his hood: 'he had a kingly crown; and yet upon no head visible was it set'. Merry's blade cleaves "undead flesh". So there is flesh, but in the negative realm that Frodo discovers on Weathertop. This shows the negative, but very corporal, both functioning at the same time, in the Ringwraiths. The Nazgul Lord's blade bites deep into Frodo's shoulder. His mace wrecks Eowyn's shield and breaks her arm. That's not mere fear. So there's physical presence as well as negative.

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The Valar (with the exeption of Morgoth) exists wholly in the spirit world and their physical bodies are more like clothes to them than an actual part of their being.
Gobtwiddle! The way Tolkien describes Valinor, it seems like a very physical place, and upon entering Arda the Valar take on physical forms after their nature. Nothing immaterial here!

Last edited by littlemanpoet; 02-22-2008 at 09:28 PM.
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