[Imladris]

I just read the entire two pages of this post (!) and my head is swimming. However, I don’t believe it is as off-topic as you all seem to think it is. These are the premises to answer the original question: what were Tolkien’s views on killing. All you have to do is come to a conclusion. Now, as far as I can tell this is a brief summary of the thread: to decide whether this or that is “good” or “right” you must have a standard of codes, either written by a divine being or your own personnel beliefs or convictions. To fully answer the question we need to argue from Tolkien’s viewpoint. We know that Tolkien was a Catholic so of course he believed the first (that the “code” is set by a divine being: God). In ME it was Illuvitar. God/Illuvitar is the king of this world/ME, therefore the people who honor Him as king owe Him full allegiance. Thus when Satan/Morgoth use human means to corrupt this world, we must fight against them as well. When I mean fight, I do not mean war. I mean trying to live by God’s/Illuvitar’s Law and resisting temptation. But when that evil (Satan/Morgoth) starts to physically (war) force you to obey him, then we also need to fight back physically, because if we don’t then we would be submitting to Satan/Morgoth and in essence denying God/Illuvitar as your Lord and King. From what I know of Tolkien, he would have abhorred that. So, in his mind, I think, the war against Sauron was good. As for the Frodo and Gollum (and other such examples) that is more difficult. It is right to kill somebody when that person is trying to kill you: that is self defense. Same thing when someone is trying to kill someone else. When Frodo did not want to kill Saruman, I think it was because Frodo knew that he had no right to say whether Saruman lived or died…that was either for the justice system or for Illuvitar to decide. Yes, Saruman deserved to die: he was a traitor, a murderer and in liege with Sauron. But it was not Frodo’s place. (FYI, when I mention God, I mean the God of the Bible.)

We cannot honestly argue this topic unless we look at it from Tolkien’s point of view. Of course, people will always have questions about his viewpoint and people answer those questions and then there is another argument maybe, but on the whole I think it is safe to say he believed that there was a wrong and right. If you read the books, you can clearly see what he thought about right and wrong, truth and lies, good and bad. We cannot inculcate our beliefs into this argument. If we do we will be arguing based on emotion instead of logic and in the end we’ll run in circles.

So in the end, then, the answer isn’t nearly as complicated as we make it out to be.