Quote:
Originally Posted by Lalwendė
All the evidence points towards him not being an atheist at any rate. But the fact remains, all these dictators did not commit their atrocities in the name of Atheism so it's not really a fair counter argument to the one that various modern day atrocities are committed in the name of Faith.
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Whether someone commits atrocities in the name of their religion, to me, is less of a question than whether their actions obey or disobey the tenets of their faith (or absence thereof.) For a Christian to commit atrocities is fundamentally disobedient to their moral and religious duty, and for a Christian that does so this is the proper criticism: not that your moral and religious code is invalidated by your actions; but that you have been shown to be disobedient to that code. If Hitler claimed to be a Christian, then he showed himself disobedient (to put it mildly.) If someone is striving to love his neighbor and defend the innocent, and fails, then he failed. That doesn't invalidate the directive to love the neighbor and defend the innocent. Meanwhile, if someone else's code is to jail those he does not enjoy, and he consistently does so, we may feel that his customs are better honored in the breach, but we cannot criticize him for being inconsistent with his belief system.
Boromir88 brings up the idea of intent, and I do think that is important. I think it is valuable to take intent into account, and I think Tolkien would have also done so.
To judge a code by its followers is a risky thing (although I understand the tendency to do so.) Saruman had, as the White Council supposed, a code of virtue. Do his actions invalidate that code of virtue? Or do his actions reveal that he was disobedient to that code? Tolkien held, in Middle-earth and presumably in England as well, that Virtue was better than Evil. THe actions of those who profess to be good, but do evil, do not prove that evil is better than good. Their actions simply prove that they are not following the path of virtue.
Stalin, Lenin, and Pol Pot showed themselves obedient to their own code and value system. They acted in a manner consistent to their dogma. In a similar manner, Sauron (once he established himself firmly as a Black sort of fellow) proved obedient to his new code (disobedeint to the old, to be sure.) But that is no suprise. Shelob acted in a manner consistent to her own dogma. So did Gollum (in the end.) Some folk hold that consistency is a good thing, but I would ask "consistency regarding what?" That Sauron and Gollum were consistently evil, does not make them nicer to be around than those who strove to be good and occasionally failed. I would rather live in a society that strove for virtue and failed occasionally, than one that was consistent at being nasty and mean because it was in their belief system. Consistency notwithstanding, Orc-run Moria would not be my choice for a vacation spot.
In the books, Aragorn, Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel, Faramir, Legolas, Gimli, Sam, and even Merry and Pippin adhered pretty well (consistently!) to their own codes of virtue. Because of this, our modern society at times does not understand them. (I have long complained that PJ was far, far better at painting evil than he was at painting virtue.) Because PJ guessed that a purely noble Aragorn would not sell many tickets, we instead got a confused, hesitant, reluctant, I'm-only-in-this-because-I-have-to kind of Aragorn. I always thought that was too bad. Faramir also, was initially less good in the movie than in the book. But I digress.
Gimli isn't much of an archetype, in my mind; neither are Merry, Pippin, or Sam (some may argue.) But Legolas is. Perhaps that's an odd way of looking at the pair of them. BUt they did not start out as a pair.
The main characters who wanted to be good but strayed from their own code of virtue were, I think, Saruman, Boromir, Denethor, and Frodo himself. This to me is the heartbreak of Frodo's time at Sammath Naur; after struggling so long to adhere to his code of virtue, he fails at the last moment. THis removes him, in his own mind, from the code of virtue, and makes him a has-been. You were virtuous, Frodo, until that last moment. Too bad.
What a heartbreak for him.
IN contrast, Gandalf (wisely) refuses to take the ring knowing it would cause him to violate the code of virtue. Aragorn likewise, Faramir likewise.
Boromir, as we well know, succumbs to the temptation, but redeems himself in the end. Denethor would have snatched it given the chance, with no desire for redeemption.
While Galadriel strayed once, long ago, and has had her own independant streak, still, for the past thousand years she has steadfastly guarded the borders of Lorien against evil: first against Dol Guldor, then against Mordor. I find it difficult to lay much blame at her feet during the timeframe of LOTR. She has earned the title of virtuous, I think, by the time Frodo meets her.
Saruman is the blatantly disobedient one. He is the one who consistently behaved drastically differently from the code of virtue he proclaimed and professed; spoke sweetly while working treachery; consistently decieved many while being supposed to be faithful; butchered the Westfold. So going back to Lalwende's point above: In whose name did he do all this? His own (The White Hand)? Did Saruman commit his atrocities in the name of the White Council? If he had, would that have diminished the rest of the council? WOuld that have made his actions worse, better, or the same? Or do we care in what name he acted? If he had acted in the name of Mordor, would that have made his atrocities less? Only that it would have removed the "treachery" aspect of it; but the Westfold victims would be dead nonetheless. The atrocities Saruman committed proved that he was not, in fact, obeying his code of virtue.
He was, eventually, removed from the White Council and his staff was broken. Amazing that in the midst of it all, after the burning of the Westfol and the assault on Helm's Deep, even Gandalf hoped for his redeemption-- hoped that Saruman would return to real virtue.
Maybe Saruman is an archetypal traitor. I'm not familiar enough with all that to say. But to me, within LOTR, Gandalf is clearly an archetypal good, as are Aragorn, Faramir, Galadriel, Elrond, etc.
(Very interesting question regarding absolute evil,
Boromir88; but my reply is already over-long...)