Quote:
Originally Posted by Morsul the Dark
I was wondering if anyone had an opinion on the following,
Mordor as we all know translates to "Dark Land" but I was thinking at work as often happens when bored of various things not work related, Mordor sounds like Mortar like the weapon that fires grenades. Does anyone think Tolkien would make the connection of evil lands with evil weapons?
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That's actually two different questions, I think.
1. If you're inquiring whether Tolkien consciously thought of mortars (or murder, for that matter) when he invented the name
Mordor, he explicitly denied (somewhere in the Letters, in answer to somebody who had noticed that
Sauron was similar to Greek
saura 'lizard', as in dinosaur) that this sort of pun* had anything to do with the way his imagination worked.
2. In general - considering that evil in Tolkien's works seems to be intimately linked with 'The Machine', I think yes, of course he would make that connection. We don't see Sauron's forces using cannons or bombs in the battles of the Pelennor and the Morannon, but Saruman's army used something similar to dynamite at Helm's Deep, and in
The Hobbit the orcs/goblins are credited with inventing mass destruction devices. Not to forget the winged Nazgûl, whose attacks from above may reflect something of the horror Britain experienced during the air raids of WWII (something Peter Jackson brought out quite well in the films).
*(speaking of puns, next time we play WW together and I'm a wolf, I hope you'll make a tasty Morsel!
)