Quote:
Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar
I've found another online article comparing B5 and LotR here. It goes into the general themes more than into specific details, which makes it very interesting to read. Here's a central passage: |
I don't quite agree with the author of the link when he says:
...Babylon 5 might justly be called "an atheist's answer to Tolkien".
It seems to me that the chief difference between the universes of
B5 and
Middle Earth is not that of theism and atheism, but of optimism and pessimism. As Terry Pratchett says:
“I'd rather be a rising ape than a falling angel.”
Where JRR's tales are full of the decline from higher to lower, the future of mankind and other races in B5 is to achieve a Vorlon/Valar like state.
Yes, the two stories are written by people who consider themselves theists and atheists, but I do not regard these labels as necessarily poles apart since there are optimists and pessimists in both camps. The Eden parable contains this symbolised in the two trees. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil leads to the 'fall', the state in which "thorns and thistles" grow if we do not keep our garden/soul tended, but the other tree is still there if we are willing to pass through the fire of the Cherubim/Four Living Creatures/Valar who guard it. There is, ultimately, a sense optimism in Tolkien's work as in B5, because in both cases the heroes pass though the fire to the realm of light, beyond the West, beyond the Rim...
"Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed."
G.K.Chesterton -The Defendant (1901)