It's 1984 in the Third Age

[Formendacil]

A side note regarding the "capture and release" of broken prisoners.

Tolkien touches on this several times in the Silmarillion, particularly in the older versions, where the Elves fear and shun the broken thralls who have been released from Angband. This isn't quite so evident in the later versions, although we see a touch of it in Gwindor.

It also comes through in Maeglin and his betrayal of Gondolin. Maeglin's worst deed isn't in his breaking, in his betrayal to Morgoth, but in his return to Gondolin-- brainwashed. He not only keeps secret his betrayal, he does more to further Morgoth's work.

We see a failed attempt in the release of Húrin from Angband, Húrin not being quite brainwashed yet. But even so, Morgoth's cloud on his mind wreaks terrible havoc in Brethil and Doriath.

[alatar]

Thanks for pointing out that Frodo was threatened to be a 'broken and released' prisoner. One difference is that Winston Smith, after he was broken, remade and released, was no harm to anyone in any real way (he could not harm others, as they were guilty of thoughtcrime regardless of whether he indicted them or not). He wasn't permitted to leave the Ministry of Love until he was perfect, in the Party sense. He could have (and did, briefly) met with Julia and they could have done whatever they'd liked, for the Party knew that for these two, life was over and their souls were burned out. Not even a little mischief was possible, as no teeth remained in either of these two's heads.

Not so with the prisoners that Morgoth and Sauron release. Each was sent out with some intent, whether to do a specific deed or just to foment discord. Many still had the ability to resist, to still hate their captors, and to rejoin the fight against the evil. If Frodo would have been caught, tortured and released (assuming that the Ring still wasn't found, as after that, what's the point in playing with the mouse?), it would be to cause pain to those who'd sent him. It would be like a specific arrow fired to damage Gandalf and the other hobbits; maybe Aragorn as well.

Another point: In 1984, the heretic is essential to the Party. Without someone onto which to stomp, there was no need for the power which the Party acquired. Even after turning everyone into mindless duckspeaking robots, still there would be those wouldn't be able to use crimestop thinking all of the time (inevitably, by design) and so the Ministry of Love would always have persons on which to work.

In Middle Earth, resistance/freedom were to be wiped out entirely.

Note that if Sauron had regained his Ring, he would have been able to see the thoughts of the bearers of the Three, very much like having telescreens in Galadriel's, Elrond's and Gandalf's/Cirdan's heads. I assume that, using the palantir in his possession, along with his innate powers, Sauron already had an idea as to what everyone else was doing.

[Lalwendë]

It is only by revolution that the native genius of the English people can be set free. Revolution does not mean red flags and street fighting, it means a fundamental shift of power.

This is Orwell, in The Lion and the Unicorn (an oft-misquoted and mis-used essay by such as John Major). He highlights how it's not in the struggles of Tolkien's 'be-whiskered men' that the hidden side of the English can be set free, but in changes in society, changes such as those which happened post WWI and WWII, and which also happened after the Battle of Bywater. That quote rings a bell thinking about The Hobbits. They were stirred, they took it upon themselves to fight back, and The Shire was remade with both the Elvish beauty of Sam's gift and in the practical way of rebuilding Hobbit holes, and lining them with brick to make them more comfortable (echoes of 'Homes For Heroes' and the important welfare reforms of the Labour government post-1945). And probably most importantly, Aragorn takes the step of protecting The Shire by not allowing Men to enter it (me wonders what happened when they had to build a lengthy by-pass for the road to the Grey Havens ).

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by alatar

Not even a little mischief was possible, as no teeth remained in either of these two's heads. .... Not so with the prisoners that Morgoth and Sauron release. Each was sent out with some intent, whether to do a specific deed or just to foment discord.

This is an interesting contrast between Orwell and Tolkien. Orwell's State was seen as so overwhelmingly powerful, and the Winstons so powerless, that there was no hope that the "good" could win out. By contrast, Morgoth's strategy of sending out "broken" ex-prisoners to cause doubt an despair amongst his enemies, is evidence that Morgoth was quite in doubt about his own chances of victory. This bespeaks a fundamental difference in the ways Orwell and Tolkien viewed the world: Orwell gave his readers a glimpse powerlessness and despair whereas Tolkien gave his readers a glimpse of profound triumph at a profound cost, but not without recourse nor hope.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

I just today read a fascinating reference to '1984' in John Garth's Tolkien and the Great War. In the chapter "Castles in the Air" he discusses the development of Tolkien's early version of the Legendarium in connection with his WWI experiences. Melko (sic) 's influence over his captive-set-free Meglin (sic) is similar to that of Big Brother, though the writing style is different.

In its capacity to warn about such extremes, fantastic fiction has the edge over what is called realism. 'Realism' has a knee-jerk tendency to avoid extremes as implausible, but 'fantasy' actively embraces them. It magnifies and clarifies the human condition. It can even keep pace with the calamitous imaginings of would-be dictators. Doubtless Tolkien had no intention of making political predictions, but his work nevertheless foreshadowed things to come. A spiritual kinship exists between the unhappy Meglin and Winston Smith, downing his Victory gin under the eyes of Big Brother.

[Elmo]

Its my opinion that 'The Scouring of the Shire' is similar to the end of 'Coming Up For Air' when the main character comes back to his home town and finds its all industrialised and almost every thing which he had grown up with had been destroyed. I suppose Orwell and Tolkien who were alive in the same era mourned the destruction of rural England in the name of modernisation.

[alatar]

Having recently visited the UK on business, as we rode the train to London I noticed that many houses were very similar, small, connected and not having much surrounding green space. I was reminded somehow of the houses depicted in 1984 and in Lotho's/Sharkey's Shire. Are these places on the way from Gatwick airport to Victoria Station old enough to be what Orwell and Tolkien were seeing?

Note that I mean not to disparage anyone or their country, and note that there are places very close to where I live that look like Mordor after the orcs celebrated Sauron's birthday, and no 'facilities' were available.

[Elmo]

Don't you mind about disparaging England its Scotland's national sport I don't know about the houses in particular you're talking about but a lot of terrible houses were built in England (and Scotland) in that era and they destroyed a lot of the beauty of the countryside. As they cause of this destruction was modern 'progress' and it is no suprise that both writers developed an aversion to this and harked back to a supposedly better time.

P.S. Have you read Coming Up for Air? If not I really recommend it. It is a classic and relatively unknown though I probably spoiled the ending of it in my last post...

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by alatar

Having recently visited the UK on business, as we rode the train to London I noticed that many houses were very similar, small, connected and not having much surrounding green space. I was reminded somehow of the houses depicted in 1984 and in Lotho's/Sharkey's Shire. Are these places on the way from Gatwick airport to Victoria Station old enough to be what Orwell and Tolkien were seeing?

Note that I mean not to disparage anyone or their country, and note that there are places very close to where I live that look like Mordor after the orcs celebrated Sauron's birthday, and no 'facilities' were available.

I'm just wondering if you mean the modern houses or the older terraced houses (built of brick and stone, usually late Victorian)? The latter were very much around in Tolkien's day and were not necessarily very 'orcish' as many tend to have high ceilings and large windows and are pretty comfortable (which is why I live in one and not a modern house ). However, I also live in Europe's greenest city (the suburbs look like a forest with the odd building peeking out in high summer) and our terraces are surrounded by trees and all of them have back gardens, whereas in Birmingham the streets aren't quite so 'greened up'.

Now I personally knew well some of the streets Orwell wrote extensively about in The Road To Wigan Pier, all of which were beginning to be demolished when I was a youngster. My father worked in Wigan on the fringe of the district and we'd go and buy meat pies in a shop down one of the streets (cracking pies too - goes without saying in Wigan...). These were the unpleasant kinds of terraced houses - low roofed, quite shabbily built, fronting directly onto the street (no patch of garden), and none even then with inside toilets as there simply was no room to put them in, the houses were so poky (our house got a bathroom by the back bedroom being split in two and the outside thunderbox was long gone before I bought it). I don't doubt these houses were the ones that Orwell had in mind. And they would be nowhere near as nice as a spacious Hobbit hole with a green garden - only backyards in these houses, and sometime not even that if they were true back-to-backs (you only have windows on one elevation as the others have other houses attached to them!). There are still thousands of these in Leeds, all around the University, in the very area next to where Tolkien himself lived; Hyde Park, nothing like the London version, it's Britain's very own Beirut these days.

The one major factor that was lost, however, with the loss of these houses in Wigan, was community. People knew each other and helped each other, and living so close fostered community spirit, looking out for everyone else's kids and so on. The shiny new tower blocks broke up communities and only fostered alienation and then, crime and vandalism. So even the 'Orcish' little terraces of Wigan that Orwell hated had their bucolic side, and the really Orcish thing was to simply demolish them rather than improve them. Ironic and sad.