Fantasy

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

My take on Tolkien is that he viewed war like millions of other WWI or WWII vets, it had to be done. I say WWI and WWII because those were perhaps the last two 'righteous' wars that had to be fought to rid the world of an ultimate grasping evil (any beyond those, wars get so muddied one isn't quite sure who is exactly right or wrong and which party is evil). The wars in both the Hobbit and LotR are of a defensive nature, and beyond that Tolkien is quick to point out that war of an aggressive nature is an evil, as when the Numenoreans went from benevolent teachers to cruel tyrants of Middle-earth.

Yet I always see that the War of the Ring is a 'righteous' war and one carried out to rid the world of evil, and whereas WWII is usually seen in that way too, WWI isn't, it's more often seen as a pointless war in which whole brigades were slaughtered just to advance a trench by a few yards in the mud.