Hobbit2 - Chapter 06 - Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

However, it makes me ponder something about the mythology. If the elves are praised for their love of creating beauty (ignoring the tra-la-la-lally ones for now), why are the goblins also being shown as creating something that has aesthetic merit or beauty? Or does the subject matter absolve that issue, so it is merely "a horrible song" as the narrator claims?

"Thus even as Eru spoke to us shall beauty not before conceived be brought into Ea, and evil yet be good to have been."
"And yet remain evil."

There's no contradiction, as far as I can see. Tolkien never takes the approach that "bad guys" are 100% evil (which might make some sense, once you think about it). Tolkien doesn't write in a black and white world, not even in The Hobbit, where everything seems as basic/simple as it can get.

Directly or indirectly, Tolkien gives evil characters their due. He doesn't dismiss them as completely evil and therefore not worth appreciating. Instead, throughout his books he aknowledges the strength/strengths of the enemy, even lets us sometimes admire their evilness/cunning/whatever - but never forgetting, as Mandos said, that all those things remain evil. Not because someone said that (for example) Sauron is evil and therefore whatever he does is also, but because he chooses to direct his deeds to it.

It's like there's beauty in a fire whenever it is there, but you would prefer that beauty to be staying nicely under control than having it consume your house - in a very beautiful and majestic way.

So Elves are being shown as creating beauty to praise it, to make more of it, to do good. Goblins create beauty to demolish other beauty, but what they don't realise is that they do so in a beautiful way...but still an evil one.

To sum everything up, there's beauty in an orc sword just as much aas an Elf sword; the difference lies in how this beauty is used.


So in their attempt to destroy some good(=Thorin & co) the goblins do so by subconsciously making a different kind of beauty, something they cannot avoid. Yet this new beauty doesn't make their deed less evil.


My, this is one long and convoluted answer for something that could have been said in a paragraph!