Absolute Good in Lord of the Rings

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Well, really, I am a bit limited in my ability to watch/read your media. I mean, I do get the BBC World News and Doctor Who but that's about the limit of my exposure to your media. And the only time I read your tabloids online is when they have a juicy scandal about the Royals beating animals or wishing they were some form of sanitary device. I often think of the English as a bit Elvish, if you know what I mean. It must come from reading the likes of Nadeem Aslam's Maps for Lost Lovers or Monica Ali's Brick Lane. I think we could probably have a good discussion about the elves in terms of the mid-twentieth century English thoughts on the loss of the Empire. Still Tolkienish but I suppose not really about absolute good.

I think you should start this thread!

I myself often wished that the Levitical injunction against the wearing of mixed fabrics had been more often observed. It would have saved us from the indignity of the polyester leisure suit.

Would that be what's known on our shores as a Shellsuit?

Though they do serve a purpose because if you see someone wearing one you know to cross the road well in advance so as to avoid them

I'm not so sure they did know right from wrong--or rather, I wonder what Tolkien was doing in assigning them those two very intriguing attributes. All faiths--all cultures--have ways of enforcing normative behaviours but not all of them practice that form of extreme control, with its (unintended) damaging, detrimental effects. I've often pondered Tolkien's depiction of Smeagol's clan and what might be called the psychological consequences of Smeagol's shunning.

I don't think most people would ever think of shunning as a bad thing - I think it's one of those things (like childbirth or depression) that until it happens to you or someone you know, you can never really comprehend. On the surface it just sounds as though someone has been sent away but in reality it means the loss of your identity, friends, loved ones, and maybe even worse. It happened to my grandmother when she married outside her faith and her own mother died.

So if Tolkien included it as something which happened to one of his characters I wouldn't necessarily say that he was equating the shunners with wrong doing. Plus there's the fact that he himself was threatened with punishment if he carried on seeing Edith before he was 21 and he went along with that.