"Tolkien's Modern Middle Ages"

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by denethorthefirst

Im just playing devils advocate here (i don't believe this) but you could argue that it didn't really matter for the average peasant in Rhun or Far-Harad if his local Ruler pledged allegiance to Sauron or some distant King in Minas Tirith ...

I think you've struck something very interesting here, because it evokes the situation of the proles in Nineteen Eighty-Four who are not actually as oppressed as the more affluent and educated Party members because it is not necessary for the Party to oppress them to the same extent.

This might be compared to the fact that the reserves Gothmog of Morgul sent into the fray at the Pelennor were "mustered for the sack of the City and the rape of Gondor"; seemingly many had been promised booty and plunder; not all were acting out of particular devotion to Sauron.

This needn't lessen Sauron's threat (even though we know he desired "divine honour from all rational creatures and absolute temporal power over the whole world" [Letter 183]) because it is not inconsistent with the idea that Sauron denied the Easterlings, Haradrim and so on the spiritual/intellectual/cultural resources they needed and were perhaps their right in order to discover the Truth. This denial of cultural resources is something Hannah Arendt discusses in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951).