Tolkien and race

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J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy writings have often been accused of embodying outmoded attitudes to race.[1][2][3] However, scholars have noted that he was influenced by Victorian attitudes to race and to a literary tradition of monsters, and that he was anti-racist both in peacetime and during the two World Wars.[4]

With the late 19th century background of

moral geography, with good in the West, evil in the East.[9]

Against this, Tolkien strongly opposed

Second World War he vigorously opposed anti-German propaganda.[10] His Middle-earth has been described as definitely polycultural and polylingual,[3] while scholars have noted that attacks on Tolkien based on The Lord of the Rings often omit relevant evidence from the text.[11][12][13]

Whether Tolkien can be charged with racism

Imagery and attitudes

Some critics have found what they consider to be outmoded views on race in Tolkien's Middle-earth stories, generally based on their views of how his imagery depicts the relationship between

Man, and Orc).[1][2][14] Robert Stuart begins his analysis by stating that Tolkien was a "racialist" since he writes of races with different attributes, before asking "Was Tolkien racist?" and analysing in turn Tolkien's use of black and white (including his antipathy to racism and apartheid from his mother's experience in South Africa[15]), the nature of Orcs, the racial connections in his language, antisemitism, and the apparent hierarchy of races and lords within them.[16] Stuart concludes that "Tolkien's legendarium is suffused with racialist imagery and, at times, imbued with racist values."[17]

Problematic to apply a modern framework

The folklorist and Tolkien scholar Dimitra Fimi examines Tolkien's use of and attitudes to race in her 2009 book Tolkien, Race and Cultural History. She notes that scholars including Anderson Rearick, David Perry, and Patrick Curry have criticised or defended Tolkien on "racial charges". She states however that he wrote mostly "when race was still a valid scientific term", while scholars still held "ideas of the nature of Man and his place in the world". In her view, it is therefore "very problematic to pursue such questions [of racism] in Tolkien's work, since they could only be treated within the framework of modern perspectives on racism and racial discrimination."[18]

Discussions of racism in Middle-earth

Fear of moral decline through racial mixing

Further information: Eugenics

The scholars of English literature William N. Rogers II and Michael R. Underwood, note that a widespread element of late 19th century Western culture was fear of moral decline and degeneration; this led to eugenics.[5] In The Two Towers, the Ent Treebeard says:[T 2]

It is a mark of evil things that came in the Great Darkness that they cannot abide the Sun; but

Men? That would be a black evil![T 2]

white supremacism and medievalism, describes Tolkien as a bridge between the scientific racism of the 19th century and racism in modern fantasy.[7]

Polycultural Middle-earth

Further information: Middle-earth peoples

The Germanic studies scholar Sandra Ballif Straubhaar states that "a polycultured, polylingual world is absolutely central" to Middle-earth and that readers and filmgoers will quickly see that.[3]

The historian and Tolkien scholar Jared Lobdell likewise disagreed with any notions of the racism inherent or latent in Tolkien's works and wondered "if there were a way of writing epic fantasy about a battle against an evil spirit and his monstrous servants without its being subject to speculation of racist intent".[19]

Straubhaar calls the "recurring accusations in the popular media" of racism in Tolkien's construction of Middle-earth "interesting". Straubhaar quotes the Swedish cultural studies scholar David Tjeder who described Gollum's account of the men of

Sam Gamgee's more humane response to the sight of a dead Harad warrior, which she finds "harder to find fault with":[3]

He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home.[T 4]

Fimi observes in the same scene that Tolkien is here "far from demonising the enemy or dehumanising the 'other'."[4]

Straubhaar quotes the English scholar Stephen Shapiro, who wrote in The Scotsman that[3]

Put simply, Tolkien's good guys are white and the bad guys are black, slant-eyed, unattractive, inarticulate, and a psychologically undeveloped horde.[20]

Straubhaar concedes that Shapiro may have had a point with "slant-eyed" but comments that this was milder than that of many of his contemporary novelists such as John Buchan, and notes that Tolkien had made "appalled objection" when people had misapplied his story to current events. She similarly observes that Tjeder had failed to notice Tolkien's "concerted effort" to change the Western European "paradigm" that speakers of supposedly superior languages were "ethnically superior".[3]

Patrick Curry, Christine Chism and others say that race-focused critiques often omit relevant textual evidence,[11][12][13] cite imagery from adaptations rather than the work itself,[10] ignore the absence of evidence of racist attitudes or events in the author's personal life, and claim that the perception of racism is itself a marginal view.[9][10][11]

Tolkien stated that he thought of his Dwarves as reminiscent of "the Jews",[T 5] and that the Dwarves' words were "constructed to be Semitic".[21] This raises the question, examined by Rebecca Brackmann in Mythlore, of whether there was an element of antisemitism, however deeply buried, in Tolkien's account of the Dwarves, inherited from English attitudes of his time. Brackman notes that Tolkien attempted to work through the issue in his Middle-earth writings.[22]

Orcs and evil

Further information:
Tolkien's sentience dilemma
Dimitra Fimi notes that Middle-earth assumes a fixed hierarchy like the medieval great chain of being.[4] (Ramon Llull's Ladder of Ascent and Descent of the Mind, 1305, pictured)

Anderson Rearick III agrees that in Middle-earth, darkness and black are linked with evil Orcs and the Dark Lord

Frodo gives up everything to fulfil his quest, just as Christ did. In his view, "nothing could be more contrary to the assumptions of racism than a Hobbit as a hero".[10]

Fimi, author of an academic study of Tolkien and race,[23] notes the years of heated popular and scholarly debate on whether Tolkien was racist and concluded that the answer is both yes and no.[4][24] She writes that Middle-earth is hierarchical like the medieval great chain of being, with God at the top, above (in turn) Elves, Men, and at the bottom monsters such as Orcs. In her view, this makes sense in terms of theology, and indeed in a mythology like The Silmarillion: but a novel like The Lord of the Rings demanded rounded characters rather than symbols of good or evil.[4]

Fimi writes that Tolkien "agonised" over the origins of Orcs. If they were corrupted

Men, that would fit the view that Morgoth could corrupt but not create; but Elves and Men had free will, and if they did evil, could perhaps be redeemed. She writes that the earlier author George MacDonald had created a race of evil goblins, something that she finds an equally uncomfortable "product of 19th-century anxieties about race and evolutionary degeneration". She notes, however, that a novel is written within a tradition; Tolkien's orcs fit into the tradition of MacDonald's goblins and ultimately of the monsters in Beowulf. She concludes, "I believe Tolkien's racial prejudices are implicit in Middle-Earth, but his values – friendship, fellowship, altruism, courage, among many others – are explicit, which makes for a complex, more interesting world", and that complexities of this kind get people of each generation to read The Lord of the Rings, and to interpret it afresh.[4]

Orcs as a demonised enemy

Further information:
Tolkien's sentience dilemma, and Orc (slang)

In a private letter, Tolkien describes orcs as:[T 6]

squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types."[T 6]

The Tolkien scholar Dimitra Fimi describes his mentions of "swarthy complexions" and slanted eyes as "straight out of Victorian anthropology, which links mental qualities and physique".[4] A variety of critics and commentators have noted that orcs are somewhat like caricatures of non-Europeans. Andrew O'Hehir describes orcs as "a subhuman race bred by Morgoth and Sauron (although not created by them) that is morally irredeemable and deserves only death. They are dark-skinned and slant-eyed, and although they possess reason, speech, social organisation and, as Shippey mentions, a sort of moral sensibility, they are inherently evil."[25] He notes Tolkien's description of them, saying it could scarcely be more revealing as a representation of the "Other", but that it is "the product of his background and era, like most of our inescapable prejudices. At the level of conscious intention, he was not a racist or an anti-Semite",[25] and mentions his letters to this effect.[25] In a letter to his son, Christopher, who was serving in the RAF in the Second World War, Tolkien wrote of orcs as appearing on both sides of the conflict:[T 7]

Yes, I think the orcs as real a creation as anything in 'realistic' fiction ... only in real life they are on both sides, of course. For 'romance' has grown out of 'allegory', and its wars are still derived from the 'inner war' of allegory in which good is on one side and various modes of badness on the other. In real (exterior) life men are on both sides: which means a motley alliance of orcs, beasts, demons, plain naturally honest men, and angels.[T 7]

The literary critic Jenny Turner, writing in the London Review of Books, endorses O'Hehir's comment that orcs are "by design and intention a northern European's paranoid caricature of the races he has dimly heard about".[25][26] The journalist Ed Power, in The Daily Telegraph, compares Orcs to the stormtroopers in Star Wars, as both are "a metaphorical embodiment" of evil. According to Power, Tolkien's mythology for England required characters to be either good or evil.[27]

Moral geography: West versus East

The ShireTolkien's moral geographyGondorMordorHaradcommons:File:Tolkien's Moral Geography of Middle-Earth.svg
Imagemap with clickable links of Tolkien's moral geography of Middle-earth, according to John Magoun[9]
Further information: Harad

John Magoun, writing in

hobbits of The Shire in the Northwest, evil "Easterlings" in the East, and "imperial sophistication and decadence" in the South. Magoun explains that Gondor is both virtuous, being West, and has problems, being South; Mordor in the Southeast is hellish, while Harad in the extreme South "regresses into hot savagery".[9] The medievalist and Tolkien scholar Marjorie Burns too has noted Tolkien's "superiority of North over South, West over East".[28]

Tolkien denied allegations of a North-South bias in a 1967 letter to his interviewers Charlotte and Denis Plimmer:[T 8]

Auden has asserted that for me 'the North is a sacred direction'. That is not true. The North-west of Europe, where I (and most of my ancestors) have lived, has my affection, as a man's home should. I love its atmosphere, and know more of its histories and languages than I do of other parts; but it is not 'sacred', nor does it exhaust my affections. I do have, for instance, a particular fondness for the Latin language, and among its descendants for Spanish. That is untrue for my story, a mere reading of the synopses should show. The North was the seat of the fortresses of the Devil [ie. Morgoth].[T 8]

Tolkien pointed out that this West vs East moral divide developed naturally over the course of the fictional history and denied that it applied to the modern world:

The goodness of the West and the badness of the East has no modern reference. The concept came about through the necessities of narrative.[T 9]

Evidence of anti-racism in Tolkien's letters

Scholars such as Fimi note that Tolkien was in some ways clearly anti-racist, as he actively opposed "racialist" theories, refused to declare that he had an "Aryan" origin so as to be published in Nazi Germany, spoke out against Nazism,[4] called Hitler a "ruddy little ignoramus",[27][T 10] and opposed anti-German propaganda in wartime.[T 11]

Opposition to peacetime Nazi racial theory

In 1938, the publishers of the German translation of The Hobbit, Rütten & Loening [de] of Potsdam, wrote to Tolkien asking if he was of pure arisch ("Aryan") descent. He asked his English publisher, Stanley Unwin if he should[T 1]

suffer this impertinence because of the possession of a German name, or do their lunatic laws require a certificate of 'arisch' origin from all persons of all countries?[T 1]

He drafted two letters to Rütten & Loening; only one survives, and his biographer Humphrey Carpenter presumes that Unwin sent the other to Rütten & Loening. The surviving draft says[T 1]

I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-iranian... But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of

Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.[T 1]

Opposition to wartime anti-German propaganda

Tolkien expressed an anti-racist position during the

Second World War.[10] Tolkien reacted with anger to the excesses of anti-German propaganda during World War II. In a 1944 letter to his son Christopher, he wrote:[10][T 11]

...it is distressing to see the [British] press grovelling in the gutter as low as Goebbels in his prime, shrieking that any German commander who holds out in a desperate situation (when, too, the military needs of his side clearly benefit) is a drunkard, and a besotted fanatic. ... There was a solemn article in the local [Oxford] paper seriously advocating systematic exterminating of the entire German nation as the only proper course after military victory: because, if you please, they are rattlesnakes, and don't know the difference between good and evil! (What of the writer?) The Germans have just as much right to declare the Poles and Jews exterminable vermin, subhuman, as we have to select the Germans: in other words, no right, whatever they have done.[T 11]

Opposition to racism in South Africa

During the

Second World War, Tolkien's son Christopher, training in South Africa, expressed concern about the treatment of black people at the hands of whites, and his father replied:[T 12]

As for what you say or hint of 'local' conditions: I knew of them. I don't think they have much changed (even for the worse). I used to hear them discussed by my mother; and have ever since taken a special interest in that part of the world. The treatment of colour nearly always horrifies anyone going out from Britain & not only in South Africa. Unfort[unately] not many retain that generous sentiment for long.[T 12]

Legacy

Discussing race in Middle-earth has continued as filmmakers have sought to depict orcs and other races. The journalist David Ibata writes that the orcs in

demonised enemy, despite (he writes) Tolkien's objections to the demonisation of the enemy in the two World Wars.[29] Reviewing Robert Stuart's 2022 book Tolkien, Race, and Racism in Middle-earth, Tally writes that while the book is valuable and thorough, Stuart's "desire to absolve Tolkien... is understandable, but it is important to recognize and to emphasize the truth lest the threats posed by white supremacists... be too easily dismissed or underestimated."[30]

harfoots speak in Irish accents, behave as friendly peasants, and are accompanied by Celtic music; and that they resemble the 19th century caricaturist John Leech's "wildly unflattering" depictions of the Irish in Punch magazine.[35] Gaiman had earlier written in a wider context that "White Supremacists don't own Norse Mythology, even if some of them think they do".[31]

Notes

  1. ^ Rearick was citing Jensen, Steuard (1999). "Meta-FAQ: 7. Was Tolkien racist? Were his works?". Archived from the original on 30 June 2012.
  2. Tolkien's sentience dilemma
    .

References

Primary

  1. ^ a b c d e Carpenter 2023, #29 to Stanley Unwin, #30 to Rütten & Loening, both 25 July 1938
  2. ^ a b Tolkien 1954, book 3, ch. 4, "Treebeard"
  3. ^ Tolkien 1954. The Two Towers, book 4, ch. 3 "The Black Gate is Closed"
  4. ^ Tolkien 1954. The Two Towers, book 4, ch. 4 "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit"
  5. ^ Carpenter 2023, #176 to Naomi Mitchison, 8 December 1955
  6. ^ a b Carpenter 2023, #210 to Forrest J. Ackerman, June 1958
  7. ^ a b Carpenter 2023, #71 to Christopher Tolkien, 25 May 1944
  8. ^ a b Carpenter 2023, #294 to Charlotte and Denis Plimmer, 8 February 1967
  9. ^ Scull & Hammond 2006, p. 640
  10. ^ Carpenter 2023, #45 to Michael Tolkien, 9 June 1941
  11. ^ a b c Carpenter 2023, #81 to Christopher Tolkien, 23–25 September 1944
  12. ^ a b Carpenter 2023, #61 to Christopher Tolkien, 19 April 1944
  13. ^ Tolkien 1955. The Return of the King, book 6, ch. 1 "The Tower of Cirith Ungol"

Secondary

  1. ^ a b Yatt, John (2 December 2002). "Wraiths and Race". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 26 August 2013. Retrieved 25 May 2010.
  2. ^ a b Bhatia, Shyam (8 January 2003). "The Lord of the Rings rooted in racism". Rediff India Abroad. Archived from the original on 3 November 2010. Retrieved 4 December 2010.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Straubhaar 2004, pp. 101–117.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Fimi, Dimitra. "Was Tolkien really racist?". The Conversation. Retrieved 20 January 2021.
  5. ^ a b Rogers & Underwood 2000, pp. 121–132.
  6. ^
    Journal of Tolkien Research
    . 11 (2). article 3.
  7. ^ a b Perry, David M. "How Can We Untangle White Supremacy From Medieval Studies?". Pacific Standard. Retrieved 10 October 2021.
  8. ^
    The Chicago Tribune
    .
  9. ^
    ISBN 1-135-88034-4
    .
  10. ^
    S2CID 162647975
    .
  11. ^ a b c Curry 2004, pp. 30–33
  12. ^
    J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia
    . pp. 555–556.
  13. ^
    J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia
    .
  14. ^ Straubhaar 2004, p. 113.
  15. ^ Stuart 2022, p. 87.
  16. ^ Stuart 2022, pp. 19–45.
  17. ^ Stuart 2022, p. 339.
  18. ^ Fimi 2010, chapter 9 "A Hierarchical World", pp. 157–159 "Tolkien and the charge of racism".
  19. ^ Lobdell 2004, p. 116.
  20. ^ Shapiro, Stephen (14 December 2002). "Lord of the Rings labelled racist". The Scotsman.
  21. ^ Gerrolt, Dennis (1971). "Now Read On... interview". BBC. Archived from the original on 2022-06-10. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  22. ^ Brackmann, Rebecca (2010). ""Dwarves are Not Heroes": Antisemitism and the Dwarves in J.R.R. Tolkien's Writing". Mythlore. 28 (3/4). Lansing, Michigan: Mythopoeic Society. article 7.
  23. ^ Fimi 2010, p. 1.
  24. ^ Fimi, Dimitra (2012). "Revisiting Race in Tolkien's Legendarium: Constructing Cultures and Ideologies in an Imaginary World (lecture)". Dimitra Fimi. Retrieved 20 January 2021.
  25. ^ a b c d O'Hehir, Andrew (6 June 2001). "A curiously very great book". Salon.com. Retrieved 3 March 2020.
  26. ^ Turner, Jenny (15 November 2001). "Reasons for Liking Tolkien". London Review of Books. 23 (22).
  27. ^ a b Power, Ed (27 November 2018). "JRR Tolkien's orcs are no more racist than George Lucas's Stormtroopers". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 20 January 2021.
  28. JSTOR 1316804
    .
  29. ISSN 2076-0787
    .
  30. ^ Tally, Robert T. Jr. (2022). "[Review] Tolkien, Race, and Racism in Middle-earth by Robert Stuart". Mythlore. 41 (1): Article 16.
  31. ^ a b c d e Thielman, Sam (20 February 2022). "'The history of fantasy is racialized': Lord of the Rings series sparks debate over race". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 February 2022.
  32. ^ Houghton, Kristen (6 May 2015). "Are Authors Anything Like the Characters They Write?". Huffington Post. Retrieved 14 May 2023.
  33. ^ Duggins, Alexi (8 September 2022). "Lord of the Rings stars speak out against racist 'threats, harassment and abuse'". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 September 2022.
  34. ^ Stewart, Sara (6 September 2022). "'Neil Gaiman Gives Tolkien Lesson to 'Rings of Power' Racists". Los Angeles Magazine. Retrieved 25 October 2022.
  35. ^ a b Heritage, Stuart (5 September 2022). "The backlash to rule them all? Every controversy about The Rings of Power so far". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 September 2022.

Sources

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