31-12-2002 05:56									#31
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wait wait.. I thought it was the men that came from the west...I forget the name tolkien gave them but weren't they like Aragons forefathers?

	31-12-2002 05:59									#32
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The Numenoreans were from the West, yeah.

So were the Elves.

	31-12-2002 06:54									#33
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You have mixed up the Ages of ME.

In the first Age, the elves were created in the East, aroung lake Nurnen. When Melkor's power became great in the North, they were invited by the Valar to travel to Valinor in the far West, across the sea. When Melkor stole the Silmarils, the Noldor, one of the elven races vowed to get back East to ME to take them back. The first men came from the East of the ME towards the end of the first Age. When the Valar had to come and defeat Melkor after the failure of both elves and men, ME was so devastated that men and elves had to leave: elves went to Valinor and men went to Numenor which was an island in the middle of the sea. Then the 2nd Age started. But Melkor went to Numenor and corrupted the Numenorean men and made them so arrogant as to try to attack Valinor. They were vanquished and Numenor perished, but a few uncorrupted Numenoreans fled to ME and founded the kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor. There they joined up with the remnants of the elves that had not left ME, mostly Sindarin (grey elves like Legolas) that had never gone to Valinor and a few Noldor (like Elrond). In the year 3441 of the 2nd Age, Sauron is defeated by Elendil and Gil-Ghalad and Isildur takes the One Ring. Then the 3rd Age starts. However the 4rth age, the Age of Man, was coming and all elves and other ancient races had to go West to Valinor or pass into oblivion, which they did, during and shortly after the War of the Ring. The 4rth age commenced at the 25th of March of 1419, Shire Count, or 3019 of the 3rd Age, when Frodo throwed the Ring into the eternal flames of Mt. Orondruin.

East and west are only relative terms in Arda. The mother of all evils, the oath of Feanor, was uttered in Valinor, in the West.

	31-12-2002 07:07									#35
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quote: Originally posted by FrustratedPoet yay 'poly! Apolyton: We don't censor idiots, we laugh at them.

Or....

Apolyton: We don't censor idiots, we're moderated by them.

	31-12-2002 08:12									#36
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LOLLLLLLL!!!!

	31-12-2002 08:31									#37
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axi,

Yet, most of the stuff you said happened in Similarian, not in LotR.

	31-12-2002 08:46									#38
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So let me get this right- black/dark refers only and always to Africans, and an Oxford don of South African origins (suspicious- was he an active Broederbond member? we should be told!) who wrote a fantasy work about different races coming together to combat a great evil, was in fact subtly creating a chauvinist Aryan racist primer. Tcha.

Sometimes a cigar is a cigar, a zeppelin is a dirigible, and a car is a way of getting from A to B.

The silly cheap remark about New Zealand shows a surprising lack of knowledge of race relations there- one party with an anti-immigrant platform is actually led by a part Maori:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/s.../newz-s26.shtml

	31-12-2002 09:00									#39
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quote: Originally posted by molly bloom So let me get this right- black/dark refers only and always to Africans, and an Oxford don of South African origins (suspicious- was he an active Broederbond member? we should be told!) who wrote a fantasy work about different races coming together to combat a great evil, was in fact subtly creating a chauvinist Aryan racist primer. Tcha. Sometimes a cigar is a cigar, a zeppelin is a dirigible, and a car is a way of getting from A to B. The silly cheap remark about New Zealand shows a surprising lack of knowledge of race relations there- one party with an anti-immigrant platform is actually led by a part Maori: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/s.../newz-s26.shtml

He left South Africa at age 4 I believe. I think that dark/black actually refers to the soot, smoke and grime associated with industry.

	31-12-2002 09:08									#40
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what about the weed and shrums tolkien seems to love?

	31-12-2002 09:08									#41
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The men of Far Harad are swarthy and dark.

I think Peter Jackson interpreted them as being Tuareg-, Berber-, and Arab-like in TTT.

	31-12-2002 09:13									#42
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Plus a lot of Far Harad is desert.


ACK!

	31-12-2002 11:42									#43
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It's interesting, but I don't think it's true. Especially in The Silmarillion, I'm inclined to think Tolkien was influenced more by Christian and Norse imagery. For instance, Melkor is originally an Ainu, a lesser being of thought created by Iluvatar, and "descends . . . into darkness". He even goes so far as to refer to Thangorodrim as "hell".

	31-12-2002 11:51									#44
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quote: Originally posted by rah Our professors take was more on the lines of GB vs Nazi Germany. The Shire being English in it's perfect form in the West and Germany being the evil empire in the EAST

...but... but... there are no volcano's in Germany....

	31-12-2002 11:53									#45
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I think Tolkien drew a lot from a lot of different mythological stories... mixed them up added a pinch and created a masterpiece.

	31-12-2002 11:55									#46
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quote: Originally posted by Lord_Davinator I think Tolkien drew a lot from a lot of different mythological stories... mixed them up added a pinch and created a masterpiece.

cf. Atalante, Avallone, Beorn, Gimli, etc.

	31-12-2002 12:05									#47
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Eh, Tolkien is not the problem. His world is full of many races coexisting in peace. One thing though is how the horde comes out of the East - but that can entirely be due to chance.

The real problem lies with other writers. David Eddings for example. I don't know if any of you have read his work; they're pretty good for commercial fantasy, if you ignore the massive amounts of Eurocentricism that seeps in through every part of his work, despite his later attempts to patch them up. (The fact that he directly rips off Earth races does not help.) He admitted it, eventually.

	31-12-2002 12:18									#48
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The fact that the evil comes from east can be explaned thus:

It has to come from somewhere. Tolkien had one 10-sided dice, and he declared: North (1 and 2), East (3 and 4), South (5 and 6), West (7 and 8) and the inside (9 and 10). Tolkien threw 3 or 4 (the exact number isn't known to the public), and thus the evil was destined to be coming from east.

	31-12-2002 12:29									#49
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How do you get a 10 sided dice?

	31-12-2002 12:30									#50
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Lord_Davinator -

I assume that you have never heard of such games as Dungeons&Dragons...?

	31-12-2002 12:30									#51
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quote: Apolyton: We don't censor idiots, we laugh at them.

quote: Apolyton: We don't censor idiots, we're moderated by them.

t-shirt material

	31-12-2002 12:43									#52
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As an Elvis fan, I will start my own petition if they dare call the third movie "The Return of the King".

	31-12-2002 12:50									#53
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Pherhaps it's very natural for someone who's living on the far-west side of a large continent (EurAsia) that all evil comes from the east........

where else would it come from? There is only east......

	31-12-2002 12:51									#54
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Traditionally, the home of evil is north. Thus Santa Claus is evil.

Thank you, Hurri, for the sig material...

	31-12-2002 12:54									#55
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Tolkien was an anti-industrialist(or more accurately anti-MODERNIST) along the lines of DH Lawrence.

Read some of his letters to the Nazis when the Nazis tried to 'claim' him as an Aryan author.

Directions of Evil:
Even in the Hobbit, the Goblins and Dragons come from the far North.

The Elves were created at Lake Nurnen and originally wandered the eastern shore of the continent.

There are some telling criticisms though to be made:

1.White or 'fair' skin is constantly equated with inner goodness.

2. Tolkien is anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian. Men know their 'place', servant-master relations are glorified, particularly all the loyal and dutiful servants (christianity? thou good and loyal servant...), rulership is passed through the Blood, for example if anyone in Tolkien has the blood of numenor, you just know that the odds are they will be more noble, taller, stronger, and fairer skinned than 'fallen' man.

3. Tolkien has a repressed 19th century English public school boy horror of heterosexual sex, and 'dirty' things.

Sam and Frodo's relationship is the common one of Boy's Own Paper and other Public School Boy genre stories of the 19th century: the David and Jonathan relationship, a 'pure' relationship of 'innocent love' that to an outsider looks like SUCH an example of homosexuality in self-denial that it is self-parodying.

	31-12-2002 13:06									#56
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Gee, is it racist when black Africans refer to the forces of evil as the dark forces? This goes back to our fear of the dark and the wild animals lurking beyond the campfire waiting for a foolish human to leave the light.

	31-12-2002 13:08									#57
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Mordor, on the other hand, has a tendency to be found in the East (the Southeast, to be exact).

	31-12-2002 14:55									#58
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I can imagine what Atilla must have seemed like to the Germans, Goths and Romans alike. A great menace growing in the East. The peoples of the West had to unite to defeat him. And even then, it was only a draw.

Couldn't the Lord of the Rings basically be a fantasy version of this very real history?

	31-12-2002 15:35									#59
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quote: Originally posted by ranskaldan Mordor, on the other hand, has a tendency to be found in the East (the Southeast, to be exact).

Yeah, and doesn't Sauron and Saruman BOTH sound very much like Saddam!

	31-12-2002 15:36									#60
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Yeah... and saruman looks like a jew...