We Hobbits are a Merry Folk:

An Incautious and Heretical Reappraisal of J.R.R. Tolkien

an article by David Brin, Ph.D.

An abridged version of this article appeared in the late-December 2002 online edition of Salon Magazine.
 
Currently published in Tomorrow Happens.
Copyright © 2002, by David Brin. All rights reserved. No duplication or resale without permission.

And yet, almost from its birth, the Enlightenment Movement was confronted by an ironic counter-revolution, rejecting the very notion of progress. The Romantic Movement erupted as a rebellion against the rebellion.

In fairness, it didn't start out that way. For example, many of the leading early English Romantics -- Wordsworth, Shelley, Blake, etc. -- welcomed the French Revolution (at least in its early phases) as a sweeping away of the cobwebs of feudalism and clericalism -- a step toward a kind of utopian universal brotherhood. So long as they shared the same entrenched enemy -- powerful bishops and feudal lords -- you could hardly slide a knife blade between the two wings of the rebel alliance.

Even today, men like Thomas Jefferson stand as icons of both Enlightenment and Romanticism.

But this changed when the industrial revolution hit full stride. Suddenly, where once gentry and clergy ruled, there were arrogant new powers striding about. An entrepreneurial bourgeoisie. A new intellectual elite of science. And a clanking, noisome ruction of impudent machinery.

Even democracy began to seem less classically pure when it was taken off a pedestal to be practiced for real by farmers, shopkeepers and a rising middle class, all of them arguing, wheedling and conniving amid an incredible din. This wasn't the calmly erudite Academy or Forum, but something a lot more gritty -- often puerile. It was real. Some, like Alexis de Toqueville, saw beauty in all the noise. Others felt their idealized hopes betrayed.

Temblors began splitting a chasm between romantics and enlightenment pragmatists. The alliance that had been so formidable against feudalism began turning against itself. Trenches soon aligned along the most obvious fault line, down the middle, between Future and Past.

Don't get me wrong. I know how unfair it can be to reduce a whole vast, churning intellectual movement to a few pat descriptions and caricatures. In fact, individual romantics ranged (and still range) across not just one spectrum but many dimensions. Some of them -- like the agrarian socialist William Morris -- clung to Jefferson's old optimism, egalitarianism and pragmatism, even while their movement's center of mass moved inexorably the other way. Backward, toward a renewed fascination with elitism.

By the Nineteenth Century, the battle front had grown so rigid that intellectuals started speaking of "two cultures," forever at odds and mutually incomprehensible.

Neither side had a monopoly on truth. Each saw plenty to criticize. The romantics' agrarian nostalgia had a real-world basis in the Industrial Revolution's displacement of people and transformation of the countryside; industrialization was now seen as an oppressor, not a liberator.

Through the eyes of Charles Dickens and many others, we all can envision the 'satanic mills' where women and children toiled horrible eighty-hour weeks, under brutal conditions. Exposing such injustices in vivid tales and dramas may have been the romantics' finest hour.

Mentioned far less often is what those factories were busy producing. For example, mountains of cheap cloth, allowing even the poor to afford several changes of clothes. And soap. And cheap iron bedsteads, just like rich folks had, lifting mattresses off the floor and away from vermin. More soap. And dinnerware and pencils and concrete and bathtubs and cheap windows and lamps and books and sewer pipes and reading glasses and water faucets and school desks and flush toilets and electric wire. And more soap.

Faced with these tradeoffs, people voted in a myriad ways, with marches, protests, ballots and their pocketbooks. And with their feet, moving en masse from country hovels to urban tenements. It turned out that they wanted the factories, slums and schools reformed. But they also wanted what the factories and schools made.

Romantics disagreed with this decision. It baffled them.

In a nutshell, that was when they parted company with -- and started nurturing contempt for -- the common man.

Let's tie this in with our overlying theme. For J.R.R. Tolkien and his fellow Oxfordite, C.S. Lewis, were proud and avowed romantics.

Calling the scientific worldview 'soul-less,' they joined Keats and Shelley, Henry James, and most European-trained philosophers in spurning the modern emphasis on pragmatic experimentation, production, universal literacy, progress, cooperative enterprise, democracy, city life and flattened social orders.

In contrast to these 'sterile' pursuits, romantics extolled the traditional, the personal, the particular, the subjective, the rural, the hierarchical and the metaphorical.

Moreover, by the turn of the century, romanticism was fast losing all vestige of its former empathy for the concerns of commonfolk. One solitary artist -- or entertainer or lost prince or angry poet -- loomed larger in importance, by far, than a thousand craft workers, teachers or engineers... a value system that is thoroughly pushed today by the mythic engine of Hollywood. Just as in Homer's time, ten thousand foot soldiers mattered less than Achilles's heel.

This fits the very plot of Lord of the Rings, in which the good guys strive to preserve and restore as much as they can of an older, graceful and 'natural' hierarchy, against the disturbing, quasi-industrial and vaguely technological ambience of Mordor, with its smokestack imagery and manufactured power-rings that can be used by anybody, not just an elite few. (Recall the scene where Saruman turns away from the 'good' side and immediately starts ripping up trees, replacing them with mining pits and smoky forges. The anti-industrial imagery could not be more explicit.)

Consider the rings. Those man-made wonders are deemed cursed, damning anyone who dares to use them. Especially those nine normal humans who tried to rise up, using tools to equalize and then usurp the rightful powers of their betters -- the high elves.

The nine Ring Wraiths aren't just evil henchmen and cardboard monsters. In my opinion, they are among the most important figures of the epic. Tolkien himself calls them tragic figures and dwells on their background. These fallen mortals -- decent men who were hauled unwillingly into service to the 'dark side' -- can be looked upon as cautionary figures, conveying the universal lesson that "power corrupts."

On that much we can all agree. But I think there's more to the Ring Wraiths. To me, they distill the classic Greek notion of hubris -- a concept that romantics often embrace -- the idea that pain and damnation await any mortal whose ambition aims too high. Don't try putting on the trappings or emblems or powers that rightfully belong to your betters. Above all, don't try to decipher and redistribute mysteries.

In other words, exactly the same morality tale preached in Star Wars.

Romanticism has come full circle, now unctuously praising the very same lords -- the uber-men -- it started out opposing.

(An aside, in self-defense. Some readers may assign 'left' or 'right' political significance to what I say here. Don't. Both romantics and pragmatists fill in every modern political movement. For example, as a staunch environmentalist, I can still comment on the romantic elitism of many who share the same cause.

In fact, this struggle is being fought every day, almost unnoticed, in the battlefield of our contemporary media. Enlightenment's child -- suspicion-of-authority -- often comes paired with the quintessential romantic image: a smug loner who despises the masses. They get mixed together, even though they arise from different traditions.

In order to tell them apart, try to notice whether a character sneers only at power-abusers... or at everybody. Is his or her ire aimed solely upward, toward some cruel elite, or downward too, despising fellow citizens and neighbors as clueless sheep?)

Don't get me wrong. Romanticism can make strong points. Even after the worst crimes of industrialization were palliated, criticism remains valid. For one thing, every generation of entrepreneurs features some who are insatiable and conspire together to become lords. Moreover, scientific advancement badly needs the constant light of public scrutiny, or else the "advances" can easily go sour. Science needs criticism precisely because it's proved effective. It works far better than magic ever did. That makes science potentially far more harmful, as well as far more useful.

The most blatant example of this is what we're doing to our world. Modern civilization isn't inherently less caring. It's just that there are so many of us, and we can afford to buy so many things -- it puts Earth under intolerable strain. The planet was certainly less abused when our numbers were kept low by poverty, starvation and disease. Now we must replace those old corrective forces with new ones -- knowledge, foresight and self-restraint.

No wonder romanticism yearns for simpler ways and times, when death solved all such problems in a more natural way.

Moreover, enlightenment can never completely replace older modes of thinking. The need for stirring, illogical tales and images runs deep within us all. (Some of us earn a good living that way.) Without romance, we'd be sorry creatures, indeed.

Still, scientific/progressive society has been known to listen to its critics, and not just now and then. Name one feudal society whose leaders did that.

Were any orcs or 'dark men' offered coalition positions in King Aragorn's cabinet, at the end of the Ring War? Was Mordor given a benign Marshall Plan?

I think not.

Which brings us to another of the really cool things about fantasy -- identifying with a side that's 100% good. You can revel as they utterly annihilate foes who deserve to be exterminated because they are 100% distilled evil.

This may not be politically correct, but then, political correctness is really a bastard offspring of egalitarian-scientific enlightenment. Witness the sometimes saccharin PC-sweetness of Star Trek. Enlightened, but maybe also a bit gelded. (Is that why everybody likes Klingons?)

Romanticism never made any pretense at equality. It is hyper-discriminatory, by nature. (Have you ever actually read Byron or Shelley?) Whole classes of people are less worthy, less deserving of life, than other classes.

The Nazis were utter archetypal romantics. (Ever listened to Wagner?) Deal with that.

The urge to crush some demonized enemy resonates deeply within us, dating from ages far earlier than feudalism. Hence, the vicarious thrill we feel over the slaughter of orc foot soldiers at Helm's Deep. Then again as Ents flatten even more goblin grunts at Saruman's citadel, taking no prisoners, never sparing a thought for all the orphaned orclings and grieving widorcs. And again at Minas Tirith, and again at the Gondor Docks and again... well, they're only orcs, after all.

What fun.

Lev Grossman made a similar point in a recent Time Magazine article.

"Where are the women? Peter Jackson filled out Liv Tyler's role for the movies (it's much less prominent in Tolkien's version), but the Fellowship is still as much a boys' club as Augusta National. And whiter too. Don't let all the heartwarming Elf-Dwarf bonding between Legolas and Gimli fool you. The only people with dark skin in Middle-earth are the Orcs."

This tendency is taken to an extreme, showing the basic moral problem of romanticism, in a work that was coincidentally created by the other fellow who filmed a version of Lord of the Rings, one Ralph Bakshi, whose animated feature called Wizards was, in my opinion, just about the most evil thing produced since Goebbels ran the Nazi propaganda mill. In Bakshi's post-apocalyptic future, pastoral pixies, or elves, dwell in a bucolic Wagnerian paradise of vast, open countryside. These pretty creatures exclude a tribe they call 'mutants' -- ugly, urban, and vaguely technological -- forcing them to inhabit a lightless canyon-ghetto for a thousand years. Bakshi portrayed the mutants as cowardly and pathetically incompetent, whenever they tried to escape into the pixies' immense realm. No matter. A narrator calls the suppression a matter of essential 'good' vs. 'evil'... as defined by the elvish side. When the mutants finally get inspired by a leader (portrayed as a screeching skeleton), viewers worry, then cheer when doughty pixies surround the ghetto, launch a pre-emptive strike, and annihilate every mutant, down to the last cub.

Admittedly, most Tolkien lovers claim to loathe Ralph Bakshi's version of LOTR. And yet, one can see the commonalties of theme. He may represent the darkest side of this 'force', but it's the same basic premise.

Let's not ignore, but instead openly acknowledge the underlying racialism and belief in an inherent aristocracy that J.R.R. Tolkien weaved into the books, without even much attempt at subtlety. Nor do I much blame him. He couldn't help it, coming from the imperialist and class-ridden culture that raised him. One that worried deeply about how "uppity" the masses were starting to become.

Moreover, the characters whom the reader comes to know best -- Frodo, Sam and even the king-in-waiting, Aragorn -- are themselves not very snooty or racist. Aragorn has an easy-going, common touch -- much like Luke Skywalker, the only un-patronizing Jedi. The snootiest and most relentlessly aristocratic characters in LOTR stand off in the wings. For example preachy, secretive and patronizing Elrond and Galadriel, coaxing maximum effort while letting others do the fighting for them.

(Bloody @*!%! elves. I'd point out endless parallels with a fellow named Yoda, but that would stir up too many hornets all at once!)

Oh, but in fact J.R.R. Tolkien was himself far more critical of the situation portrayed in his universe than any but a few of his myriad readers ever chose to notice. Certainly more self-critical than most of his contemporary readers or those watching the new film trilogy.

In several places, Tolkien openly stated his authorial judgment that the elves who made the Three Rings were ultimately to blame, having set the stage for tragedy in Middle Earth. They made their own rings (preceding Sauron's One Ring) in order to control the world, stopping time and preventing change, forbidding anything to die and decay and thus taking away room for new growth. Verlyn Flieger quotes Tolkien:

"They wanted to have their cake and eat it: to live in the mortal historical Middle Earth because they had become fond of it... and so tried to stop its change and history, stop its growth, keep it as a pleasaunce."

There are moments scattered throughout LOTR when Tolkien seems to be warning that romanticism can lead one down the road to genocide. He was disturbed to see the Nazi SS, for example, embrace many of the same nordic mythic stories and symbols that he used as source material.

In later books, like the The Silmarillion, Tolkien went deeper into this self exploration, even going so far as to cast an analytical eye upon the elvish hierarchs of Middle Earth, in much the same way that Isaac Asimov re-evaluated his Second Foundation and the meddlesome-patronizing robots of his famed science fictional universe. The kind of self-examination that the Star Wars cosmos desperately needs, alas, while there's still time.

Indeed, many academics have cited the obvious parallel between the retreat of the High Elves in LOTR -- abandoning Middle Earth to return "west across the sea" -- and the dissolution of the British Empire which began with the emancipation of India, about the same time that Tolkien was writing his epic. In fairness, J.R.R.T. did not rail against this change. He saw it as regrettable but inevitable -- like the end of his mythical Third Age. An approaching time of iron, when aloofly noble figures like Elrond and Galadriel must go back whence they came.

But those self-critiques never had the widespread readership or influence of the original LOTR. Indeed, there seems to be little appetite for examining the repetitious themes of fantasy.

Take for example, those immensely popular PBS interviews of Joseph Campbell, some years ago, about his book The Power of Myth. With an air of fawning worship, Bill Moyers gave Campbell hours to espouse the wholly unoriginal theory that ancient legends had certain similarities of rhythm and theme from continent to continent. Alas, not once did Moyers perform the journalist's duty of asking hard questions. For example -- might some of the similarity have arisen out of simple economics? The bards and storytellers of olden times needed to be fed. Naturally, they sucked up to the chieftains and kings and magicians who had all the bread and gold, conjuring legends of elite demigods and princes, seldom daring (and only obliquely) to suggest that creativity and courage -- even sovereignty -- might reside in common men and women.

Enlightenment gifts -- egalitarianism, openly-shared criticism, cooperative skill, accountability, argument, criticism, social mobility and science -- were anathema. To this day, romantics feel uncomfortable with them. To Campbell, any story that drifted from the standard romantic formula was simply no story at all.

In the end, neither Tolkien nor his close friend C.S. Lewis could ever cross the gap that another Oxbridge don was writing about, at roughly the same time -- the infamous "two cultures" gulf that C.P. Snow claimed to find unbridgeable, between the world of science and the world of the arts.

Try as he might, and even confronted with the blatant romantic excesses of Nazism, Tolkien could not escape his own deep conviction that democratic enlightenment and modernity made up the greater evil. That hated trend, he feared, would ruin all the beauty that he found in tradition. In aristocratic-mystical hierarchies. In the ways of the past.

It all seems rather a pity, in light of what happened later, during the final third of the 20th Century.

For C.P. Snow's 'gap' between two cultures began to be crossed, time and again, by unfettered spirits who simply refused to accept primly drawn categories. I wish Tolkien and Lewis could have lived to see how easily this chasm is traversed now, in both directions, by technologically-savvy artists and by scientists who love art.

Indeed, science fiction bridged the two cultures gap with a superhighway. But that's another story.

Next... so which is the Golden Age? Our past or our future?

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