Last year’s Christmas blockbuster “The Hobbit, an unexpected journey” awakened a very old front of controversy in relation to Tolkien’s work. The ever present question of racism in his texts.
There has been a lot of ink spent on discussing this. Some defend that there is a very clear racist component in Tolkien’s work due to his conception of higher men (numenorians) or the rivalry between elves and dwarves. Others claim that this charge is completely invented and an insult to the magnificent body of work this Oxford teacher created.
But this will not be an exposition of what this or that people think. What I intend to do is expose my humble point of view acquired from years devoted to this book and its lore.
I do understand that some aspects of Middle Earth can be read as racist, but I don’t think that this was Tolkien’s intention. And these are not empty words of a fan girl. Allow me to explain why.
If you take a deep look at the books that conform the lore of Middle Earth (The Lord of the rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, etc.) you will actually appreciate a very clever attempt on Tolkien’s part to encase within each race of Middle Earth a human virtue and a human flaw. By doing so, he intended to represent different aspects of the human nature within each race.
And so, Hobbits represent humility, but at the same time, they stand for compliance. Dwarves, stand for perseverance, and also represent greed. The beautiful elves embody wisdom, but also pride and arrogance. And men stand for courage, and represent ambition.
As you see, none of Middle Earth’s races is flawless. And the most interesting thing about this aspect is that each race’s flaw is the logical consequence of its virtue.
For instance, little and humble hobbits are virtuous in their humility. But the logical consequence of their lifestyle (simple and humble) is compliance. Leading such a simple life they grow lazy and uncompromising. Why should they try to be something more if like that they are already fine? This is, basically, a mirror to the reader. Most people are like that. Tolkien was only trying to reflect something that he saw every day. The simple people are often very humble and humility is their greatest virtue. But they are also compliant. They never aim for anything grander, or anything that will change their routine.
Men, on the other hand, have the great virtue of courage. They are the opposite to hobbits, they are always trying to achieve something bigger, to better themselves. And to do that, it takes a lot of courage. The logical downside is ambition. The race of men, is ambitious. They don’t long for riches, like dwarves; they desire power above all. The story of Numenor, as told in the Silmarillion is the very proof of this, as is the story of Boromir and the later madness of Denethor’s.
The same goes for the controversial dwarves. These are creatures that love working and they persevere until they get what they want. They will stop at nothing in their work, which happens to be mining. They are resistant and never complain in the face of hard work. When presented like that, their flaw could be only greed. They are constant and persevere to the extreme, which leads to their greed for riches. Their hard work in mining leads them to the need for more riches.
And there is the great controversy. With that description, everybody thinks that Tolkien was referring to the jews. First of all, I highly doubt it. But even if it was like that, would it matter? There is not a single line in any of Tolkien’s books that say that “dwarves are bad”. Dwarves do bad things, but so do all the other races (except the hobbits, and that’s sort of their sin). Elves also stray from the righteous path. And we all know men do.
This conception of the elves as the perfect race couldn’t be more wrong. It is true that elves are the first race to be created, but just as angels in Judeo-Christianity, they are not perfect. Elves are beautiful by definition; tall and fair. And most of all: elves are wise. But they have a reason to be. Elves are also immortal, and therefore, they have centuries to learn. Elves are not born wise. But they have the time to acquire said wisdom. And what is the logical flaw that comes from wisdom? Arrogance and pride. Elves are both. They know themselves wise, and therefore arrogance can not be far away.
And so, after years of thinking, I’ve come to a conclusion. This racist issue is always raised by people who have only read “The lord of the rings”, or, in most cases, only have seen the movies. And because of it, only have seen the mistakes of dwarves, mainly because all of the mistakes made by elves are narrated in “The Silmarillion”. And because of this, they think that Tolkien presents the elves as the perfect race, whilst dwarves are just a bunch of greedy people.
Well, in “The Silmarillion” there are plenty of arrogant elves that make mistakes, and pay dearly for them. The thing is, by the Third Age (when the war of the ring happens), the elves that have survived until then, are already aware of what happens to those who perish to their own arrogance, and try to avoid it.
But the main reason why I say that I don’t think that dwarves and elves are the literary transposition of nazis and jews stands on one single thing. Elves don’t consider dwarves to be a lesser race. Their hate comes as the result of a long life series of strifes, one of the main being the fact that dwarves killed the elf king in Doriath. But truly, if I had to look for a similarity for the strife between these two, I would never go for the nazis-jews hate, but more like the love-hate relationship between England and France. They’ve been at each other’s throats during centuries, but one has never been better than the other. Each race gave as good as they got.
There is nothing more I can say about it, and whomever wants to keep believing Tolkien was pronazi will keep believing it. But for all there is, I really think that this was not his intend. And I quite like what he did with the races. The idea to have the virtue of each race be the cause of their fault is really smart and I thing that works perfectly.
What are your thoughts on the matter?
