Tolkien & killling? - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

Nenya · 12-22-2002, 06:12 PM

This one has interested me a while.
As we all know, Tolkien had seen two wars, and fought in the other one. He had seen almost all of his friends get killed, been in great danger himself, and feared for his son's life. All of this must've influenced his writings a great deal. Now, my question is, what were Tolkien's views on killing?

Let's try and find the answere from his books:
In LotR, there are lots of violence and battles. Most of them pretty straightforward, with "goodguys" and "badguys". Never is the enemy an equal human being (or hobbit, or whatever, you get the point),but an orc or something similar, making the killing far more ethically justified. But isn't that what you do in a war: make the enemy a faceless monster (an orc, if you will)? Killing isn't wrong, when the thing you kill is compleately evil, is it? Too bad this has nothing to do with real life.
But on the other hand, we have Frodo. The hobbit, who starts by saying that Gollum should've been killed right away. By the end of the book, he didn't even want to touch a sword, and believed that even Saruman had the right to live. Is this what Tolkien was really trying to tell us, that no-one has the right to decide whether somone should live or not? (Gandalf had it a bit more eloquentely phraised, but he had had a couple of more centuries to think about it than me... [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]) That Frodo's growth could somehow symbolize his own?
And how does that sum up with all those oh-so-necessary battles, without wich ME would've been destroyed?

Now then. I'll leave you to it , and please forgive me if this topic has been discussed before, but I couldn't find it with the search-thingy.
And please don't be cruel to me, I'm only a little hobbit-girl trying to express my thoughts and failing miseraby. Ah well, I'll blame the time (2am). [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

~Elina

[ December 22, 2002: Message edited by: Nenya ]

12-22-2002, 06:12 PM	#1
Nenya Wight Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: the hand of Lady Galadriel Posts: 127	Tolkien & killling? This one has interested me a while. As we all know, Tolkien had seen two wars, and fought in the other one. He had seen almost all of his friends get killed, been in great danger himself, and feared for his son's life. All of this must've influenced his writings a great deal. Now, my question is, what were Tolkien's views on killing? Let's try and find the answere from his books: In LotR, there are lots of violence and battles. Most of them pretty straightforward, with "goodguys" and "badguys". Never is the enemy an equal human being (or hobbit, or whatever, you get the point),but an orc or something similar, making the killing far more ethically justified. But isn't that what you do in a war: make the enemy a faceless monster (an orc, if you will)? Killing isn't wrong, when the thing you kill is compleately evil, is it? Too bad this has nothing to do with real life. But on the other hand, we have Frodo. The hobbit, who starts by saying that Gollum should've been killed right away. By the end of the book, he didn't even want to touch a sword, and believed that even Saruman had the right to live. Is this what Tolkien was really trying to tell us, that no-one has the right to decide whether somone should live or not? (Gandalf had it a bit more eloquentely phraised, but he had had a couple of more centuries to think about it than me... [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]) That Frodo's growth could somehow symbolize his own? And how does that sum up with all those oh-so-necessary battles, without wich ME would've been destroyed? Now then. I'll leave you to it , and please forgive me if this topic has been discussed before, but I couldn't find it with the search-thingy. And please don't be cruel to me, I'm only a little hobbit-girl trying to express my thoughts and failing miseraby. Ah well, I'll blame the time (2am). [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] ~Elina [ December 22, 2002: Message edited by: Nenya ]