[Kalimac]

Kronos, I don't mean to be rude but this whole thread has been about how people can misinterpret Tolkien's work in such ways - what we were saying was not that the book *cannot* be interpreted in racist ways, merely that there's no rational grounds for it (Tolkien was not trying to promote an Aryan worldview, or whatever it's called nowadays) - and so it *should* not be interpreted as a brief for that sort of thing. <P>You have a good point when you say that people will often get out of a book what they want to get out of it instead of looking at it objectively. But does this necessarily make the book itself guilty? Depends on the book. I'd say that "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" would be a guilty book, because its whole purpose in being created was to inflame anti-Semitism. It wouldn't exist without that. With Tolkien, the colour business is almost a side-note; that's not what the story is about. I get skittish when people talk about a book's potential for misinterpretation because that makes it sound like the book (or the author) is the involuntary cohort of anyone who decides to use it for evil purposes. <P>Besides, anyone with a sufficiently loopy opinion will be able to twist anything around to justify it. I've seen websites arguing that "The Chronicles of Narnia" are actually devices to subconsciously instruct children in death cults, but the fact that people are capable of interpreting them in that way does not mean that I am obliged to somehow justify my reading of them, or mount an elaborate defense of C.S. Lewis's non-cultic tendencies, before being comfortable in reading them. Charles Manson got his inspiration for killing sprees out of Beatles lyrics, but this doesn't take away from my enjoyment of the Beatles. <P>One more thing; you have to remember that often they will distort the actual text to get the results they want. I've run into this personally, under rather bizarre circumstances. Several years ago, a co-collegian of mine committed suicide by swallowing cyanide; an unusual and very nasty way to die. Recently I found out that several Holocaust-denial groups had picked up on the newspaper items about his death and had used the circumstances surrounding it as indirect evidence that the gas chambers couldn't have existed. Cracked in itself, but that wasn't all; they CHANGED several facts and grossly distorted several others to the point where the original incident was scarcely recognizable. I was furious, but there wasn't much to do except ignore them and remember the boy the way he ought to be remembered. So if someone from one of those groups tells you that something is a commonly-known Atlantean reference, or that something else can be interpreted as a symbol for Aryanism, triple-check it. They could have made those facts up on the spot. <P>I believe that neo-Nazi and Aryan groups use Tolkien's books to justify their positions, and while it bothers me, there's nothing I can do about it except enjoy the books as they were meant to be enjoyed, and not let their perversions of it trouble me. As long as they don't consist of more than 1% or 2% of the population, there's little more to be done than that.<p>[ 5:52 PM January 06, 2004: Message edited by: Kalimac ]