[Amarinth]

thanks too, joy, for sharing quickbeam's very eloquent article.

it's kinda surprising for me to know (yes, alas, just now) that some racial slurs have been levelled against tolkien, including an implied xenophobia with his characterization of the southrons and haradrim. see, i'm asian, and have been reading tolkien's works for the longest time, and i've never ever equated these characters with us. as i understood it, men were traditionally under the sway of the dark lords, being easier to corrupt than the quendi; in the first age, for example, only the three houses of the edain were friendly to the quendi and fought against morgoth.

again, as i understood it, in the third age, the southrons and haradrim fell under the dominion of sauron because, having no real contact with the valar and the first-born, they were easier to turn against these and their friends, the numenoreans. they were also geographically closer to mordor and thus flocked to the closest natural ally. as to the discord between them and the elf-friends, well, i never really equated it with evil vs. good, but rather, with the traditional dislike of a native-born to a colonizer, which btw the numenoreans were.

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every man's life is a path to the truth -- hesse