kalessin --that was breathtaking! your scientific way of sieving the racism issue using species vs. race distinction is genius. i'm almost sure even tolkien didn't think of it though [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img], being a believer in the christian faith which is antithetic to evolutionary science. but maybe in the back of his mind, he had an intuitive grasp of this distinction?
rereading this thread, it becomes plain that tolkien only desired to create his own myth from the perspective he did belong in, which was the western one. to have expected him to write a myth conforming to the sensibilities of all races on earth is unreasonable. the fact even that his novels in several instances spoke of racial and species "barriers" falling away for the better (gimli and legolas, gimli at lorien, dwarves at nargothrond, huan, the ents, the great eagles) demonstrates tolkien's belief in the universality of good.
i shall continue to belive what is plain in the novel, than what is implied without.
---------------------------------------------
every man's life is a path to the truth -- hesse
__________________
pity this busy monster,manunkind, not / -progress is a comfortable disease;/ your victim (death and life safely beyond) / plays with the bigness of his littleness
---ee cummings
|