[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

We ought not to forget that Dr. Shapiro is a serious academic, and that such people are not given to publishing opinions simply in order to upset an author's fans. We should also be aware that this is a newspaper article about what he has said: it has not been written by Dr. Shapiro himself, and his arguments may have been simplified or misrepresented.

That being understood, his is a legitimate line to take: there is a lot of stress placed on the purity of bloodlines in Númenorean culture; the Orcs are dark, diminutive, harshly-spoken and brutal, the very picture of a rampaging horde of savages.

On a more detailed analysis of the work one might note that the Haradrim, allies of Sauron, have a distinctly Indian feel about them: they are dark-skinned, dressing in exotic silks and gold, and riding elephants. A large number of the immigrants to Britain in the 1950s came from India. The Dunlendings, too, fall short of the Aryan ideal that Dr. Shapiro assumes Tolkien to have been promoting, and there is even a brief reference to "...black men like half-trolls with white eyes and red tongues" at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.

The argument is therefore one that can be supported, and I understand how somebody whose academic background lies in social and cultural history could come to that conclusion on a cursory examination of the work. It is, however, an erroneous one, as Dr. Shapiro would have realised had he devoted as much attention to actually reading the book as he has to tying it in with British social history.

Firstly, a representative of the Tolkien Society is on record as saying that he hated racism, which seems to me a good reason to assume that there was no racist intent on his part when he was writing his novel. Obviously this is what we would expect the Society to say, as they have a vested interest in ensuring that Tolkien's works do not become the focus of an anti-racism campaign. It is also possible, however unlikely, that Tolkien betrayed repressed racist impulses in his works. Even these improbable possibilities can, however, be discounted.

There is, for example, the question of Sauron's dark-skinned troops. Unlike the Orcs, they are portrayed as being "bold men and grim", "strong and war-hardened". They are always described in a manner that emphasises the fact that they are human, distinct from the sub-human Orcs and Trolls, almost as though to drive home the point that Orcs are not an allegory for any human race. It is also well worth noting that the Corsairs of Umbar, not to mention the Mouth of Sauron, are portrayed as being of Númenorean descent. Then there are the Wild Men, who take common cause with Sauron's enemies: they hardly conform to any idealised Anglo-Saxon model.

As for the Orcs themselves, their speech patterns sound more like those of thugs than immigrants: they are harshly-spoken rather than inarticulate, the brutality of their speech intended to convey the viciousness of their character. If anyone ought to be offended by this portrayal it's bigoted, selfish and ignorant people who swear constantly; it certainly isn't aimed at a particular ethnic group.

Then there's the matter of the blood-lines: simply put, European sagas are infested with genealogies. When power and status are hereditary it tends to breed an obsession with tracing and recording one's antecedents, sometimes with a little embellishment. This interest in blood has nothing to do with race, but with connection with power, as evinced by the inclusion of gods in most saga genealogies. Actually, if we wanted to, we could describe Beren and Lúthien as a mixed-race couple. That could throw the racism theory a little out of kilter.

This is further achieved by the note that one of the larger themes throughout LoTR is the burgeoning friendship between Legolas and Gimli, whose races are sundered by what amounts to racial mistrust. Each comes to appreciate the culture of the other, and their friendship brings to a more personal level the increased co-operation between the two races that is required for the defeat of their mutual enemy. If one wants to look for racial themes, this seems to me to be the more obvious.

As for the assertion that Tolkien believed in some mythical pure England, this is sheer nonsense. Tolkien believed, quite correctly, that England (being a country established and named by invading Germanic tribes) had lost its mythology when the Normans invaded. He was trying to rebuild the lost legends of Anglo-Saxon England, which is scarcely a fictional entity. To suggest that he believed in some idea of racial purity is nonsensical. He was well aware of Britain's cultural history, he was merely attempting to enrich one aspect of it, in which he had a particular interest.

Essentially, then, there has been a fundamental misunderstanding of Tolkien and his work. The idea that Dwarves are idealised Scots is frankly ludicrous, and the invading threat to the village ideal is technological "progress", not immigration. Time is short, and both HarperCollins and the Tolkien Society have covered the points about timing, so it remains for me only to state that I was not attracted to the novel by racist undertones, which I hope I have debunked as thoroughly as I may. You can find in Tolkien's work whatever you want to find. If this academic wishes to find racism then that's rather sad, but he's entitled to look for it. I hope that he's made to look extremely foolish by the publication of this article.

[ December 16, 2002: Message edited by: Squatter of Amon Rudh ]