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Old 03-30-2006, 01:38 AM   #32
davem
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Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SpM
why they are condemned to a life of evil (portrayed as wrong by Tolkien in his writings) through no fault or choice of their own and indiscriminately slain without remorse by those on the side of good. That raises questions about the morality of the world which Tolkien created and the nature of the struggle between "good" and "evil" which is at the centre of it. And, while that world may have been Faerie in origin, it was also a Christian one, consciously so in the revision.
Well, this illustrates the problem in attempting to Christianise non-Christian things. Whatever Tolkien believed, you simply cannot have 'Christian' Elves or Faeries or Goblins, because those beings, & the world they inhabit, are non-Christian. Faerie does not live by the Ten Commandments.

Certainly there is a 'natural' moral code, a set of 'Laws' within Faerie, but these are bound up with its nature - if you break one of the 'rules' of Faerie you won't just get arrested & taken to court, where some clever Lawyer will get you six months in the Bahamas with a Social Worker of your choice in order to 'rehabilitate' you back into society - more likely you'll be eaten by a Dragon, or forced to perform six impossible tasks before breakfast.

That said, if Orcs are viewed as equivalent to Christian Demons, as I suggested previously, there is less of an issue. Orcs & Elves, in their origins are effectively a 'mythologisation' of the Angels & Demons (ie Fallen Angels, who were corrupted by Satan) placed in a mythic history of Humankind. I suspect that if Tolkien had called the creatures Demons rather than Goblins no-one would have even asked whether it was 'fair' that they should be condemned to a life of evil.
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