|
Of course - Tolkien sets up a situation where the 'bad' guys are (in most cases) irredeemably 'BAD', or deluded by Sauron. The Uruks who attack Helm's Deep are accused of 'reckless hate', not 'reckless courage'. And perhaps this is why the siege of HD fails to rise to the heights of the siege of Troy - there is no bitter & terrible conflict of Achilles & Hector. Aragorn wins, but he, & the rest of the heroes (& this is a central point, so I'll seperate it out)
have no need to feel remorse - yet it is his remorse that humanises Achilles & makes him a tragic hero rather than merely a 'superhero'. No-one ever questions the morality of the fight - because Tolkien has given us an 'easy (in the moral sense) war. Of course in such a war no-one on the 'good' side will question the morality of their actions - or even the necessity of slaughtering dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of the enemy, because the enemy deserve it, & there is nothing good to say of them. One cannot even respect their courage in defence of a wrong cause, because they are all cowards.
Does this situation actually reduce the heroes to a little more than Rent-o-kill operatives & make them a little less than fully human - they can slaughter without thought or necessity for remorse - Aragorn will never have to sit while the father of an Orc pleads to be allowed to retrieve the body of the son Aragorn hacked to pieces on the Pelennor, & Eomer will never have to choose whether or not to allow an Orc's sister to retrieve the head he stuck on a pole for proper burial.
So, our heroes can slay the enemy & never have to face the consequences of having taken a life - if only because the lives they take are not worth counting. There is no real horror or ugliness in the killing, & there is, one could argue, no moral or ethical growth in the characters because there is no necessity to question what one has done.
Yet, Tolkien had seen real war, seen real human beings riddled with bullet holes & blown apart (who knows if he himself had taken a life (or many lives)). The more I consider this the more it intrigues me.
|