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And I take those points - yet, the Ruffians were not 'noble, fellow braves', but cowards. Of course Frodo realises that killing is wrong, & seeks to halt, or limit any deaths, but the question I'm posing is different. War seems to be a fact of life in both the primary & secondary world, but it is the nature of the enemy that interests me. In most wars there is heroism & self sacrifice on both sides - heroes fight heroes & no side has a sole claim on nobility & courage.
Except in Middle-earth. Frodo wants an end of killing per se - but that would require an end of the Warrior, of the cause worth dying for (& I'm not limiting 'Warrior' to the military sense).
And war, for all its horror, may produce heroism which is seen nowhere else - yet for such heroism to happen it seems to me that warriors must exist on both sides. If the other side consists wholly of cowardly 'monsters' then the 'hero' is actually reduced to the role of cockroach exterminator - he may go down fighting under a million cockroaches, & that may be a brave act if he does so willingly, to save his friends, but is it 'Heroic' in the Homeric sense - & is it 'tragic' or merely sad if the enemy is not equally noble & his death not an equal loss?
Now, none of this is meant to denigrate Tolkien's achievement, merely to ask whether something important has been missed out & whether that something is of far greater importance than the usual stuff Tolkien is accused of avoiding - like sex, for instance (Pullman's great bugbear. And interestingly Pullman does present us with a noble tragic 'anti-hero' - Lord Asriel...)
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