Seems Like Someone's Rooting for the Wrong Side

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

I'm afraid I want no more part of this. It's offensive, frankly. I will not 'justify', 'prove', 'qualify' or otherwise anything I have said because I am simply defending the right of people not to be insulted for the things in Tolkien which they personally find entertaining.

Oooh, umbrage and high dudgeon. Isn't that the last resort of those left without a leg to stand on?

I still think it would be valuable to consider where Tolkien put the dramatic action, whose decisions he described, how he presented the choices available in Middle-earth.

We don't have to accept his moral vision, but far more interesting than saying anything goes or you're bad if you like orcs is the aesthetic question of what he choose to highlight.

In giving the main focus to the choices and travails of the heroes, without developing the baddies to any large extent, without making them as attractive, as, say, the Byronic heroes were attractive, was Tolkien in fact creating a situation in which the very unwritten parts, the unstated possibilities, in fact create a situation which, likely, Tolkien wished to avoid, that is, an imaginative and dramatic interest in the baddies.

Would we all be as interested in balrog wings if Tolkien had been more direct? I don't think so. So, all this interest in Sauron and Melkor and orcs and Saruman, is it in fact created by Tolkien's avoidance of extensive description of evil. Is this a pursuable line of discussion?