Unnumbered Tears - what if?

[symestreem]

Originally Posted by davem

Tolkien wouldn't have created such a personification of evil, because he had seen real evil on the Somme, & knew that it's really cowardly, self obsessed & cruel.

By the Somme I assume you mean the Western Front in World War I. I question your portrayal of the war as 'evil'. Who exactly was evil? The Central Powers, for seeking domination? The Allied Powers, for opposing them and causing bloodshed? I also question the extent to which Tolkien saw real evil on the front lines. Soldiers do what they are told- this was before the Nuremberg trials. The evil to be found would have been in the high command, not the men-at-war. That doesn't mean that the war was right- I just think that evil has to be deliberate. For example, Morgoth was evil because he was trying to be evil, but Feanor was not evil.

[davem]

Originally Posted by symestreem

By the Somme I assume you mean the Western Front in World War I. I question your portrayal of the war as 'evil'. Who exactly was evil? The Central Powers, for seeking domination? The Allied Powers, for opposing them and causing bloodshed? I also question the extent to which Tolkien saw real evil on the front lines. Soldiers do what they are told- this was before the Nuremberg trials. The evil to be found would have been in the high command, not the men-at-war. That doesn't mean that the war was right- I just think that evil has to be deliberate. For example, Morgoth was evil because he was trying to be evil, but Feanor was not evil.

What is your concept of evil, if the Somme battlefield doesn't graphically portray the presence of it for you? Try this link & then tell me there was no deliberate evil to be seen on the Somme:

http://toosvanholstein.nl/greatwar/t.../tolkiene.html

Its not about individual persons doing 'evil' things - its much deeper & more horrible , a callous disregard, a lack of compassion, a deliberate infliction of suffering & degradation. All too often done for the 'highest' reasons, by people convinced they're in the right . Morgoth is a 'symbol' of something monstrous which is just way too close to most of us, & the 'spirit' of Morgoth was in the air of the Somme.

[Lalaith]

There is evil to be found in all wars, but not all wars are alike in cause and situation. I apologise for what I know is generalisation, but I think WWI was, overall, an evil situation which was the result of unbelievable blundering stupidity from those in charge on both sides. WWII was different in that the evil there was more deliberate, one-sided and premeditated.
It is interesting that Tolkien's work, born out of the first kind of evil, actually in general portrays the latter.

[symestreem]

My definition of evil, as best as I can put it into words, is doing something bad or harmful deliberately without extenuating circumstances, to further your own ends or to hurt people. The Somme line was a case of two opposing groups fighting for their lives because their commanders ordered them into battle. There were cases of evil in this campaign, there's no doubt about that. However, the two groups of soldiers killing each other was not evil, or not evil on their part. It was the result of misguided and possibly evil decisions by the command.

[davem]

Well, the soldiers didn't have to obey their orders to kill, so we can't absolve them entirely of any moral resposibility for their actions. They were moral beings, not robots.

Also, we can't say how much deliberate cruelty, & therefore 'evil', was committed by individual soldiers. I just think its too simplistic to say the 'evil' ones were all in the war rooms, & everyone on the battlefield was morally good.

What you have to keep in mind is that WW1 was the first war of the Machines - planes & tanks appear for the first time, there is the use of such things as heavy machine guns, barbed wire, high explosives, barbed wire stretched across the battlefield, & yet the men, from the commanders down are still basically 'victorians'. Men are sent across the mud into machine gun fire with fixed bayonets! There are still cavalry divisions - officers riding horses into battle & fighting with swords.

If you think about that madness surely you're struck by the presence of something beyond callous or incompetent commanders dispatching innocent, unthinking young men to their deaths. There was something else. It was hell & hell is suffused with the presence of evil. there was something'evil' in all that waste, a good part of a whole generation thrown away, the soldiers themselves throwing their own lives away. Some thing more than insanity was going on there, & I don't know what else to call it but 'evil' - not evil individuals, but evil nonetheless.