Tolkien, Technology, and... War

[Estelyn Telcontar]

There's a wonderful passage in The Hobbit that gives a comment about the Goblins and their love for technology and weapons. From it, we can assume that Tolkien connected technology with its negative destructive effects.

Now goblins are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted. They make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones... Hammers, axes, swords, daggers, pickaxes, tongs, and also instruments of torture, they make very well, or get other people to make to their design.. It is not unlikely that they invented some of the machines that have since troubled the world, especially the ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once, for wheels and engines and explosions always delighted them...