LotR -- Book 4 - Chapter 08 - The Stairs of Cirith Ungol

[Encaitare]

Originally Posted by Lathriel

It just shows that appearances can be deceiving. Just like Saruman clothing himself in white. That was an illusion too, and it would have been much more appropriate for Saruman to dress in black.

That's what I like about this, though: everything is not strictly divided into black = bad, white = good. It goes this way in many cases, ie: Mordor, the Black Land, and Gandalf the White. But then we also have opposite examples, such as the black (or "sable") standard of the King of Gondor, and the White Hand of Saruman. It's a refreshing change, really.

I don't know about anyone else, but sometimes I find the super-evil, black-clad villain to get very old. A "color reversal" I liked was in Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule, in which the chief baddie -- not a nice guy at all -- lived in a beautiful palace in a pleasant land, was very handsome, and happened to fancy wearing white robes.

In Tolkien's works, evil is associated with darkness -- but then, if it were not for darkness, we could not see the stars. This may just be a random musing, but I just wondered whether there is a difference in Tolkien between blackness and darkness. The elvish mor seems to be used interchangeably to mean black or dark. But the people/places who hold this title as part of their names range from the Moriquendi to Morwen to Moria to Morgoth.

The Moriquendi never beheld the Two Trees, which might be considered a sorrow to the Calaquendi. Yet these "Dark Elves" are not evil. Morwen was named thus for her dark hair -- she was not evil either. But Moria is a dark and evil place, and we all know how unpleasant Morgoth was...

Thoughts?