Absolute Good in Lord of the Rings

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

I think you should start this thread!

Oh, I've not much time these days for watching a thread so closely--even replying sometimes I'm so tardy that the thread has quite moved on and no one knows quite where I'm coming from--rather hilarious really. Let someone else if it's wanted.

I don't think most people would ever think of shunning as a bad thing - I think it's one of those things (like childbirth or depression) that until it happens to you or someone you know, you can never really comprehend. On the surface it just sounds as though someone has been sent away but in reality it means the loss of your identity, friends, loved ones, and maybe even worse. It happened to my grandmother when she married outside her faith and her own mother died.

So if Tolkien included it as something which happened to one of his characters I wouldn't necessarily say that he was equating the shunners with wrong doing. Plus there's the fact that he himself was threatened with punishment if he carried on seeing Edith before he was 21 and he went along with that.

Sad story, that, about your grandmum. Hmm, different cultures, different strokes. I don't know anyone here who would condone the extreme forms of shunning. There are families who get into a tiff and won't speak, but by and large I think around here people sense that shunning contributes to a worsening of the situation rather than a healing or a true correction. I don't know many who would refuse to speak. 'course, maybe that's the influence of a culture which leans more to therapists than to dogmatics.

Interesting point about the pressure put on Tolkien over his teenage infatuation with Edith. Clearly, the event was formative given their tombstone reads "Beren and Luthien." He "went along with it" but he wasn't in a particularly strong position at the time, and that does not mean he didn't have thoughts about it later in life. (Carpenter did, if I recall the biography correctly.) However, I'm not the one to make direct or uncomplicated links between an author's bio and his life and this isn't the thread to start that topic! Certainly, consider the character Tolkien gave the shunning to--Smeagol/Gollem. It fits so well with psychiatric theories of the abuses of extreme shunning that I can't help but wonder how much Tolkien thought about belonging. Certainly, the theme of the fellowship, the ties of the four hobbits, and Sam and Frodo's friendship all point towards community as being an essential Good in the tale and to put one beyond that is, to put them beyond the pale. so to speak.