/lit/ - Literature

>>22268419
If he saw what was going on today then he’d certainly think so.

>>22268419
>>22268429
he'd consider the invasion in its early stages and perhaps something like the moorish conquest of spain. he wouldnt count us out entirely, having seen and always written about so many occasions in which the aryan hobbits and others managed to make a comeback victory very late in the match facing dire odds.

>>22268419
Short answer, yes. Long answer, not ultimately.

There's a character in LOTR (maybe it's Elrond?) who calls the battle against Sauron and, ultimately, Morgoth (which has raged by for thousands of years by the time of the LOTR) "the Long Defeat." He basically admits that evil is never truly vanquished and must be continually stamped out when it rears its head.

The arc of the stories of Middle Earth is one of increasing disenchantment. In the beginning, you have basically an elvish Eden, which gradually gets debased by evil agents from outside, until the elves flee to Middle Earth, which is sort of like a postlapsarian state. Then, men come along and make things a bit rougher, less magical and more mechanistic. At the end of the Third Age (the end of LOTR), basically all of the elves and even dwarves are leaving Middle Earth, ceding dominion of the world to man. Fast forward untold millennia, and you now have our world, where Mordor-esque industrial brutality prevails. So, in a sense, Mordor wins.

However, this is not the whole story for Tolkien. In his Ainulindale (creation myth for his universe, which is the first chapter of the Silmarillion), he describes the supreme creator Illuvatar generating the world as a song. The lesser deities, known as the Valar, begin to contribute their own music to the song of creation. The most powerful of the Valar, Morgoth, begins to introduce discordant music of his own in an attempt to thwart Illuvatar's designs. However, Illuvatar is able to shape Morgoth's music into alignment with his own, weaving his evil intentions into the master plan, basically; then, he says something like, "everything you produce has its ultimate origin in me, and nothing you can do will avoid contributing to my song as I intend." This betrays Tolkien's ultimately Christian view on evil: it may triumph in this world, but God himself, the supreme Good, is the author of all, and his story is inevitably a Divine Comedy.

>>22268513
>The most powerful of the Valar, Morgoth, begins to introduce discordant music of his own in an attempt to thwart Illuvatar's designs. However, Illuvatar is able to shape Morgoth's music into alignment with his own, weaving his evil intentions into the master plan, basically; then, he says something like, "everything you produce has its ultimate origin in me, and nothing you can do will avoid contributing to my song as I intend."
I like this, and I have had this kind of thought towards our world as well. Society might seem really discordant right now; but sometimes in a piece of music, dissonance and tension is vital, so that when all the loose notes are pulled back into a harmony, it's all the more satisfying.

>>22268419
No because Tolkien believed in divine providence. In fact, divine providence is what ultimately defeats Sauron in the end. Not the strength or guile of some hero, but an act of fate. Frodo himself succumbs to temptation at Mt. Doom. You might say Gollum is the "hero" but that's just superficial. No, Gollum was a wretched and fallen creature. But God, through divine providence, can use even the wretched and fallen to enact His will.

>>22268419
Yes. The black machines of Mordor are the stuff of sorcery and witchcraft. Tolkien hated the ugliness of big industry, but appreciated the beauty in nature.

He was a big hippy.

>>22268474
Except Tolkien was opposed to industrial society entirely, and Europe is already fully industrialized.

No, you dunce. LotR describes real events that happened in the distant past.

>>22268736
So then from an LOTR perspective Mordor was defeated only to come back and win.

>>22268419
Why do people talk about this childish derivement of the Ring Cycle as if it says anything about modernity Wagner didn't already say? Sauron didn't win, Alberich won.

Grow up.

>>22268474
>the aryan hobbits
They were swarthy descendants of the Harfoots and Fallohides

>>22268419
No.

>>22268755
You could say Wagner is derivative too, a bastardization of the original myth

>>22268513
>This betrays Tolkien's ultimately Christian view on evil: it may triumph in this world, but God himself, the supreme Good, is the author of all, and his story is inevitably a Divine Comedy.
The theological view of evil in Tolkien's work directly mirrors catholic belief. Meaning that evil is introduced through influence of creations' with free will. Although it is originated by humans in theology of Thomas Aquinas, Tolkien most likely was inspired by the idea of evil from Paradise Lost where Lucifer is the creator of evil. Melkor is, of course, a stand in for Lucifer.

>>22270045
Which would make Tolkien both a bastardization of the original myths and Wagner.

>>22270045
No. Ring Cycle is mostly inspired by the parallels in industrial age and modern man. The myth takes a new form. Tolkien did not introduce a new or reformed myth, just shown it from a different perspective.

>>22270075
This.

>>22268545
>a hundred billion animals slaughtered annually is just a melodic tension bro
Filth

>>22270087
This is your mind on christianity

>>22270065
That doesn't seem to contradict what I said.

>>22268577
This is also true. For more on this, check out the "eucatastrophe" section of his essay "On Fairy Stories."