On 7/9/09, Dan Clore <clore@...> wrote:
> Roderick Long wrote:
>
> > By the way, in the foreword to LOTR, denying that the book is an
> > allegory of World War II, Tolkien notes: "if [the war] had inspired
> > or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring
> > would have bene seized ans used against Sauron; he would not have
> > been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dur would not have been
> > destroyed but occupied. Saruman, failing to get possession of the
> > Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found
> > in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and
> > before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to
> > challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth. In that conflict
> > both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they would
> > not long have survived even as slaves."
> >
> > That tells us something of what Tolkien thought both of the Ring and
> > of both sides in WW2.
>
> There's also a letter where he says that the difference between war in
> Middle Earth and war in the real world is that in the real world there
> are Orcs on both sides.

Both quotes sound almost like Dwight MacDonald before he became a neocon.


--
Kevin Carson
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