Celebrim - I hope you don't object that I'm replying to multiple posts here, and also changing the sequence of your paragraphs a little.
Tolkien creates a deliberately pre-Christian world with a creator deity largely unrevealed to its mortal inhabitants. There is no element of his middle earth that is analogous to Christendom. Minas Tirith is not Rome. Denethor is not the Pope or the Holy Roman Emperor.
All this is true.
I think it would nonetheless incorrect to say that that is what LotR is about or that the allusion to the threat of Eastern invasion is means that the Eastern invaders are analogous to particular real-world racial groups and that the story is really about a contest between Europeans and non-Europeans.
Agreed.
Tolkien is drawing on elements of the European mythic and historical pallette, including allusions to the repeated threat of invaders to Europe
Agreed, and this is what is crucial to my contention.
Fantasy and Science Fiction share that they invent The Other primarily to compare and contrast it with humanity. Quite often (and I'd like to say 'most of the time'), the author is not trying to say, "Humanity is like this.", but rather, "Humanity is NOT like this, and by contrasting humanity with things that it is not, we might gain a better grasp of that slippery question of what humanity is."
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So fantasy might be interested in the question, "Do humans have free will?", and it might respond by trying to imagine a race that clearly does or doesn't have free will and then comparing and contrasting humanity with the invention to answer the question, "Is humanity like the race that clearly doesn't have free will, or is it different?"
My point is, however, when you make the relevant other wield a scimitar, or have swarthy skin, or speak in a guttural language; when you deploy the notion of "rightful kingship" (a Christain European notion) as part of your mythological palette; etc - this is not an uninteresting feature of the story. And it can be a mark of racialised thinking. And I contend that thinking of this sort can be found in Tolkien - and I offer as my contrast the Earthsea trilogy.
When we talk about elves and dwarves is that what is really at stake? Or, when we discuss the Ruml or the Soft Ones, or we really essentially interested in the literary and dramatic representation of cultural differences? I don't think that holds true. I think you could use invented races as less inflamatory standins for discussing racial and cultural differences, but I hardly think that the fact that one author does means that we should force that reading on every invented race we encounter.
I agree. Hence, as you said earlier, we're not talking about allegories. But it can still matter what tropes, what devices, what allusions an author uses to make the points s/he wishes to make (whether or not those points are themselves points about cultural difference or identity).
I think for all your recognition of Tolkien's Catholocism, you rather invert the normal Catholic way of looking at the world. How is it that pride has suddenly become a smaller and more forgivable vice or sin that any other? You might as well say that at least Satan isn't orcish in his outlook, because he is traditionally portrayed as being motivated by pride. And furthermore, I think you do the Numenoreans far more credit than Tolkien did to say they weren't motivated by base greed and hatred. The Valinoreans had something that they wanted and which was withheld from them, and they came in their rage and pride to take it.
The story of LotR is about humility. It seems a rather strange take on the story to suggest that Tolkien is somehow writing about the relative nobility of pride or how justifiable it may be in small doses. Frodo was a very humble person, but even his small amount of pride would have been lethal to him had not providence intervened.
Responding to this is difficult in part because of forum rules - we're already pushing the limits of "no politics", and I don't want to go too far over the line of "no religion". But I'll do my best to not offend.
I agree that LoTR ranks humility as the highest virtue. And I agree it ranks pride as a great sin - so that Saruman, Sauron, the Black Numenoreans etc are, in the end, greater examples of villainy then the mere orcs. I think that this is also demonstrated by the almost sympathetic treatment of the conversation between the orcs that Sam overhears while wearing the ring post-Shelob.
On the other hand, read the book and ask yourself who would you rather be? Or know? Or be governed by? Denethor, or Shagrat? Although pride is the gravest sin, it is also compatible with living a fully human and flourishing life. Faramir may be more virtuous than Boromir, but Boromir's life is hardly a wasted one. He dies at peace with himself, reconciled to himself, and proud. Compare that to the life of an orc.
In my view this is expressive of a complexity (perhaps a tension) that is evident in Catholic (and other Christian) moral and social thought, both medieval and contemporary, of reconciling human values with divine (redemptive) values. Saruman and Sauron are players in this game. The orcs don't even get a look in.
Turning the focus back on to Tolkien in particular, the complexity of reconciling a commitment to human values (which include proper pride) and redemptive values (which repudiate pride in favour of humility) is also one that is evident in the romantic and post-romantic response to industrialism, which is a question of culture and value evidently dear to Tolkien's heart. On the one hand, industrialism is critiqued as elevating pride, and the pursuit of material control and success, above redemption and other spiritual concerns. On the other, industrialism is critiqued as making pride impossible for ordinary people, because they are transformed from yeoman and crafters to mere factors in the industrial processes of production. I'm not saying that these two critiques are inconsistent, but reconciling them is not a trivial intellectual matter.
Thus, I think that it is no surprise that the treatment of pride vs humility in LoTR is a subtle matter, in which truly human protagonists have a part to play on both sides. But the orcs do not. The particular moral failing of which
they are expressive - barbarity in the fullest sense - is not one that is imputed to any of these truly human protagonists. In my view, as I have said, this is not uninteresting when one also notices the way that orcs are characterised by reference to the various racialised tropes I've mentioned in earlier posts.
If you really want to push this argument, I think you can do a better job showing that Tolkien's treatment of the elves ended up created 'racialized thinking' in D&D than you can with either orcs or humans. In particular, I think D&D elves are blushes on Tolkien elves in a way that highlights the cultural and ethnic divisions that developed between Tolkien's elves (which for Tolkien were primarily interesting as ways of discussing how language evolves) that was racialized when it was recreated in D&D. In particular, I'm thinking about how in 1e AD&D, every single elvish culture required the creation of a new elvish racial group - Sea Elves, Snow Elves, Wild Elves, Grey Elves, Wood Elves, Dark Elves, High Elves, Sun Elves, Moon Elves, and who knows what else.
This raises its own issues about sensible game design, but I'm not sure that it contributes in any further way to racialised thinking. The numbers of sub-races get so great, and their differences so unconnected to any points of human social contention, that I don't see any real compounding of the issue I'm concerned with.
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