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Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 5117727" data-attributes="member: 3400">You probably want to leave a lot of the pulp writers like Robert E. Howard out of your D&D too, frankly. While LotR does, I think, draw on some orientalist racial stereotyping (like Bill Ferny's friend, the squint-eyed, sallow-faced spy from Isengard), I think it's also important to note that there are multiple levels of the story going on here. You've got the destiny of Aragorn's lineage writ at one level of the story, that ties in with his natural racial/cultural nobility and the contrasting you see between the Men of the West bearing the cultural legacy of the early alliance with the elves and Valar and everyone else, particularly the forces of Mordor (some of whom ally, others of whom are intimidated/dominated into Sauron's armies). That's all strongly influenced by great epic myth and legend which typically pit one group against another, like Arthur fighting the barbarous Saxons, or the Saxons fighting the Normans, etc. But at another level of the story, you've see the world through plain Hobbit sense. Sam sees a dead man of Harad and wonders, at a sympathetic level, what brought him to that battlefield. And it's at the Hobbit sense level that I think we can see Tolkien's main sympathies.</blockquote>