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CuriousG
Half-elven
Fri, 4:53pm
Post #26 of 35
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The Ent police are coming for you and your hasty ways; they should arrive about 4026 or so. //
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CuriousG
Half-elven
Fri, 5:00pm
Post #27 of 35
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It's always a good day when there's a link to Orwell. Such a great mind and writer. //
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Fri, 5:26pm
Post #28 of 35
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The suspense will probably kill me! :)
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You've got to change your hasty ways... NoWiz
Before I stop reading you
You've got to change... NoWiz
And every word that I say is true
Now I'm entstridin' and hiding
All over the wood
And my mates Merry and Pippin
Say that ain't good
This can't go on...
Lord knows you got to change...
with apologies to Carlos Santana At Woodstock. Hmmm - never knew he played gig in Oxfordshire...
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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Voronwë_the_Faithful
Valinor
Fri, 5:26pm
Post #29 of 35
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Yavanna standing like a tree under heaven
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I love that image so much that it was one that I asked to have illustrated for my book -- the only one of a scene that was not omitted from the published Silmarillion (and Anushka did an amazing job of capturing how I always imagined that image).
'But very bright were the stars upon the margin of the world, when at times the clouds about the West were drawn aside.'
The Hall of Fire
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CuriousG
Half-elven
Fri, 8:14pm
Post #30 of 35
(37 views)
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I like how Yavanna's description encapsulates Tolkien's greatest, most persistent loves in a single sentence: trees, light, music [winds of Manwe], stars [heaven], water/sea/Ulmo, and fertility contrasted with barrenness.
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Sat, 3:56pm
Post #31 of 35
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As if our existing list of utterly unanswerable questions were not enough, how do we see dragons in terms of potential autonomy from the local Dark Lord?
Tolkien voices Smaug (and I think Glaurung in Children of Hurin, but my copy is not to hand) in a very different way to his orc talk. Dragons sound articulate, educated. Orcs, on the other hand: I think it would be consistent with the text to imagine that if a dog has four thoughts, one for each paw (food, food, food, sex) an orc might have a similarly limited repertoire (violence, revenge, violence, food, perhaps). ...
...Now writing that immediately makes me want to imagine to contrary just for fun. Orcs who are right old intellectuals in private, a bit like the cameo played by Alice Cooper and his band in Wayne's World. Who can tell? But since that would have to rely entirely on supposition of things that happen beyond the text, it doesn't make for anything other than the weakest of theories. ...
...So, it's easy (for me) and consistent with the text to imagine orcs as having "a mind that's weak and a back that's strong"...
-- as the song goes, played by ZZ Top and Jeff Beck here Well, bless my beard! Frank Beard is the one playing the drums by the way. He does not have a beard. And nor is he my beard. Which is confusing, but not relevant in any way, come to think of it...
But dragons! I wanted to talk about dragons.
Smaug: his potential as an ally of Sauron is something Gandalf is thinking about according to Quest of Erebor (whether or not Tolkien had thought any such thing on Gandallf's behalf when he wrote TH). But, I think, 'ally' in that evil folk/psychopathic way that everyone is trying to use everyone else and the whole thing will break down as soon as betrayal is more appealing than co-operation to one of the parties. I don't get the sense that Smaug just thinks he's independent of Sauron but isn’t really.
Glaurung, now. Ally of Melkor, or something more like an instrument of Melkor with limited/no independence? That is, do we see Glaurung as potentially free to decide to have a fascinating chat with Turin instead - about the issues of rendering haiku in elvish say. Or is he bound to behave as Melkor wishes unless Melkor loses control for some reason in what you might call a reptile dysfunction.
For bonus points discuss whether it is likely that Melkor is suffering from a reptile dysfunction, and whether he should just go and talk to his doctor or pharmacist in confidence.
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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CuriousG
Half-elven
Sat, 6:44pm
Post #32 of 35
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which, of course, is short for Spotify. Spot has four paws: Kpop, Reggae, Rap, and The Beatles. Spot doesn't fetch sticks or bark at strangers; he makes new playlists for clubs on Ibiza. Wiz doesn't need to feed Spot; he just plays 8-track tapes for him. Spot shows no interest in reruns of "Lassie" or "Scooby-Do," but he's wags his tail at the Grammys and barks to vote. That's Spot.
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CuriousG
Half-elven
Sat, 7:39pm
Post #33 of 35
(21 views)
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Reptile loyalty and agency, or dysfunction
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Glaurung: so I remember from The Sil, and Tolkien Gateway cites Children of Hurin on the same point, that he set himself up as
Which says a lot about agency. Not: "Morgoth set him up as dragon-king," and not "Sauron came to Nargothrond on an errand from their mutual lord Morgoth, urging Glaurung to rule Nargothrond as dragon-king and gather many orcs to himself." Nope, he does it himself.
At the same time, I'm back to "what can readers credibly imagine him doing," and I don't see him becoming "Dragon-Emperor of Beleriand, gathering Sauron and other dragons and balrogs to him and making war on Angband." I mean, he could! But it seems within the legendarium, Morgoth never faces a credible threat to depose him by an underling, and neither does Sauron, and they're the only two Big Bads we have for ages at a time. So I think the rules of a Tolkien Dark Lord is that they don't allow much agency to their underlings, never enough to challenge them for power, though they can wreak havoc on their own. Glaurung as Dragon-King was a menace to Doriath and any Elf-Man resistance in western Beleriand, so he was furthering Morgoth's goals. Which is probably why Orcs readily agreed to follow him.
It still seems with Smaug that Sauron couldn't take him for granted: he might have to negotiate with him and offer him something for an attack on Rivendell or Minas Tirith. But I'd stick with the idea that both sides know how asymmetrical the relationship is: kinda like Italy asking Malta to do something.
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CuriousG
Half-elven
Sat, 8:21pm
Post #34 of 35
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2 exceptions: Ungoliant and Saruman
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They are outliers, but I'll still account for them as challengers to the Dark Lord.
1. Ungoliant wasn't a direct servant of Morgoth's and instead a free agent. She seemed the junior partner in their crime spree, until swallowing all the jewels made her more powerful, so naturally she challenged him. But Balrogs showed up, and she disappeared and moved on, not setting up a realm to rival and unseat Morgoth.
2. Saruman, if he could get the One Ring, would have gone from Sauron-servant to Sauron-rival, so he's an exception, but he didn't start as a Sauron-servant, and we never saw the rivalry take place. Though it's suggested it would have.
‘It is a pity that our friends lie in between,’ said Gimli. ‘If no land divided Isengard and Mordor, then they could fight while we watched and waited.’
‘The victor would emerge stronger than either, and free from doubt,’ said Gandalf. ‘But Isengard cannot fight Mordor, unless Saruman first obtains the Ring.'
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noWizardme
Half-elven
9:08am
Post #35 of 35
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And allies better watch out in another way...
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Thanks for that CuriousG! 
It's striking me that any Dark Lord allies better watch out in another way too. We've covered that agreements aren't entered into with any particular intention by the Dark Lord to keep the his own side of the bargain. Everything comes with a 'Darth Vadar Clause' (to the effect of 'I've changed the deal: pray I don't change it any further").
The second risk of allying with a Dark Lord is trying to keep control of your free will, which he'll hijack if he can. I made a handy (though probably not exhaustive) list once:
Here are some cases where a talking, thinking creature has its free will tampered with or corrupted (it is not clear whether similar things could be done to control orcs) :
The Nazgul are talking, thinking creatures who are now total slaves to Sauron’s will. They gave away their free will in a Faustian bargain – into which I assume they foolishly entered of their own accord, rather than being forced into it. But maybe there is no foreseeable way back now.
Frodo and the Ring. In encounters with Black Riders, Frodo feels a strange urge to put it on. Sometimes he resists, and when he fails at Weathertop he realises that the urge comes from without. After this he no longer confuses it with his own will, but still, it’s a struggle not to obey its promptings. And at the last moment Frodo cannot throw the Ring into Mount Doom.
Pippin works himself up to take the Palantir from Gandalf, finding that he can’t sleep for thinking about it. The description of his theft of it is all the more disturbing because he seems simultaneously eager to get it and reluctant (‘you knew you were behaving wrongly and foolishly; and you told yourself so, though you did not listen’ Gandalf tells him later). It seems that an outside force is trying to operate covertly, disguising itself as Pippin’s own wishes and exploiting his natural curiosity (and resentment that Gandalf didn’t thank him for saving the Palantir when it fell).
It would be arguable that Boromir, when trying to seize the Ring by force, is in a similar position (‘you knew you were behaving wrongly and foolishly; and you told yourself so, though you did not listen’). Whether that’s a useful thought or not, Boromir too recovers, and is able to decide to protect Merry and Pippin, rather than try and track Frodo for another attempt on the Ring.
Saruman’s Voice is another example of interference with the thinking of others. Tolkien explains some of how it works in Letter 210:
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“Saruman’s voice was not hypnotic but persuasive. Those who listened to him were not in danger of falling into a trance, but of agreeing with his arguments, while fully awake. It was always open to one to reject, by free will and reason, both his voice while speaking and its after-impressions. Saruman corrupted the reasoning powers.”
The recurring theme is that outside tampering with one’s free will is easier to counter if one sees it for what it is (and makes that discovery in time).
From an earlier (September 2024) discussion of orcs
And I think there's something that I didn't get to in my "take dragons now" post that will go well here: I was thinking of orcs as (possibly) weak-willed and not terribly intelligent and so (perhaps) easier to keep under control. The term 'useful idiots' occurred to me wrt the orcs.
But (interestingly, to me at any rate) I associate this phrase with Joseph Stalin's dismissive name for his apologists in the West. Among whom were a lot of people with a great deal of formal education, probable sophistication in thought and definite sophistication in writing or speech. Probably Tolkien knew some of them in Oxford University circles: and similarly he most likely encountered their equivalents on the right: 'useful idiots' who were apologists for Hitler or Mussolini.
I sometimes think Saruman's speech to Gandalf about the regrettable necessity of either co-operating with Sauron or beating him to the Ring might be based on the sorts of self-justifying postures Tolkien might have heard applied to his contemporary politics. Whether that's right or not, I don't think intelligence is all that much of a Defence Against the Dark Lords in Middle-earth.
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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