|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
boldog
Rohan
Feb 12 2015, 9:15am
Post #1 of 9
(1264 views)
Shortcut
|
|
Easterlings and Haradrim - Evil or forced to fight?
|
Can't Post
|
|
The way I see these men in the books is being constantly oppressed. Particularly the Haradrim. First they Numenor attacking them, then Gondor, and then Saurons dominion. I personally pity these men in the stories.
The way I see it is that they were forced to fight for Sauron. Perhaps as ransom for their land, families, lives? Obviously some promise would have also been woven in there which would never be fulfilled.
I picture these men to be like the Jews during their dominion by the Romans. They hated the lack of their own free country, and especially the paying of taxes to the Romans. They are forced to pay taxes otherwise face a mass retaliation by the Romans.
In this situation Sauron is the Romans, and the tax paying is instead offered in armed force. If the men of these lands refused to give Sauron armed forces, he would bring war upon their lands.
So deep down the men loathe Sauron, but if it means the safety of their families, then they will do whatever they must to keep Sauron pleased.
thoughts??
Azog and Bolg. That is all I can say.............
|
|
|
squire
Half-elven
Feb 12 2015, 12:51pm
Post #2 of 9
(1192 views)
Shortcut
|
|
You may be right, but Tolkien is usually pretty clear about group morality.
[In reply to]
|
Can't Post
|
|
From our modern democratic perspective, the common soldier cannot be 'evil' because we identify with him. Tolkien's passage about the dead Harad warrior in The Two Towers is evidence that the author had a lot of sympathy with this point of view.
But he remains clear that in the context of his larger story, the peoples of the East and South are hostile towards the Men and Elves of the West, and that they follow Sauron willingly for all practical purposes. I think it's possible to reconcile this by remembering that Tolkien tends to focus on the highest leadership, the kings and lords, when he crafts his wars and migrations and conflicts, Thus, perhaps, you might decide that it's the leaders and chieftains of the Easterlings and Haradrim who have become completely corrupted by Sauron, to the point where they are, in fact, evil Men. The armies follow their leaders, and commit their crimes, willingly or not.
squire online:
RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'.
Footeramas: The 3rd & 4th TORn Reading Room LotR Discussion and NOW the 1st BotR Discussion too! and "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
 = Forum has no new posts. Forum needs no new posts.
|
|
|
Darkstone
Immortal
Feb 12 2015, 3:35pm
Post #3 of 9
(1187 views)
Shortcut
|
|
"By our valour the wild folk of the West are still restrained..."
[In reply to]
|
Can't Post
|
|
"... and the terror of Gondor kept at bay; and thus alone are peace and freedom maintained in the lands behind us, bulwark of the East."
-Translations from the Orcish
******************************************
I met a Balrog on the stair,
He had some wings that weren't there.
They weren't there again today,
I wish he would just fly away.
|
|
|
Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Feb 12 2015, 4:11pm
Post #4 of 9
(1177 views)
Shortcut
|
|
Samwise pondered this very same question.
[In reply to]
|
Can't Post
|
|
In The Two Towers ("Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit") Sam sees his first (dead) Haradrim:
It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace--all in a flash of thought which was quickly driven from his mind.
So it seems likely that Tolkien did not view all Haradrim nor Easterlings as evil. Some would doubtless have been considered to be good at heart--forced by circumstance into a war not of their own choosing.
"The Great Scaly One protects us from alien invaders and ourselves with his fiery atomic love. It can be a tough love - the “folly of man” and all that - but Godzilla is a fair god.
"Godzilla is totally accepting of all people and faiths. For it is written that liberal or conservative, Christian or Muslim or Jew, straight or gay, all people sound pretty much the identical as they are crushed beneath his mighty feet." - Tony Isabella, The First Church of Godzilla (Reform)
(This post was edited by Otaku-sempai on Feb 12 2015, 4:12pm)
|
|
|
Darkstone
Immortal
Feb 12 2015, 4:26pm
Post #5 of 9
(1178 views)
Shortcut
|
|
It's very apt that it is Sam who ponders this question...
[In reply to]
|
Can't Post
|
|
...given that he himself was involuntarily dragooned into the war:
'Get up, Sam!' said Gandalf. I have thought of something better than that. Something to shut your mouth, and punish you properly for listening. You shall go away with Mr. Frodo!'
-The Shadow of the Past
When he muses about the Haradrim he could just as well be thinking about himself.
It says something that it was not those who willingly fought for fame, freedom, or fortune who won the war, but rather the everyday guy who just happened to get caught in the draft.
******************************************
I met a Balrog on the stair,
He had some wings that weren't there.
They weren't there again today,
I wish he would just fly away.
(This post was edited by Darkstone on Feb 12 2015, 4:28pm)
|
|
|
PhantomS
Rohan
Feb 13 2015, 2:55am
Post #6 of 9
(1151 views)
Shortcut
|
|
Of The Rings of Power And The Third Age
[In reply to]
|
Can't Post
|
|
In the east and south well nigh all Men were under his dominion, and they grew strong in those days and built many towns and walls of stone, and they were numerous and fierce in war and aimed with iron. To them Sauron was both king and god; and they feared him exceedingly, for he surrounded his abode with fire.
The Easterlings and Haradrim are descendants of these people and thus probably fight because they worship Sauron; the arrival of the Black Numenoreans in Umbar probably made it worse, as well as the coming of Queen Beruthiel (whose ship sailed past Umbar to parts unknown) and the arrival of Castamir and his sons. The Easterlings in the Silmarillion might be of this stock as well.
They bring all of their troops to the Pelennor, as opposed to sending a levy or a token force- complete with kings themselves coming. Aragorn's arrival with the southern Gondor men seemed to send only news back to the Harad, and no survivors. The Easterlings and Haradrim who are at the Black Gate continue to fight even though the Orcs and Trolls lose their minds, and even though they had larger numbers did not win and refused to surrender to the last.
|
|
|
Harold.of.Whoa
Rivendell
Feb 13 2015, 2:55am
Post #7 of 9
(1179 views)
Shortcut
|
For what it's worth, there are at least three occasions in LotR when Tolkien describes the Haradrim specifically as "cruel."
That may not address your topic, but it's interesting. That speaks to me of people you would not want to rub elbows with, irrespective of whose service they were pressed into.
|
|
|
Felagund
Rohan
Feb 25 2015, 10:11pm
Post #8 of 9
(1101 views)
Shortcut
|
|
the Men of Darkness and other racial ways of cataloging the world
[In reply to]
|
Can't Post
|
|
Tolkien pretty much divided Men up into near immutable categories, although as Squire says, this most immediately applies to the elites rather than the average soldier. The words of Faramir are illustrative of the categories, which applied by the Dúnedain (LotR, "The Window on the West"):
"For so we reckon Men in our lore, calling them the High, or Men of the West, which were Númenoreans; and the Middle Peoples, Men of the Twilight, such as are the Rohirrim and their kin that dwell still far in the North; and the Wild, the Men of Darkness."
The Haradrim, Easterlings and Variags were definitely in the Men of Darkness camp. And in a sense they were 'damned' from near the earliest days, and repeatedly thereafter. Morgoth went East around the time of the Awakening of Men and corrupted large numbers of them, if not the majority - the generic 'Easterlings'. It was from this Darkness-worshipping contingent that the proto-Edain were fleeing when they headed West, towards Beleriand. The grim and bloody fate of those who lived under this Darkness is sketched out in the 'Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth' (HoMe X) - a forerunner to what would happen millennia later on Númenor, once Sauron introduced Morgoth-worship.
After the downfall of Morgoth and before the rise of Sauron, those Men who had only known Darkness or lived in ignorance of the Valar had little opportunity to embrace a different path (The Silmarillion):
"And after the victory of the Lords of the West those of the evil Men [the Easterlings of Beleriand] who were not destroyed fled back into the east, where many of their race were still wandering in the unharvested lands, wild and lawless, refusing alike the summons of the Valar or Morgoth. And evil men came among them, and cast over them a shadow of fear, and they took them for kings. Then the Valar forsook for a time the Men of Middle-earth who had refused their summons and had taken the friends of Morgoth to be their masters"
In other words, they didn't have much of a chance to learn any differently.
Also worth mentioning in this context that not all of these Men of Darkness naturally flocked to Sauron, once he became the new Dark Lord. There's the quote provided by PhantomS earlier, about how Sauron became the god-king of the Men in the East and South of Middle-earth. I'd add to this the Middle-earth described in Tolkien's incomplete 'Tal-Elmar' short story - told from the point of view of Darkness worshipping / fearing Men in the Second Age (HoMe XII).
However, Unfinished Tales ("Concerning Galadriel & Celeborn") states that after the end of the War of the Elves and Sauron, Sauron was "wholly concerned with conquests in the East". This suggests that he had to do some fighting to bring these areas under his control (or keep them under his control). Amongst his numberless slaves in Núrn, there were presumably Men of Darkness - taken in war or as tribute from the neighbouring Men of Rhûn, Khand and Harad. That these realms / regions fought amongst themselves is described in Unfinished Tales ("Cirion & Eorl") - so a slave trade along these lines is conceivable. These slaves were granted possession of Núrn after the War of the Ring, in effect becoming a (presumably grateful) client state of the 'High Men' of the Reunited Kingdom of Gondor & Arnor.
Not that the Dúnedain always got it right with these categories, or that transfer from one to another couldn't happen. Of the original Easterlings who migrated into Beleriand, the Sons of Bór maintained faith with the Noldor - contra the despicable Sons of Ulfang. The Númenoreans got it wrong about those they called the Gwaithurim - the peoples of Minhiriath and Enedwaith whose woodland homes the Númenoreans destroyed, and from who the Dunlendings were descended. Despite arrogantly classifying these people as 'Men of Darkness', the Gwaithurim were in fact proto-Edainic people related to the Folk of Haleth, and therefore distant kinsmen of the Númenoreans themselves. Thus, although the Dunlendings were 'baddies' in the War of the Ring, they weren't in the sense of an Original Sin / Morgoth conversion committed in the depths of time. Their treatment after the Battle of Helm's Deep is perhaps Tolkien's concession to this motif. The Dunlending survivors are accorded a very different fate to the Orcs of Saruman.
And then there are the glaring and infamous examples of fallen Númenoreans. Firstly the 'King's Men', then the Black Númenoreans, and then the rebels of Gondor who went on to become the Corsairs of Umbar. As has been remarked elsewhere in this thread, all of these groups would have made things worse in the lands they conquered and settled in (Umbar, Near Harad, Far Harad?).
And there's the question, for me at least, of what these various tribes and confederations would have done if Sauron wasn't on the scene - what's the counterfactual here? Paraphrasing your Rome analogy slightly, and thinking about the great barbarian migrations of European history, it's quite possible that these guys would have had it in for the realms of north-west Middle-earth anyway - be they ruled by Dúnedain or the so-called Men of Twighlght / Middle Men (Northmen, like the Rohirrim, Men of Dale, Beornings and so on). Gondor, Arnor, Rohan, Dale - all of these places had shiny things that the Men of the East and South didn't have, wanted, and were prepare to wage war to get. Thus the various Wainrider invasions are described in "Cirion & Eorl" and the LotR Appendices as would-be wars of conquest and occupation. Rather than the 'Jews within the Roman Empire' analogy you use, I'd go with Rome versus Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Huns, Vandals etc. These were the authors of much destruction and mayhem, but no modern historian would ever write about them as being inherently evil.
A final word on the racial element, as I mentioned it in the title of this post. I know Tolkien has copped flak over the years for his alleged depiction of Easterners and Southerners as evil or flawed on racial grounds. Certain stereotypes do reoccur, at least at the elite level that Squire mentioned: the West is the Best; the South and East are full of the enemies of civilisation; the Men of Twilight are generally a good bunch of chaps who see things the Dúnedain way in the end (good ole Barliman, Bard, Beorn, Eorl, Éomer, Vidugavia, Marhari, Ghân-buri-Ghân and so on); the Men of Darkness all crave the destruction of the West.
However, I'd point out that the original Darkness in Middle-earth was in fact from the North (Utumno, Angband), and that even the favoured Men of the West, the Númenoreans could get it badly wrong. Geography aside, I reckon the racial issue is a bit more nuanced too, and probably has more to do with Tolkien's (very Catholic) concept of Original Sin. The 'Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth' makes the case that Men started off just fine, and even after the corruption of Morgoth seeped in, redeemed themselves time and again through self-sacrifice, good deeds and heroism. This goes for Edainic peoples as well as non-Edainic ones, like the Sons of Bór. Númenoreans could sink to depraved depths, and the Gwaithurim only ended up aiding Sauron due to their savage treatment at the hands of the so-called enlightened Númenoreans. The Dunlendings sided with Saruman, not because they were racially inclined to be evil, but because the hated Forgoil (Rohirrim) had stolen their lands. The Men of the Mountain embrace Darkness, are accursed but then earn redemption 3000 years later.
Welcome to the Mordorfone network, where we put the 'hai' back into Uruk
|
|
|
Felagund
Rohan
Feb 26 2015, 4:42pm
Post #9 of 9
(1087 views)
Shortcut
|
|
more cruelty, and the eye of the beholder
[In reply to]
|
Can't Post
|
|
Likewise, 'Balchoth' means 'cruel horde' in Sindarin (balch + hoth). This suggests that they weren't a nice bunch of people, at least from the point of view of Gondor.
Tolkien's intriguing unfinished story 'Tal-Elmar' tells a similar story, but from the other perspective. The protagonist, Tal-Elmar is of the Folk of Agar, who appear to be classic 'Men of Darkness'. However, his people refer to the warlike and would-be conquerors, the 'Fell Folk', who can be interpreted as distant relatives of those all-round good guys, the Edain.
Cruelty and so on obviously depends on the point of view, and who's dishing it out.
Welcome to the Mordorfone network, where we put the 'hai' back into Uruk
|
|
|
|
|
