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Althoun
Menegroth
Mar 12 2019, 1:43am
Post #26 of 56
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Annatar is the single most important casting call....
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And the character who could prove the trickiest for the screenwriters to convincingly portray.
He is the "Lord of the Rings" after all, the eponymous namesake for the entire saga.
I concur with Mari D and Thor'n'Oakenshield about the need for Sauron to be depicted as a layered antagonist, with motives (originally "fair" ones, like his guise of Annatar, let's remember Tolkien wrote in his latter stage of reflection) that we may, if grudgingly, sympathise initially - as did the Elves of Eregion whom he won to his cause of forging the rings of power, for the ostensible purpose of rejuvenating the scarred and neglected lands of Middle-Earth, which the Valar had simply abandoned to the dominion of Men whilst they halled themselves up in the forbidden lands of Aman.
Tolkien's description in his letters of Sauron as an aspiring "reformer" who had been given a chance by the Valar to repent after the War of Wrath and only slowly descended back into outright villainy, and at the last developed an impulse to dominate the world, is definitive for me. It must be abided by. There is something of the horribly flawed idealist in Mairon (Sauron's original name in Valinor), as he becomes more and more debased by his overwhelming lust for order, until he loses sight entirely of the welfare of the subjects he'd originally sought to succour, and instead becomes sociopathically obsessed with his own will and that one idea of ordering everything according to it.
For that reason, I'd hate for him to be given an evil or mischievous glint in his eye behind the backs of the Eregion elves. His 'cover' should be perfect, as befits a divine entity: utterly trustworthy and genteel in bearing.
My 'models' for comparing Annatar-Sauron have long been the historical Jacobin leader Maximillien Robespierre of French revolutionary fame and John Milton's tantalizing portrayal of Satan in his epic 17th century poem Paradise Lost.
Robespierre started out as an idealistic French lawyer from Arras. Under the repressive Ancien Regime, he stood up against capital punishment, for criminal justice reform, the rights of the poor to social welfare and against both slavery and wars of expansion. He dreamed of a day when this terrible monarchical regime would fall, to make way for a republic of virtue and fraternity. What's not to love?
Mirabeau once said of Robespierre during the French Revolution, "This young man is dangerous. He believes everything he says."
After the execution of the king, and his wife Marie-Antoinette, Robespierre was swept to power and immediately set about protecting the revolution from the "enemies of the people". He declared: “There are only two parties in France: the people and its enemies. We must exterminate those miserable villains who are eternally conspiring against the rights of man. . . . [W]e must exterminate all our enemies.”
This list of enemies started with the aristocrats. Our young lawyer encouraged the mobs of dispossessed people outside in the streets to take down the nobility through acts of extra-judicial justice. He incited them to action whenever political expediency called for it.
One historian notes that, "The justification of the massacres was that those killed were enemies of the republic, counterrevolutionaries who had conspired against that equality, justice, and reason whose realization would “establish the felicity of perhaps the entire human race.”".
Stanley Loomis writes that, in these September massacres, “the bloody work went on for five . . . days and nights...Cannibalism, disembowelment and acts of indescribable ferocity took place here. . . . . It has been loosely assumed . . . that most of the victims were aristocrats—an assumption that for some curious reason is often supposed to mitigate these crimes. Very few victims were, in fact, of the former nobility—less than thirty out of the fifteen hundred who were killed.”
Having secured the capital, Robespierre appointed commissioners to enforce the Revolution outside the capital and deal with the ever growing list of enemies. Norman Hampson notes in his biography of Robespierre that “the revolutionary tribunal . . . had become an undiscriminating murder machine. . . . Imaginary . . . plots and absurd charges were everyday events.”
In the Vendéan massacre, recounts Schama, “Every atrocity the time could imagine was meted out to the defenseless population. Women were routinely raped, children killed, both mutilated. . . . At Gonnord . . . two hundred old people, along with mothers and children, [were forced] to kneel in front of a large pit they had dug; they were then shot so as to tumble into their own grave. . . . Thirty children and two women were buried alive when earth was shoveled onto the pit."
Robespierre was the exact type of reformer Tolkien had modelled Sauron on, as described in that September 1954 letter and elsewhere:
"The form that he took was that of a man of more than human stature, but not gigantic. In his earlier incarnation he was able to veil his power (as Gandalf did) and could appear as a commanding figure of great strength of body and supremely royal demeanour and countenance. At the beginning of the Second Age he [Sauron] was still beautiful to look at, or could still assume a beautiful visible shape –and was not indeed wholly evil, not unless all 'reformers' who want to hurry up with 'reconstruction' and 'reorganization' are wholly evil, even before pride and the lust to exert their will eat them up.
But many Elves listened to Sauron. He was still fair in that early time, and his motives and those of the Elves seemed to go partly together: the healing of the desolate lands. Sauron found their weak point in suggesting that, helping one another, they could make Western Middle-earth as beautiful as Valinor. It was really a veiled attack on the gods, an incitement to try and make a separate independent paradise.
He had gone the way of all tyrants: beginning well, at least on the level that while desiring to order all things according to his own wisdom he still at first considered the (economic) well-being of other inhabitants of the Earth. But he went further than human tyrants in pride and the lust for domination, being in origin an immortal (angelic) spirit.’...
Though the only real good in, or rational motive for, all this ordering and planning and organization was the good of all inhabitants of Arda (even admitting Sauron's right to be their supreme lord), his 'plans', the idea coming from his own isolated mind, became the sole object of his will, and an end, the End, in itself. ... [H]is capability of corrupting other minds, and even engaging their service, was a residue from the fact that his original desire for 'order' had really envisaged the good estate (especially physical well-being) of his 'subjects'.
Likewise, Robespierre was a man so incapable of compromising on his cherished ideal of a revolutionary republic of virtue, democracy, social equality and the popular will of the nebulously defined 'French People' that he intended to help, that he actually instituted a Reign of Terror in which thousands of innocent people were guillotined, in an attempt to bring about "progress". See:
http://people.loyno.edu/...1983-4/mcletchie.htm
Maximilien Robespierre, known to his contemporaries as "the Incorruptible," is one of the most controversial figures of the French Revolution. His name has become symbolic for that period of the Revolution known as the Reign of Terror; certainly he was a man who wielded great influence and power over the course of events of the French Republic between 1792 and 1794; yet different people in different eras had differing opinions of the man and his power. Some, especially his English and Austrian contemporaries, saw him as the Devil incarnate...Some see in him the origins of twentieth century dictatorship along the lines of Stalin or Hitler. Most agree that, for a time, he was the most important man in the Revolution...
Robespierre's failure can be viewed as that of a man so narrow-minded in his views that eventually he cannot conceive of anything outside of them, a man so firmly convinced of his own absolute rightness that he cannot see the glaring errors he makes. It had grown inconceivable to him that anyone should oppose him successfully, and when someone did, the blow numbed him into inaction for a while. Although he started out with the best of motives, it came to the point where protection of the ideals for which he stood was everything to him, whereas protection of the people whom the ideals were originally to protect meant nothing.
In terms of how Sauron should look, I've always felt that in his Annatar guise he would have been an almost impossibly beautiful and androgynous, shape-shifting being; strong, tall, charismatic in speech and imposing in form but with a subtle touch of the feminine and a certain felinity about him. By the latter, I mean to pay homage to his genesis in Tolkien's earlier legends as "Tevildo, Prince of Cats" from the Book of Lost Tales.
I'm sorry to say that I've always seen Annatar as a blonde. I take his description of being "fair" as meaning not simply handsome but quite literally fair-haired and fair of complexion as well. We should remember that when Celebrimbor first espies Annatar, he and his colleagues mistake him for one of "the Vanyar, the fairest race of Elves". In the HoME series we learn that the Vanyar had blonde hair, while the Noldor had dark hair. So that settles it for me as far as his appearance in the canon is concerned: Annatar is blonde.
I see him as kind of like this guy:
Only with the charismatic charm of a Tom Hiddleston.
(This post was edited by Althoun on Mar 12 2019, 1:48am)
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Thor 'n' Oakenshield
Nargothrond
Mar 12 2019, 1:49am
Post #27 of 56
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Agreed on all points - including about Tom Hiddleston!
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Hiddleston is one of my top choices to play Annatar. But I think I might assemble an entire list.
"We are Kree"
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Marmoon
Nevrast
Mar 12 2019, 2:17am
Post #28 of 56
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Tolkien's description in his letters of Sauron as an aspiring “reformer” who had been given a chance by the Valar to repent after the War of Wrath and only slowly descended back into outright villainy, and at the last developed an impulse to dominate the world, is definitive for me.
This would provide some fantastic character development. I wonder if the writers could push the boundaries a little and have him seriously consider repentance, thereby reducing the Elves' blame for overlooking him in their midst (not that they stood a chance against the illusion of a Maia), until some event pushes him back to the dark side and in need of instituting order in the world. The end result would be the same, but his initial deception would be less egregious and it would keep the (casual) audience hooked and hoping that he finds his way back to redemption.
John Milton's tantalizing portrayal of Satan in his epic 17th century poem Paradise Lost.
Paradise Lost is an unrivaled achievement and Milton’s Satan is the closest approximation to Annatar for me. He is not good in the classic sense but Miltion humanized him so skillfully that you cannot help but sympathize and take pity on the devil. I would not want Annatar to be played so closely to the fallen angel, for various reasons, but similarly force the audience to question "What is good? Why don't I hate him?" The audience should love and despise Annatar.
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squire
Gondolin
Mar 12 2019, 2:42am
Post #29 of 56
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How many viewers are going to say, Oh God, it's just Anakin Skywalker - AGAIN.
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It is the same character, after all.
Yes, I know Milton came first, and Tolkien came second, and Lucas came third (if you leave out all the others in a fundamental mythical trope of mankind).
But the fact is, Star Wars got there first in the environment of multi-episode high-effects fantasy epics.
How should Annatar be presented to keep him from looking like a rip-off to the average jaded viewer's bored eyes?
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'.
Archive: All the TORn Reading Room Book Discussions (including the 1st BotR Discussion!) and Footerama: "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
Dr. Squire introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
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Eldy
Dor-Lomin
Mar 12 2019, 4:11pm
Post #30 of 56
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"I have seen a security hologram of Mairon sacrificing Elendili" //
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(This post was edited by Eldy on Mar 12 2019, 4:11pm)
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Thor 'n' Oakenshield
Nargothrond
Mar 12 2019, 4:18pm
Post #31 of 56
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Can't say I see a connection, honestly, between the two
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And Anakin Skywalker was sixteen years ago, so I'm not sure if many people would draw a connection. Could just be me, but apart from the similarity between the two names, I don't think they have any similarities at all? I mean, evil - but...evil is something pretty universal in fantasy/sci-fi.
"We are Kree"
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Archestratie
Nargothrond
Mar 12 2019, 4:22pm
Post #32 of 56
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It is the same character, after all.
Yes, I know Milton came first, and Tolkien came second, and Lucas came third (if you leave out all the others in a fundamental mythical trope of mankind).
But the fact is, Star Wars got there first in the environment of multi-episode high-effects fantasy epics.
How should Annatar be presented to keep him from looking like a rip-off to the average jaded viewer's bored eyes?
Anakin wasn't clever though. He was just a stupid idiot who got tricked into joining the Dark Side. I can't imagine they'd portray anyone as a clueless screwup.
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Marmoon
Nevrast
Mar 12 2019, 5:17pm
Post #33 of 56
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Sauron’s fall occurred long ago (as Mairon, a wee Maia affiliated with Aulë), so the idea of a return or renewed commitment to evil would be different than Anakin Skywalker’s first surrender to the dark stuff. Sauron is not being groomed for evil in the Second Age and he is not a puppet of Melkor. As long as Annatar is played with some gravitas, dignity, and deep wisdom (he is an ancient deity, after all), albeit traits with a corrupt slant, and not an angsty teenager with an unbelievable courtship that ends in broken hearts, then there should be no difficulty distinguishing him from Anakin. I suppose the writers could invent a love story for Annatar to motivate his behaviors and actions, but that would indeed be too formulaic for me (Amazon: please do not do this). I do not have any alternatives at this time but surely a room full of the best writers money can buy will yield an original motivation for his character.
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Archestratie
Nargothrond
Mar 12 2019, 5:27pm
Post #34 of 56
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I suppose the writers could invent a love story for Annatar to motivate his behaviors and actions, but that would indeed be too formulaic for me
That would end the show before it began.
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Marmoon
Nevrast
Mar 12 2019, 5:32pm
Post #35 of 56
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Rioting in the streets, burning effigies of Bezos.
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Archestratie
Nargothrond
Mar 12 2019, 6:00pm
Post #36 of 56
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Rioting in the streets, burning effigies of Bezos.
At the very least!
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squire
Gondolin
Mar 12 2019, 7:52pm
Post #37 of 56
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That works for me on a lot of levels, especially the commercial ones.
Granted, it has nothing to do with Tolkien, but we've already seen that adaptations of his far more popular books are well received with changes of a similar order. No one - except us in this room and our friends in other similar rooms - has read the Akallabeth, History of Middle-earth, or even the detailed appendices in the back of The Lord of the Rings. This Second Age thing, if in fact it's a real focus of this new series, is effectively a blank slate for the writers.
And love ... well, love makes the world go round. Not to mention the famous wrath of a woman scorned (I'm looking at you, Ungoliant) and morally corrupting effect of a quest for revenge on the slayer of a loved one (Gorlim, bro, let her go now, before it's too late), if we're looking for other well-used story themes that work commercially and also for our favorite professorial scribe.
"Young Sauron"
"Sauron in Love"
"Sauron's Ring of Endearment"
"Sauron: Tempted by Beauty"
"Sauron's Gift: A New and Better Ring"
"Sauron Divorced"
"Sauron's Revenge"
"Sauron Alone"
"Sauron Shoots Up"
"Sauron Against the World"
Wow, this cool show practically writes itself. And that's before the whole world is destroyed in a mind-blowing apocalyptic ending - that isn't an ending!
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'.
Archive: All the TORn Reading Room Book Discussions (including the 1st BotR Discussion!) and Footerama: "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
Dr. Squire introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
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Felagund
Nargothrond
Mar 12 2019, 10:01pm
Post #38 of 56
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Is one of my favourite themes. Mairon, seduced by Melkor after the Ainulindalë; Sauron considering and then spurning Eönwë's command to return to Valinor for trial after the War of Wrath; and then, arisen again in Middle-earth early in the Second Age, apparently considering how to 'heal' the hurts of the world, before lapsing into tyrant mode.
Apart from the sources you've cited, HoMe X: Morgoth's Ring, "Myths Transformed" is a rich vein for Sauron 'motive' hunting. For example:
"Sauron had never reached this stage of [Morgoth's] nihilistic madness. He did not object to the existence of the world, so long as he could do what he liked with it. He still had the relics of positive purposes, that descended from the good of the nature in which he began: it had been his virtue (and therefore also the cause of his fall, and of his relapse) that he loved order and coordination, and disliked wasteful friction."
Welcome to the Mordorfone network, where we put the 'hai' back into Uruk
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Eldy
Dor-Lomin
Mar 12 2019, 10:09pm
Post #39 of 56
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I think the idea of Sauron becoming evil because of a doomed romance is one we can address out of hand (not that you were necessarily suggesting it as a plausible outcome). Perhaps I'm overly optimistic, but I'd like to think that a team who put as much thought into the maps (even if they weren't perfect) would be sensible enough not to do something so ridiculous.  I don't really expect them to spend much time on the early Third Age (much before Sauron's appearance as Annatar), so I dunno that they'll depict his becoming evil one way or another. Depends in part on how they reshuffle the timeline, I suppose. I'll admit I've always liked Michael Martinez's tongue-in-cheek description of Sauron's first five hundred years post-service to Morgoth.
For the next five or six hundred years, Sauron vanished from history. It is unlikely that Sauron “slept” in the sense that the Balrog seems to have curled up under a conveniently huge mountain and dreamed of past debaucheries for the next several thousand years. More likely, Sauron retreated into far eastern Middle-earth and there he could have done anything, such as plant a garden or found a monastery to teach ancient Elves, Dwarves, and Men the Way of Peace. Whatever he did, after a few hundred years Sauron realized he wasn’t going to accomplish much — or else that he could probably get away with doing whatever he wanted, so he launched a new initiative.
Flashback to Sauron's time as a yoga instructor, please!
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Mari D.
Ossiriand
Mar 13 2019, 2:24am
Post #40 of 56
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Wow, this is so fitting for me to read these days ...
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... because I've been putting an emphasis on getting my life in order recently; trying to get old tasks done, declutter rooms. Also, for a while now, I've been observing processes around me and I usually try to remove friction and improve order and efficiancy!
Why? Actively increasing order has a calming effect on me. Logic, things making sense, might be an intellectual type of order. So I want processes to be logical, functional, without friction. And, you know, won't we all be better off if there's more order? And wouldn't ordering things differently, better, be good for a world marred in so many ways?
What can I say? Yes, it feels good to see your smart plans put into action ... to see good effects for you and others, to reap the benefits. It feels nice if your reform ideas are respected, implemented, maybe applauded afterwards. You think that you should implement more of your ideas, shouldn't you ... and you begin hoping nobody will ever stand in the way of these beautiful and important ideas, as that would be such a shame. And then you secretly wonder how you'd in fact react if someone did.
Now, I haven't gone off being a dictator. But I sometimes indeed charmed people into helping me with my goals of order and reform - without really considering if it's good for them also to help me right now.
I trust that people in my life or God would tell me if my zeal for reform went too far; and then I'd stop. And maybe this has already happened in a subtle way.
A nagging, growing sense that my attitude is not wholly right. That this order thing is becoming an end in itself sometimes. That I lost my awareness of what it's meant to be good for.
And now, these quotes about reformers you and the others posted, and about them becoming enarmoured with their wise ideas and unquestionable goals... they help me finally pinpoint what is wrong about my attitude. Where it could lead a man, in the worst of cases. If certain ends start justifying means be default, if love for everyone involved is no longer what measures are checked against.
I copied some of the quotes that capture all this so perfectly and put them into a text file. I hope they'll help me refocus. Amazing, what you can learn by reading about a fictional character. Thank you all for the quotes, history lesson and fitting comments.
(This post was edited by Mari D. on Mar 13 2019, 2:37am)
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Archestratie
Nargothrond
Mar 13 2019, 12:06pm
Post #41 of 56
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Is one of my favourite themes. Mairon, seduced by Melkor after the Ainulindalë; Sauron considering and then spurning Eönwë's command to return to Valinor for trial after the War of Wrath; and then, arisen again in Middle-earth early in the Second Age, apparently considering how to 'heal' the hurts of the world, before lapsing into tyrant mode.
Apart from the sources you've cited, HoMe X: Morgoth's Ring, "Myths Transformed" is a rich vein for Sauron 'motive' hunting. For example:
"Sauron had never reached this stage of [Morgoth's] nihilistic madness. He did not object to the existence of the world, so long as he could do what he liked with it. He still had the relics of positive purposes, that descended from the good of the nature in which he began: it had been his virtue (and therefore also the cause of his fall, and of his relapse) that he loved order and coordination, and disliked wasteful friction."
Morgoth's Ring and The War of the Jewels are the two best HoME books out there. I recommend any Tolkien fan find a copy if they can.
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Thor 'n' Oakenshield
Nargothrond
Mar 13 2019, 3:36pm
Post #42 of 56
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I've read both but don't own them
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Now is the time to fill out the gaps in my collection, now that I'm going to need to do clue-hunting and page-scouring in preparation for this show. I wouldn't be surprised if there's an uptick in sales of HoME, UT, etc.
"We are Kree"
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Archestratie
Nargothrond
Mar 13 2019, 4:18pm
Post #44 of 56
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On Amazon (paperback-I can't afford hardcover) for $17.70 with Prime shipping. It is going to arrive tomorrow 
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Althoun
Menegroth
Mar 13 2019, 9:41pm
Post #45 of 56
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Anakin Skywalker? Pah, PULEEZ! Lucas should be so lucky......
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"I know the nightingale mocks not the cuckoo's call; Though my song apes not yours, may I not sing at all?" - Angelus Silesius (1624-1677)
As we both know, Tolkien conceived of creation as being the "Music of the Ainur", like a great symphony or orchestral piece with every distinct voice singing in harmony. Melkor was a disrupter of this music from the beginning, looking to sow discord. Sauron didn't join in this 'discord' because his great virtue was that he loved order and perfecting things. His later decision to join Melkor had to do with his reasoning that Melkor would get reconstruction achieved more quickly.
Sauron's fall from grace was not the nihilistic desire for destruction, ruin and disorder represented by Morgoth. Rather, it stemmed from his great virtue itself and was its logical conclusion, if warped into becoming an end in itself. Tolkien's overriding moral being that the very things which make us great can be our undoing, if we lose sense of the fact that to "love" (in Catholic Thomist theology) is to 'will the good of the other'. Consider Shakespeare's Othello, in which the protagonist's much vaunted virtue throughout the play is his love for Desdemona. He loves her so much, that, when the duplicitous Iago convinces him she has been unfaithful with another man, he strangles her to death because he cannot bear the thought that she could be any other man's.
In other words, Othello truly thought that he loved Desdemona and so did everyone else but, in fact, he strove to possess her as his own - not will what was good for her. Likewise, for Sauron according to Tolkien: "like all minds of this cast, Sauron's love (originally) or (later) mere understanding of other individual intelligences was correspondingly weaker; and though the only real good in, or rational motive for, all this ordering and planning and organization was the good of all inhabitants of Arda (even admitting Sauron's right to be their supreme lord), his 'plans', the idea coming from his own isolated mind, became the sole object of his will, and an end, the End, in itself."
Unlike the great Music of the Ainur, with all its diversity, in which each of the divine beings was permitted by Eru to "weave their own thoughts and ideas into this Music" without breaking the unity, Sauron wanted everyone to sing his song and could not envision any other notion of "the Good" or "Perfect" outside of it. The original intention was pure but the absolutization of it as the "thee only" song, and the exclusion of all other 'songs' that might be equally valid and part of Eru's grand design, completely corrupted him. In this, he is so different from his arch-nemesis of the Second Age, the Lady Galadriel who Tolkien tells us did not share her husband Celeborn's disdain for the Dwarves but rather saw them as friends, because in Unfinished Tales it states: "Galadriel was more far-sighted in this than Celeborn; and she perceived from the beginning that Middle-earth could not be saved from "the residue of evil" that Morgoth had left behind him save by a union of all the peoples who were in their way and in their measure opposed to him". All the different voices, like the Music of the Ainur itself - weaving their own thoughts and ideas into the melody - a union of all the free peoples, as opposed to Sauron's will to enforce his thoughts and ideas upon all.
Not a Star Wars fan, I have to admit (by a long shot), but even with the little that I do know about Darth Vader - I really think the comparison is far off the mark.
For a start, there is no manichaen and almost juvenile notion of "dark side" in Tolkien's thought. Pious Catholic that he was, Tolkien understood evil to be the privation of being; not some kind of external 'force' in its own right, like in the Zoroastrian dualistic creation myth.
“In my story,” Tolkien unequivocally writes in one letter, “I do not deal in Absolute Evil. I do not think there is such a thing, since that is Zero. I do not think that at any rate any ‘rational being’ is wholly evil” (Letters, 243). Scott A. Davison points out agreement between St. Augustine and Tolkien that evil is ‘essentially parasitical on good... and is a lack of goodness... since existence itself is good'. Hence why Tolkien writes that, "Sauron was 'greater', effectively, in the Second Age than Morgoth at the end of the First. Why? Because, though he was far smaller by natural stature, he had not yet fallen so low. Eventually he also squandered his power of being in the endeavour to gain control of others."
Annatar doesn't become 'bad' because he turns 'dark side' away from the 'force' after a run-in with unrequited love. His descent into evil was the direct outcome of his original pure desire for order and reconstruction becoming an absolute, uncompromising ideal, the obsession of his own narrow-minded will - as an end in itself, the brilliance of the idea taking precedence over the very people (the races of Middle-Earth) it had been intended to benefit.
To be precise, Annatar doesn't "deviate" like Anakin from the path of good to the path of evil: from the "force" to the "dark side". Rather ,Tolkien explains that his "frightful evil arose from a good root, the desire to benefit the world and others – speedily and according to the benefactor’s own plans" (Tolkien, Letter to Milton Waldman in 1951). This is why I say that Annatar is like Robespierre or Vladimir Lenin.
With Annatar, you have an idea that is in essence good becoming corrupted through his increasing single-minded obsession with its realization, until it gets absolutized as an end in itself, irrespective of its tangible world benefits for others. This is miles more compelling than Darth Vader. A better literary comparison, far more respectful to Tolkien, would be with his fellow 20th century Catholic novelist Graham Greene in his books The Quiet American and The Power and the Glory.
The former is set during the Vietnam war and the eponymous namesake of the story is an idealistic young American soldier, Alden Pyle, who is very much on the side of ‘democracy’, purporting to support increased freedom and human rights for the Vietnamese people and he rabidly opposes what he sees as the colonialism of the French and the soul-destroying Communism of the Vietminh (not unlike Sauron's righteous anger at the Valar abandoning Middle-Earth to dereliction), suggesting that an American ‘Third Force’ is needed (i.e. think, rings of power are needed as a utopian solution to Arda's marring).
As the novel develops it becomes ever more apparent that ‘hero’ Pyle is not as heroic and charming as he started out, and our perception of him changes. Like the Americans he represents, Pyle’s obsession with democracy turns out to be an end in itself rather than a means to an end. The idea of freedom, to both Pyle and his country, becomes more important than guaranteeing freedom for the people themselves.
In reference to a bomb which he himself personally set off in a crowded high street Pyle says: “...They were only war casualties...It was a pity... They died in the right cause...They died for democracy...” The word ‘only’ is pivotal. Pyle denigrates the Vietnamese people, innocents whom he murdered senselessly, as mere casualties of war, human fodder whose deaths are regrettable but wholly justified in the cause of democracy. He does not consider the fact that one of the women he killed could have been his mother, that a child he killed could have been his son, as Fowler, another character, explains to him: “...Would you have said the same if it had been your old nurse with the blueberry pie?...He ignored my facile point...” To Pyle, the idea of a free and democratic Vietnam is far more important than the human beings who are intended to enjoy this future of liberation, as is evidenced by the words, “they died for democracy”. Fowler on the other hand sees the brutal reality and ignorance of such an imperialist disregard for basic human rights. He understands the truth that people can never be viewed as subordinate to ideas. Fowler captures this dilemma when he states: “...How many dead colonels justify a child’s or a trishaw driver’s death when you are building a national democratic front?...”
(This post was edited by Althoun on Mar 13 2019, 9:51pm)
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kzer_za
Menegroth
Mar 13 2019, 9:46pm
Post #46 of 56
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HoME XII (Peoples of Middle Earth) is also very good //
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Mari D.
Ossiriand
Mar 14 2019, 6:58pm
Post #47 of 56
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Thanks for your interesting explanations!
So, it's possible that when a plan is first conceived, it might be checked against what it means for the people, or even be conceived for the precise reason of benefitting the people. And the moral compass says: "Okay."
But then, as things develop, it might turn out that the plan needs readjustment. Something turns out to have unexpected side-effects, circumstances change.
IF the plan has become an end in itself, the person might chose to blindly pursue it anyway, and resistance can even entice them to fight harder for the cause. As a long time ago they decided it's a *good* plan, that question is already settled in their mind and not reexamined!
IF, however, what the plan is supposed to be good *for* is still in view, then the person would have to say: "Uh-oh, my plan needs some readjustment."
So in some cases, you could call the decline into evil a failure to readjust.
(Or it could e.g. be a failure to weigh your goals against other goals from the start. Bad side-effects or resistance could then alert you to the fact that you may have missed some factors in the original plan that you should have taken into account.)
But if you're so concinved that your plan is good that any resistance only causes you to fight *even harder* for it, calling everyone who's against it "stupid" or some other disqualifying word or name ...
then we can get to where everyone is fighting VERY HARD for GOOD ... at the same time and against each other.
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Question thereto:
In the times of Lord of the Rings, did Sauron still believe he was fighting for good?
(This post was edited by Mari D. on Mar 14 2019, 7:02pm)
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Darkstone
Elvenhome
Mar 14 2019, 7:12pm
Post #48 of 56
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As von Moltke noted, no plan survives contact with the enemy, so any strategy must be a series of options.
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Character is what we do on the internet when we think no one knows who we are.
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Mari D.
Ossiriand
Mar 14 2019, 7:50pm
Post #49 of 56
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So that means, in the reformer's case ...
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... contact with reality ...
What a good idea. Hopefully I can keep that in mind when next trying to initate changes that involve other people.
... non-native English speaker, so if you reply to one of my posts feel free to help me improve by quoting + correcting the quote in CAPITAL letters :-)
... Thanks everyone for your kind answers to my many questions! It's a delight for me to read them.
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Hamfast Gamgee
Dor-Lomin
Mar 16 2019, 10:25am
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Sorry, Squire, I'm afraid that thought makes me feel slightly ill  I think we can leave all that lovvy dovvy stuff to soaps. Or Tolkien life-stories maybe. Sauron can possibly have a hot evil mistress in leather boots. That I think I can handle.!
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