Lord of the Rings
Article
Lord of the Rings is a recurring book in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between April 28, 2023 and June 10, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “Lord of the Rings has some of this, in the person of Aragorn”; ""we see it in the Lord of the Rings (e.g. encounter with Gorbag)""; “It certainly has dark implications for the good characters, both by modern standards and those contemporary to Tolkien. This is a whole other topic for another discussion. But it also recontextualizes the whole ‘Russians are orcs’ thing”. It most often appears alongside A Poet in Paradise, Agrippa d’Aubigné, Alfred Adler.
Metadata
- Category: Books
- Mention count: 2
- Issue count: 2
- First seen: April 28, 2023
- Last seen: June 10, 2023
Appears In
Related Pages
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- A Poet in Paradise (1 shared issues)
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- Agrippa d’Aubigné (1 shared issues)
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- Alfred Adler (1 shared issues)
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- Ancient Progenitor Civilization (1 shared issues)
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- Aragorn (1 shared issues)
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- Art Spiegelman (1 shared issues)
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- Arya Stark (1 shared issues)
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- Auschwitz-Birkenau (1 shared issues)
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- Banewreaker (1 shared issues)
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- Bastille (1 shared issues)
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- Bastille (1 shared issues)
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- Berlin Conservatory (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
Lord of the Rings has some of this, in the person of Aragorn. But the key plot with the Ring is the opposite. Frodo isn’t unusually competent. He’s not even unusually agentic - he only starts his quest after Gandalf foists it upon him, saying that it has to be him for mysterious and kind of hokey-sounding reasons. If he is above-normal in any qualities, it’s the qualities we all imagine ourselves as being above-normal at - hard to corrupt, loyal to our friends, having a certain normal-person-good-sense while everyone around us seems strange and suspicious.
Tolkien (yes, we’re in the “fantasy Godwin’s law” territory now, deal with it, dear reader) has created a stringent morality system in his world. Elves are good, Orcs, Trolls and Wargs are bad, Humans, Dwarves and Hobbits move on this one-dimensional scale from one end to the other. But Orcs have always been problematic. You see, unlike other bad creatures, Orcs have sentience and even some rudimentary sense of morality, we see it in the Lord of the Rings (e.g. encounter with Gorbag). So how can it be? And, more practically, can good characters slaughter them without reluctance or remorse?
Tolkien knew about this problem and tried to write his way out of it. He couldn’t directly “George-Lucas” it, but he famously changed the origin of Orcs several times. They were Elves enslaved and corrupted by Morgoth, then they were fully “brooded” by Morgoth, then they were “beasts of humanized shape”, or possibly, results of forced mating between Elves and beasts. Each one of those retcons brought more problems. The more canonical version, I believe, is still the “corrupted Elves” theory; at least it appears in more early texts and is corroborated by the Lord of the Rings. It certainly has dark implications for the good characters, both by modern standards and those contemporary to Tolkien. This is a whole other topic for another discussion. But it also recontextualizes the whole “Russians are orcs” thing.