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Notes -
The Two Towers
It is trivial, with the current "very online right" and with the benefit of a (relatively recent) era that didn’t require "diversity", to impose a reactionary reading on the movie trilogy the Lord of the Rings. Having just finished watching the (otherwise pedestrian, at least in relation to the sublime Fellowship of the Ring) Two Towers, the analogies are almost too on the nose. We have a technocratic leader ("a mind of metal and wheels") who leads a rabid horde of third-worlders in a takeover of a 100% white, peaceful, free nation. In the books, the technocratic leader’s "new" cloak is literally rainbow hued. The free nation just wants to be left alone, but is eventually forced into battle. The leaders pine for a simpler, easier time; where valor, honor, and renown were attainable.
Of course, so do all who live to see such times. The folk in the old tales had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. One of Tolkien’s motifs is how easy evil is to defeat: all good has to do is stand up to it. The Ents think that they go to their doom, before utterly decimating Isengard. The Hobbits cower initially during the scouring of the Shire, then win an almost trivial victory. One of my favorite lines from the book is when Theoden decides to go into battle himself, at which Aragorn proclaims, "Then even the defeat of Rohan will be glorious in song!". This is echoed in the movie during the "Forth Eorlingas" last charge. Yet the only thing in the Lord of the Rings that risks genuine defeat is passivity. Ultimately, Theoden’s death in Return of the King is one through which he does win lasting glory: the great Witch king is forever destroyed. Not only will he have no shame in the halls of his fathers, he has a prominent position in their company.
My grandfather served in WWII but never fought. If it wasn’t for the dropping of the Atom bombs in Japan, he would have been in the invading ground force. Given the casualty estimates of a ground invasion, there is a solid chance that his 5 children, his 20+ grandchildren, and his 40+ great-grandchildren would never have been born. He felt some pride in his service, but also regret and shame. Others fought and died. He didn’t.
Two generations removed from WWII, the very thought of storming Iwo Jima or Normandy is unthinkable; both at the national level as well as the individual level. Watch Saving Private Ryan and try to imagine yourself in that scene. My grandfather felt shame, but I can’t even muster that emotion. When I imagine myself in those boats approaching the beach, the only emotion I feel is terror. I am a product of my time, where even the "good" guys lack ambition and will. The world’s richest man trolls on X. The world’s most powerful man trolls on Truth Social.
Another great movie, the Dark Knight, features the iconic (and ironic) line "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain". As I stare at the beige walls of my cubicle, were that those were my options! We live in an age where everything is flattened. There is great evil but without an obvious source. There are many who live upright lives, but without valor or victory. Our present evil is the insidious slow drip of poison that seeps into us through our surrounding milieu.
The great project of the "online right" is to identify this evil, to name it, and to then fight it. Yet this evil remains amorphous and elusive. Each "influencer" thinks they have the "correct" answer. These answers are typically mutually contradictory. In the face of this hydra, some have returned to recommending the basics: reproduce, guard your family, stay in shape, weather the storm. This is sound advice. But as long as the evil permeates are society, our children and our spouses risk defecting. The halls of power rot even as their power becomes more entrenched, threatening lives and livelihood. What can men do against such reckless hate? The one option that is certainly not available to us moderns is to ride out and meet it.
This is fundamentally wrong. The whole point of the LoTR world is that things keep getting worse and, although you may win the day, in the long run everything is cooked, as it were. Evil keeps coming back, it gets defeated every time one way or another, but things are worse off than they used to be despite the ""victory"". Restoration is impossible. We can never make things as good as our fathers had it. The elves wither and go to the uttermost West. The race of hobbits fails. The dwarves die in their mines. The ents disappear. Lorien dies.
I think the vanishing of the elves and all of that was more to express the author's nostalgia for a preindustrialized past or some such. It's not so much that the world becomes darker over time, but more that the magic goes away. This could also be seen as reflective of childhood nostalgia, perhaps, a theme that was popular in Victorian fiction and which Tolkien was probably influenced by. Of course, these ideas interact with the themes about good vs. evil in certain ways, but I would say that the overall idea presented is more nuanced and indefinite than 'the world becomes increasingly evil'. One of the story points is that while good becomes increasingly degraded, evil does as well, with Sauron being much weaker than Morgoth and so forth. It's an arc from fantasy to mundanity, until evil is represented by your bland cubicle boss.
This is probably more true for the fate of the hobbits than that of the elves.
Of course, Arda has literally gotten darker since the days of the two lamps.
It's not just the magic going away - the dwarves and the hobbits are also gone. Numenor is under the seas and middle Earth kind of sucks compared to numenor.
It doesn't become increasingly evil. Nevertheless, it becomes ineffably worse.
The Elves in LOTR are just a standard tale of hubris. It is their desire to recreate Valinor in Middle-Earth without being forced to subject themselves to the authority of the Valar that caused the entire mess with the Rings. Celebrimbor's pride is what led to him helping Sauron, despite Galadriel and the other Wise being suspicious.
They were supposed to either stay and fade or leave, passing the world to Men. It was pride and a desire to stop the inevitable that made them make the rings.
Passivity isn't the problem. It's rejecting hope in God's plan. The world is degenerating and becoming disenchanted, but Eru is still at work (Numenor's destruction is actually hopeful in one way because it's clear evidence that Sauron is wrong: Eru has not abandoned the world and isn't some inert deist god) and is supposed to make it right at some point. Evil will not triumph in the end but you have to trust (and fight). It doesn't matter if you're worse off than before you fought, not fighting would be even worse.
Most everyone who becomes corrupted in some way or grievously fails rejects hope in that plan and creates problems. Celebrimbor decides he knows better, Saruman decides to bandwagon because he sees no rational path to victory, the Valar themselves arguably fail by refusing to confront Morgoth early enough to stop him corrupting everything (which is why the Elves fade so fast in Middle Earth) for fear of destroying Arda despite knowing that Eru proclaimed Morgoth could never triumph...
Because people have free will, they fuck things up. But it's not over until it's over.
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