From: jchokey@leland.Stanford.EDU (James Alexander Chokey)
Subject: Re: Tolkien a Racist?
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 92 21:08:40 GMT

In article <1992Dec12.033514.6299@genie.slhs.udel.edu> nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Nancy Lebovitz) writes:
>
>I agree that there's some very dubious stuff about race in Tolkien 
>(especially, IMHO, the stuff about the superiority of the Numenorian-
>derived humans), but when Treebeard describes cross-breeding humans
>and orcs as "a great evil", I thought it was because the result would
>be more dangerous sort of orc, not because of any horror at cross-
>breeding.

	A minor, but signficant point of info:  Treebeard describes this 
mingling as "a black evil"--  not "a great evil."  This is significant,
IMHO, because the use of the word "black" in conjuction with a criticism of 
racial mixing potentially adds another dimension of interpretation to this 
statement.

	Both readings (the more-dangerous orc reading and the horror at 
cross-breeding reading) are, it seems fair to say, justified by the text--
and they are not mutually exclusive in any way.  Here's the passage:

	"He [Saruman] has take up with foul folk, with the Orcs.  Brm, hoom!
Worse than that: he has been doing something to them; something dangerous.
For these Isengarders are more like wicked Men.  It is a mark of evil things
that came in the Great Darkness that they cannot abide the Sun; but Saruman's
Orcs can endure it, even if they hate it.  I wonder what he has done?  Are
they Men he has ruined, or has he blended the races of Orcs and Men? That
would be a black evil!"  (TT, H-M edition, pp 76-77)

	It seems to me that the "black evil" outburst is specifically in
response to the idea of Saruman's having "blended" Orcs and Men, although
the whole passage is in fact about the "dangerous" action of creating
tougher Orcs.  However, it seems to me that the real nature of the evil 
and the danger here is not the fact that tougher Orcs now exist.  Rather the 
real evil and the real danger seems to lie in the fact that Saruman "has
been doing something to them" at all.  The fact that he is trying to 
alter a race of beings--  to try and engage in some sort of "eugenic" project
seems to me to be the main focus of condemnation here.  

	In a letter, one person suggested to me that this passage might 
actually be seen as a condmenation of Nazi racial experiments.  I don't know
if I'd try to pin it down to that specfic a reference, but I do think that
Tolkien is, at least at one level, implicitly critiquing the various ideas
on eugenics, which was actually a rather popular topic in Europe until 
it became known what the Nazis had done with it.  Such a critique makes 
a lot of sense, particularly in light of other discussions on the moral
ramifications of science and technology in LOTR.  It's yet another instance
of an evil modern "technology" that produces dangerous, ugly, and immoral 
results.

	Still, I don't think that's the end-all of the presentation of
race and of racial difference in LOTR--  or even in this passage, which
is rather ambiguous in parts.  The idea of "blending the races of Orcs 
and Men" seems to be worse than simply "ruining" Men-- at least that's one
reading of the last two sentences of Treebeard's statement."  And there
still is the use of "black" in a condemnatory fashion in describing this
mixture of races.  Tolkien's text is multivalent and operates at many
levels and I don't think we can exclude the more "dubious" reading of this
passage simply because there is another reading that we feel more comfortable
with.  

	--  Jim C. <jchokey@leland.stanford.edu> 

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