From: carl@class.gsfc.nasa.gov (Carl F. Hostetter)
Subject: Re: Tolkien a Racist?
Followup-To: alt.fan.tolkien
Organization: NASA/GSFC
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 15:23:59 GMT

You know, there's another wrinkle to this whole "racism" question that
we are overlooking.  Elves and Men awoke in the far east of Middle-earth,
which is of course our own Earth (according to _Sauron Defeated_, men awoke
"in Mesopotamia"). Those who were most attracted to the Light (which
in Tolkien we must understand as goodness and purity) moved west.
Those who were less strongly drawn to the Light either
strayed, north or south, or remained in the east.

So, the denizens of western Middle-earth, the protagonists of our
story, _tend_ to be of higher moral character than those that
strayed or were left behind. And the enemies that beset the
hosts of the West naturally must come from the north, east, or south.

We know that there were presumably very fair-skinned men in the far
north, the Lossoth, who could hardly be considered an example of
a Tolkienian model of a "superior race"; in fact, they seem to be
quite primitive. The Easterlings are not, I believe, described as
being swarthy, yet they too were fierce enemies of the West.

Now, as for the Southrons. Remember that Tolkien wrote an
extremely minute analysis of the Anglo-Saxon word "Sigelwearaland"
(I hope I spelled that correctly!), in which he demonstrated that
the Anglo-Saxons maintained a legend that the inhabitants of the
far south had been burned black by their proximity to the sun
(this is seen as a remnant of the Icelandic myth of Surtr the
fire-demon). Tolkien was working very much in the old Germanic,
especially Anglo-Saxon, world view; so his Southrons are 
necessarily dark-skinned because of _geography_, and only indirectly
due to their moral, technical, or social development (in fact, there
is nothing to indicate that the Southrons were anything but
a great, wealthy, and technically advanced civilization: look at
their ships and panoply). _However_, the fact remains that there
is broadly speaking a _moral_ gradient to the Voelkerwanderung in
Middle-earth, so that the peoples of the South are there in large
part due to their moral character.

But notice that we cannot, then, equate retarded moral, technical,
and social development with dark skin in Middle-earth. The Lossoth
are fair-skinned (presumably), but primitive, and if they are not
evil they are hardly among the "good". The Easterlings are not
(I think) described as swarthy, but they seem to be primitive
(they drive Wains), and those we see in _LotR_ can be described
as evil. The Southrons are dark-skinned, but they are technically 
and socially far advanced, and unfortunately also "evil".

All Men awoke in the same place; where they ended up was in large part 
determined by their moral character. The color of their skin was a 
subsequent, necessary, and, probably, irrelevant side effect of this.

> 
> James> I wonder whether it might also be possible to think of
> James> Tolkien's professional and personal interest in languages as
> James> being a determining factor in his treatment of races and
> James> peoples in LOTR.  That sounds kind of nutty, I admit, but there
> James> might be something to it as well-- although I can't put my
> James> finger on just why.  Any ideas?
> 
> I'm not sure about this, but didn't Tolkien tend to rank the various
> languages that he was exposed to in much the same way as the races in
> Middle-Earth are ranked? In this way a language might be noble or
> aesthetically pleasing, and another, (French for example), might not.
> This concept is certainly played with in LOTR, but is there any
> reflection of it in Tolkien's real life?
> 

Modern lingusists utterly reject any notion that one language is
"superior" or "inferior" to another. However, this was not the
case in Tolkien's time. But in Tolkien's time, such arguments
were made basically on how much a given language was perceived to
vary from the enshrined model of the Classical langauges, Latin,
Greek, and Sanskrit (notice that on this scale, English does not
fare too well!) However, _this_ sort of linguistic discrimination
was _not_ shared by Tolkien, who very much loved such "barbaric"
languages as Weslh, Old Norse, Old English, and Finnish. Rather, Tolkien
had a very strong sense of linguistic _aesthetic_, and it is this
aesthetic that is refelcted in the languages of Middle-earth.
Tolkien was especially fond of Finnish and Welsh, so Quenya and
Sindarin, which are phonologlically similar to Finnish and Welsh
respectively, are "high" in this ranking. As we go lower in the
ranking, we find an increasing use of "harsh" or "guttural"
consonants, such as "gh" and "sh".

|===================================================================|
|         Carl F. Hostetter      carl@class.gsfc.nasa.gov           |
|                                                                   |
|                    Ars longa, vita brevis.                        |
|          The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.            |
|  "I wish life was not so short," he thought.  "Languages take     |
|  such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about."  |
|===================================================================|