page_title: Man (Middle-earth)
section_title: Diversity
hierarchical_section_title: Man (Middle-earth) / In the fiction / Diversity
context_page_description: In J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fiction, Man and Men denote humans, whether male or female, in contrast to Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, and other humanoid races.
  Men are described as the second or younger people, created after the Elves, and differing from them in being mortal. Along with Ents and Dwarves, these are the "free peoples" of Middle-earth, differing from the enslaved peoples such as Orcs.
  Tolkien uses the Men of Middle-earth, interacting with immortal Elves, to explore a variety of themes in The Lord of the Rings, especially death and immortality. This appears throughout, but is the central theme of an appendix, "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen". Where the Hobbits stand for simple, earthbound, comfort-loving people, Men are far more varied, from petty villains and slow-witted publicans to the gentle warrior Faramir and the genuinely heroic Aragorn; Tolkien had wanted to create a heroic romance suitable for the modern age. Scholars have identified real-world analogues for each of the varied races of Men, whether from medieval times or classical antiquity.
context_section_description: Although all Men in Tolkien's legendarium are related to one another, there are many different groups with different cultures. Those on the side of the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings are the Dúnedain, the men who fought on the side of the Elves in the First Age against Morgoth in Beleriand, from whom other friendly groups, the Rangers including Aragorn, and the men of Gondor are descended; and their allies the Rohirrim.
  The main human adversaries in The Lord of the Rings are the Haradrim and the Easterlings. The Haradrim or Southrons were hostile to Gondor, and used elephants in war. Tolkien describes them as "swart" (dark-skinned). The Easterlings lived in Rhûn, the vast eastern region of Middle-earth; they fought in the armies of Morgoth and Sauron. Tolkien describes them as "slant-eyed"; they ride horses or wagons, leading to the name "wain-riders". The Variags of Khand formed a third but smaller group, who appear as vassals of Mordor in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. Their name is from Russian: Варяги (Variag), meaning the Varangians, Viking or other Germanic warriors who served as mercenaries. Other human adversaries include the Black Númenóreans, good men gone wrong; and the Corsairs of Umbar, rebels of Gondor.
  Sandra Ballif Straubhaar notes in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia that Faramir, son of the Steward of Gondor, makes an "arrogant" speech, of which he later "has cause to repent", classifying the types of Men as seen by the Men of Númenórean origin at the end of the Third Age; she notes, too, that his taxonomy is probably not to be taken at face value.
caption: Tolkien modelled the Rohirrim, the Riders of Rohan, on the Anglo-Saxons (here in an 11th-century illustration).[7]
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