Editor,
Recently, there has been some strange construction of the J.R.R. Tolkien classic trilogy The Lord of the Rings as being racist and pro-war propaganda, with some trying to link the title of the second part of the story The Two Towers as being a comparison to the twin towers and the fact that the Orcs, the animal-like villains in service of the evil Sauron are dark complected, therefore the story is racist. This is nonsense, pure and simple.
The story is a fantasy epic influenced by the Celtic and Teutonic myths of the Middle Ages. Also, Tolkien worked a great deal on his story during and after the Second World War. If critics actually read the story and wanted to draw a comparison, the orcs and the Uruk-Hai could be compared to the rabid ideologies of the Nazis and their concepts of breeding a super army to bring about the 1,000-year Reich. Saruman -- the evil wizard -- could be paralleled with mad scientist Josef Mengele, the death camp doctor consumed with genetic structure and engineering.
The dark appearances of the orcs are more comparable to the SS and their precursor of the 1920s, the Steel Helmets, rabid bands of proto-Nazis who were responsible for intimidation and street thuggery during the early days of the National Socialist party. Both the SS and the Steel Helmets dressed in pure black with silver linings, as the Orcs and Uruk-Hai do; their goal being to aid Sauron in his quest to rule all of Middle Earth just as the goal of the Steel Helmets was to bring about the rise of Hitler in Germany and the goal of the SS was to ensure Nazism's perpetuity.
The idea that the story is somehow pro-war propaganda is beyond me. The title The Two Towers was conceived in the 1950s, some 20 years before the World Trade Center even existed. It is a reference to the towers of Isengard and Mordor, the realms of Saruman and Sauron respectively. While the story may deal with war between the heroes of the fantasy lands of Rohan and Gondor, with the mortals being aided by mythical elves and dwarves and hobbits and a wise wizard, in no way should it be taken as propaganda for any contemporary issues, i.e. the potential attack on Iraq.
At the end, the story should be taken as Tolkien meant it to be taken. There are no subliminal messages or allegories; it is a fantasy tale of ordinary people overcoming their fears and achieving great things and is meant to be read as a story of fiction.
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Those who would brand the work as racist or war-mongering are as sad and pathetic as those who find subliminal messages in heavy metal songs and obviously are little more than complainers or mongers of their own agendas in order to make their own names and can't do so on ideas or creativity like Tolkien, so they have to knock him down in order to build themselves up.
Brandon D. Curtis
UNM Student
