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Lord of the Rings
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July 18th 2005
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Lord of the Rings |
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Frodo, a small hobbit from the
Shire, who has never been known to be bent towards violence is then
thrust into the most dire of situations. The fate of the world, the
fate of all living beings lies in the balance of what he does. He
is to take the ring to Mordor and throw it into the lava pit where
it was made. This would destroy the ring, and eliminate Sauron from
the Earth, as well as his oppressive bourgeois following. Frodo is
to lead the fight for freedom without ever having previous
experience doing so. As Marx and Engles put it:
The proletariat will use its
political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the
bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the
hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling
class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as
possible. (Marx, 230)
Simply put, there are more
proletariats than there are bourgeois, so by mere logical
assumption, it can be assumed the proletariat will overthrow the
ruling class. Frodo is the one who can actually begin this
revolution though. For without his destroying the ring, then it will
still have it’s grasp upon the masses. Once the ring is destroyed
though, then the war for freedom will undoubtedly conclude in the
favour of the men, elves, dwarves, and hobbits.
The Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics allowed the Lord of the Rings to be distributed in their
country, while at the same banning the Chronicles of Narnia (Taran).
This shows that even a corrupted “socialist” regime would allow the
books due to their pro-revolutionary sentiment. Also, Tolkien’s
being catholic in a protestant England, and his visits to Ireland
with his common Irish “cave myths” and “Coming of the Lugh” (shown
by the large eye in the tower) may bring some evidence that Tolkien
may have had at least a soft spot for the Irish Republican Army
(http://www.mythicalireland.com).
This is a revolutionary Army that
fights for a socialist and independent Ireland from the United
Kingdom of Great Britain, and would fit quite well into the idea of
an enemy to the east. Tolkien socialist tendencies show ever more
clearly in that the “[…]race of hobbits is an idealisation of the
English peasantry, in feudal or semi-feudal times”
(http://www.wsws.org). Also, in the year 1937, the same year Tolkien
released the book The Hobbit, the IRA made an assassination attempt
on the King of England in Belfast, also, 31 people were executed in
the Soviet Union for trying to overthrow Josef Stalin, an extremely
oppressive ruler of that country (http://www.echostatic.com). This
is why Tolkien’s obvious portrayal of these ideals came to be so
strongly seen in his Lord of the Rings trilogy.
In the Lord of the Rings: Return of
the King, we see a clear message of the old world burning with the
machine of industry, and this machine is driven by the blood, sweat
and tears of the oppressed working class labour force. The wizard
Saruman says:
“Together, my lord Sauron, we shall
rule this Middle-earth. The old world will burn in the fires of
industry. Forests will fall. A new order will rise. We will drive
the machine of war with the sword and the spear and the iron fist of
the orc” (Lord of the Rings: Return). This quote is quite telling of
the aims of himself and his oppressive ruling class. This is also
very reminiscent of that which the capitalist over-lords of the
1800’s and the modern ages philosophy. The Industrial Revolution
broke the backs of the day labourer, and destroyed the family
structure (Marx, 209). The modern industrialists destroy our
forests, and pollute our air and water systems. One needs only to go
to a big city in the United States to see this. The new order rises
from the ashes of this utter destruction, and that new order is the
global industrial complex of the modern age, ruled by Trans-national
corporations, free-trade agreements, and no treaty requiring ethical
treatment of workers. The only way in which a system such as this
can possibly survive is through the forcible oppression of the class
producing.
Continued on
Page
3
By
Tony Kaminski
Freelance Writer
Books
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