It not being intended doesn't mean it isn't there - I can follow Larry that far. The author's intention is important - I'm not a big fan of "the author is dead" dogmas - but that doesn't mean other readings aren't valid. And some things that were in fact on purpose or at least conscious are still problematic to readers now, and to many readers even at the time of publication - primarily the suggestion that one's race (or gender) determines most of one's essential characteristics. The orcs are merely the most blatant example, because their race's essential characteristic is being evil.

To some readers it's racist and sexist, and I don't think that's a reading that requires much in the way of misreading or wilfully misrepresenting.

That doesn't mean that people who take other things away from the books are closet racists and sexists for enjoying them (well, I suppose "acrackedmoon" does think they are, but there are limits to my devil's advocating).

The difference between culture and race is fairly crucial there, I think.

Of course, I don't think anyone can doubt that. But then he has to go and say himself that they remind him of Jews. Not that he'd be the first to think that; I think it's safe to say that when Wagner wrote his Alberich in the Ring Cycle, his anti-Semitic views must have played a role.



I felt those were excuses, too, when I read acrackedmoon's arguments. You can always claim that it's a coincidence, but under the circumstances that does seem to strain credulity. It just so happens that the most prominent of the very few women fighters in Tolkien is shown as repenting of her childishness and impulsivity in going to fight, and then shown as mature when she accepts to forego those things and return to her traditional woman's role. Not before she has won a great victory in woman-to-Ringwraith combat, true; but then, Tolkien rather makes it look like it's fate and the doom of the Witch-King's "no man alive can kill me" deal that do the job for her.

In LotR, it really is all Galadriel, and even she has most of her more independent moments in the Silm rather than LotR - in LotR she is powerful and a leader, yes, but still mostly in a nurturing, motherly role (with the obvious exception in her, to borrow a term from TV Tropes that really does not stroke with the rest of my post but who cares, crowning moment of awesome with the Ring).