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Tolkien Against the Grain

The Lord of the Rings is a book obsessed with ruins, bloodlines, and the divine right of aristocrats. Why are so many on the left able to love it?

The Lord of the Rings seems immersed in racism (the superiority of the fair and noble elves, the inferiority of the brutish, mongrel orcs), colonialism and imperialism (the return of the king means the restoration of empire), and deeply retrograde sexism (with a core cast of characters that is overwhelmingly male). They can point to his celebration of working-class heroes like Sam Gamgee over the more well-heeled and gentlemanly Frodo, his call for an ethics of selflessness and self-sacrifice, his rejection of the desire for power and control in favor of humility and communal society, and his absolute contempt for tyrants of all stripes. It is Sam’s unexpected pity for a human who is nominally his enemy that has rightly become one of the most often-quoted passages from the book: “He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace.” Part of what has sustained interest in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings for the last eighty-seven years are precisely these sorts of rough edges and unfinished thoughts.

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