![]() With that preparation I entered the Mills of Mordor, where courtesy is weakness, honesty is foolishness, and cruelty is entertainment. Debts were to be paid, and my word was to be as good as I could make it. Above all, I was to be honest with everyone. It might be better to be a slave than to die, but it was better to die than to be a slave who acquiesced in his own slavery. Mere strength (the corrupt coercion Washington calls power and Chicago clout) was to be defied. ![]() Legitimate authority was to be obeyed without shirking and without question. They were entitled to respect, and were to be thanked when they befriended me, even in minor matters. Less educated men might hold inferior positions, but that did not mean that they themselves were inferior they might be (and often would be) wiser, braver, and more honest than I was. As a child I had been taught a code of conduct: I was to be courteous and considerate, and most courteous and most considerate of those less strong than I - of girls and women, and of old people especially. That, I believe, was what drew me to him so strongly when I first encountered The Lord of the Rings. At a time when few others knew this, and very few others understood its implications, J. R. R. Tolkien both knew and understood, and was able to express that understanding in art, and in time in great art. Nevertheless they represent a broad truth about Christianized barbarian society as a whole, and arguments that focus on exceptions provide a picture that is fundamentally false, even when the instances on which they are based are real and honestly presented. These assertions can be quibbled over endlessly, of course there are always exceptional persons and exceptional circumstances. The peasant might behave badly but the peasant did not expect praise for it, even his own praise. Not only every earl and baron but every carl and churl knew what an ideal king would say and do. The king might rule badly, but everyone agreed as to what good rule was. There is one very real sense in which the Dark Ages were the brightest of times, and it is this: that they were times of defined and definite duties and freedoms. I was fascinated by his insight into Tolkien, not to mention into our Lower Earth of which Middle Earth is an elevated reflection.īecause this essay disappeared from the reaches of the Internet for a time, I wish to reprint the opening here, and post to link to where the balance still might be found. It is by the author Gene Wolfe, who is the finest writer in any genre currently gracing our planet, and he happens to have selected, and expanded, the genre called science fiction to work his arts. Here below is the beginning of my favorite essay on JRR Tolkien.
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