(urth) The Politics Of Gene Wolfe

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes danldo at gmail.com
Thu Mar 19 12:27:43 PDT 2009


On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 12:20 PM, John Watkins <john.watkins04 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Agreed...but this is in the context of a discussion of Tolkien's work.
> Tolkien veers between a benign anarchism (The Shire) and divinely-appointed
> or at least divinely-sanctioned kings.  It seems then that "good government"
> is holy or ideal government--government by the best (in the sense of "most
> moral") people.

However, the point is made at least once (by Aragorn), and so Gene "I hate
it when they repeat things" Wolfe is bound to have noticed, that the "benign
anarchism" of the Shire is permitted to exist only because of the labors of
the Rangers, i.e., the King and his followers. Tolkien doesn't really "veer,"
he's definitely in the "divinely-appointed King" camp.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes



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