(urth) The Politics Of Gene Wolfe
Jeffrey Brent McBeth
mcbeth at broggs.org
Thu Mar 19 12:40:31 PDT 2009
On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 12:27:43PM -0700, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
> 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.
Of the three major races in Tolkien (Man, Elves, Dwarves), only the
Men have the semblance of a divinely-appointed king.
The elves appear to be a meritocracy, and only in, one occasion can I
think of, do the elvish choices coincide with those most liked by the
gods.
The dwarves claim to be hereditary from the original 7 dwarves, and
seem to be largely ignored by any except Aule, which seems to be the
god that the bad guys in LOTR come from (Saruman, Sauron)
Jeff
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