(urth) The Politics Of Gene Wolfe

[Jeffrey Brent McBeth]

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

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over 
 the man who cannot read them."
 -- Mark Twain
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20090319/223f2cc6/attachment.sig>