Introduction
So, it’s back to the age-old question: Was J.R.R. Tolkien racist?
This article is a kind of sequel to my last article, and it continues the conversation on the racial language that Tolkien uses in his works. Namely, the language he uses when characterizing and referring to the orcs in The Lord of the Rings. This article will primarily explore what Tolkien apologists have to say on the matter, that is to say, the critics in Tolkien’s corner.
This article will begin by examining evidence Tolkien left behind outside of his literary works. It will then focus in on the orcs and illustrate some potential explanations for Tolkien’s racist language.
Tolkien’s Letters
One of the most clear-cut pieces of evidence we have for Tolkien’s anti-racist intentions are two of his letters to his publisher Stanley Unwin in July of 1938. The publishing house had asked Tolkien for proof that he was Aryan, to which he quite sarcastically responded he isn’t Aryan in the more historical sense of the word, that is Indo-Iranian. He also confirms he has no linguistic ties to the word.
Once again feigning ignorance, Tolkien inquires whether the question was about whether or not he was Jewish, to which he responds, “I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.”1
These letters are often pointed to as evidence of Tolkien’s rejection of the race theory, or at least anti-semitic race-theory. Other critics have pointed to a radio interview in 1964 in which Tolkien states that the dwarves remind him of the Jewish people.2 Whether or not Tolkien intended these words to be anti-semitic or not, I think it is wrong to try to represent a race other than your own through fantasy.
The dwarves are held in high esteem by Tolkien, and are almost always on the side of good. However, it’s never okay to perpetuate stereotypes or racial caricatures, no matter what time period you are from.
The Orcs as Allegory
Returning to the Orcs, many of Tolkien’s apologists have defended his characterization of them as not acceptable by our own standards, but understandable considering Tolkien’s environment and source material.
My last article touched on the concerns of moral geography, in Middle Earth, in which the Western part of the continent is inhabited by the free, rational, and good people such as hobbits and elves, and the West is “the land where the shadows lie,” inhabited by the evil people such as orcs and goblins. Some people have raised concerns that this is a conscious or unconscious metaphor for how some people view the real world. Eurocentric thinking dictates that the Western world is the home of rationality and the rest of the world is inhabited by irrational or evil people. Overall, not good.
One counter argument of my own that I have for this theory is that Tolkien often characterizes evil with industrialization. We see it in Isengard primarily, and how Saruman industrializes the Shire at the end of Return of the King. This industrialization is characterized very negatively, and is no doubt based off of the industrialization that Tolkien saw with his own eyes in the Western part of the world. Industrialization was historically claimed by the Western world and was an unfortunate justification for colonizing other countries and cultures. Saruman colonizing the Shire therefore would be a critique of Western culture, breaking the moral geography allegory.
One scholar by the name of Helen Young suggests that the source material may be more to blame than the time and place. They write
“Moreover, the romances that Tolkien knew so well were written during and after the time
of the Crusades and commonly featured Saracens—Islamic peoples of the
Middle East, North Africa, and Spain—as the enemy. Although not invariably
“so, Saracens were widely represented as racially as well as religiously different
from the western European audiences of the works, and in such literature,
darkness, whether of the skin or anything else, was associated with evil (read
as non-Christianity in those texts).”
Helen Young, Diversity and Difference: Cosmopolitanism and “The Lord of the Rings”
Tolkien would have based his world off of tales of medieval chivalry and hijinks which would villainize people of the east and glorify the western world. This sort of geography influenced his own worldbuilding, causing the moral geography of Middle Earth.
This statement also attempts to explain the racist characterization of Tolkien’s more monstrous races. Therefore, either consciously or subconsciously, his heroes of his own work look western, while his villains would appear eastern. I don’t quite buy into this theory as justification for what Tolkine has written. Building off of the point I made before for the “Dwarves are Jews” statement, I don’t think that perpetuating a racial caricature is ever okay.
England in Tolkien’s time was not exactly the most welcoming space for everyone, and many of Tolkien’s fans have written off his racist characterization of the orcs as simply being a product of time and place. I myself am not very quick to take this position because I find it dismissive of the feelings that Tolkien has hurt with his language.
Conclusion
Again, this is an ongoing discussion of how Tolkien’s life and literary works can be interpreted. I don’t buy in to many of the justifications given for Tolkien’s racist language, but I still enjoy his works and enjoy writing about his works. In my next article I will be collecting more modern criticisms of Tolkien, as well as those of my co-workers.
- https://bibliothecaveneficae.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/the_letters_of_j.rrtolkien.pdf ↩︎
- https://tolkienlibrary.com/press/804-tolkien-1971-bbc-interview.php ↩︎