Tolkien the Utopian

Tolkien’s world is a sort of Golden Age. He follows the very old idea that our best time, the time when society was organized along the lines that let us be our best, was some time in the past. Everything since has been a deterioration, a descent from that best state.

In fact, Middle Earth at the time of the events in LoTR is actually more of a Bronze Age. Within that world at the time of the War of the Ring, the wise look back to earlier eras that were even closer to the gods/elves, and so represented by even nobler metals. Actual modernity is analogous to the feet of clay. It’s not even a noble metal anymore, just a low-grade porcelain, making the whole edifice vulnerable to a rock pitched by a Hand Unseen. I take this final thought to be the definitive proof that Tolkien was actually a doctrinaire Marxist.

Whether you classify the Tolkien universe as a utopia depends on where you stand on the question of how this older idea of metallic ages squares with the new-fangled idea of utopias.

Some years ago I gave a keynote at the biannual Utopiales conference: I delivered a version of this, arguing that the CBeebies TV shows “Teletubbies” is one of the most fully accomplished Utopian texts, by way if trying to tease out of the ways in which utopian thinking involves some or other degree of infantalization. Afterwards at the wine reception some of the conference came up to chat with me about my talk, and some simply blanked me, cut me like we were in a 19th-century novel: turned their backs on me as I mingled, and so on. Only later did I realise that the attendees at Utopiales is roughly half and half academics interested in utopian literature and actual utopians, often retired North American businesspeople who had made enough money to realise their dream of establishing a commune in Bangladesh or a Robert Owen style model village in Patagonia. This latter group thought my keynote had been mocking them, and they were not happy.

This, as you can tell, is by way of disagreeing with your assertion that “Utopias have to be intentional communities. Otherwise it’s Eden, Arcadia, pastoral. Which is different.” I think the intentional community angle is a very minor and, not to be cruel but, daft-o eccentric iteration of a much broader utopian fascination.

Also Tolkien was a conservative, Catholic traditionalist, what we might call ‘right wing’ (even: very right wing) in many ways. But he was no fascist.

Glen Tomkins @ 2 (11.05.17 at 3:09 pm)

What a quirky, delightful comment! (And the fact that it may be true for more than one value of true makes it even more delightful.) If it weren’t for wonderful comments like these, I might actually be able to overcome my addiction to CT threads that don’t, at first glance, seem to be my cup of tea.

GOPtopian apologetics

Sorry, I didn’t get this far.

But, of course, it plays on the fact that Utopias have to be intentional communities. Otherwise it’s Eden, Arcadia, pastoral.

Okay, if you saying that Midde-Earth is the intentional community of the migrated Elves, decayed and degraded by ambition and greed, you should be more clear. But there are too many other players and stories, and in most cases the fall of Utopia is a fairly natural process only assisted by Sauron and the Rings (Moria for ex).

In which case most of Middle-Earth is a dystopia, or fast on its way. It is still entirely nostalgic and melancholic in its themes and attitudes, ie, conservative and Arcadian not Utopian.

There may be interesting and important questions here. Were Brigham Young and Joseph Smith Utopians? Hell, even Marx thought Capitalism was a corruption of human nature. But LoTR is not a work that lends itself to their development. It’s too big.

It’s interesting that Tolkien includes priests alongside kings and knights as examples of archaism. Don’t we have priests now?

I agree with the idea that the better instincts of Sci-Fi and Fantasy are utopian and good, not fascistic. Think of Star Trek: TNG’s luxury, fully-automated gay space communism. Star Trek: Discovery even has openly gay characters (one of whom accused Kevin Spacey of harrasement and assault).

Turns out reality is as rapey as Game of Thrones. George R.R. Martin was a realist. I think are partially drawn to the world of Thrones b/c characters believe in honor and duty unlike the mercenary nature of late capitalism where the dollar nexus has dissolved all institutions. Thrones is more realistic than some fantasy although still cartoonish, but it dwells on the horror of war and of being lowborn or born into the wrong class.

After a cursory read through the previous thread, as well as this one, it seems to me that there a number of commentators who are rather missing the point of LoTR in regards to Tolkien’s purported feudal, aristocratic, quasi-fascist mindset.

Tolkien clearly loves and admires the valor and glory of his various heroes. Whether we’re talking about the angelic Elves, the demi-gods such as Gandalf, or the aristocratic humans such as Aragorn or Faramir – their’s a beauty, nobility, and power ascribed to these characters that is deeply troublesome in the way it invokes the innate superiority of certain classes of beings. Middle Earth is deeply hierarchical. This hierarchy extends even into the lower orders of the lesser Hobbits, where Frodo is persistently portrayed as more noble and magnificent than the standard-issue Hobbit.

But, but, but, but . . . the whole point of LoTR is that all these magnificent beings are either utterly corruptible or have already been corrupted by power. Every one of them either fails the test of the Ring, or is only praiseworthy to the extent that they are *just* wise enough to refuse to ever carry it. All the might of our heroes is basically irrelevant to the real task at hand – the destruction of the Ring. All the military valor on display at the Pelennor Fields is a mere holding action that cannot accomplish the final task of the destruction of the ring.

Even Frodo, who does a hell of a lot better than the higher order of beings, ultimately fails and claims the Ring for himself at the last. Indeed, in some ways, it is the even lower status, much overlooked Sam who comes out as the true hero of the final sequences in Mordor. The end is an incredibly bleak. The Ring is not destroyed through any intentional act. Rather it is destroyed because even the lowliest of the low, a Hobbit and his corrupted cousin, Gollum, are fighting for its possession on the edge of the precipice. It’s hard to imagine an end to the quest less lacking in valorous triumph, or one which takes an even bleaker view of the natural aristocracy’s capacity for managing the true threats faced by Middle Earth’s society. As is made clear, the more heroic characters would never even have made it close to Mt. Doom, as the betrayal of Boromir makes clear, along with the (analogous) corruption of Saruman. Galadriel is notable only because she is modest enough not to ever go near the thing – she is willing to resign herself to the slow decay of Middle Earth.

The construction of Middle Earth might be racist and hierarchical, and Tolkien clearly places great emphasis on the innate beauty and superiority of his various might warriors and demi-gods. But the Christian element of the story – the emphasis on the fact that it is only the lower orders who can save the earth – seems to me the overall thrust of the story. And even then, its notable that *no one* completely succeeds through valor or heroism or innate dignity alone. Not even Frodo.

Whether that makes Middle Earth a utopia or not, I don’t know, but its pretty essential to understand the entire society in the light of the utterly corruptible nature of the ruling classes (whether human or semi-divine). Tolkien clearly loves those ruling classes, but part of what he loves is their tragic, often grotesque failures.

What strikes me as romantic/idealised — but neither utopian nor arcadian — about LotR is the certainty throughout that, in this world, we know good from evil plainly and straightforwardly. And we can watch as good is corrupted or corruption is resisted. This might amount to utopian if the perfect dystopia were a world of twining ambiguities, with greying highlights and dusky darks … a world rather like our own, now that I think of it.

Some time not so long ago, 500 or maybe just 200 years ago human population growth went exponential and everything changed. Tolkien was clobbered by some of the more brutal consequences of this like WW1. And he responded with beautiful story of a time gone by that will never return.

We are left with the choice to either “boldly go where no man has gone before” or perish.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
His ring made its bearer unseen
“Is it utopia?” asked John Holbo
Replied Crooked Timber resoundingly “no”

I would say LotR is definitely not Utopian (in that it contains no blueprint for the construction of an ideal society), though it does contain three varieties of ideal society, none of which are actually practical even within the terms of the imagined world:

– the Shire is the standard conservative rural idyll, where rules and regulations (inherently evil) are rendered unnecessary by common sense, and social cohesion is maintained by a benevolent upper class and a lower class that knows its place. But such a society has only been able to survive in the face of external threats because other (better) men have been fighting unseen to protect it.

– Gondor is a typical Philosopher Kingdom, where (after the return of the King) society is organised toward the ideal by a wise, benevolent ruler, who is the way he is because of his birth, blood and inheritance. But in the past, neither the perfection nor the continued blood line of such philosopher kings has bene maintained, and there is no guarantee it will be maintained in future (always the big problem with philosopher kings).

– The Elvish kingdoms are just hangovers from the Golden Age they hark back to, clinging on against the inevitable march of time, and fatally compromised by their dependence on corruptible (magic) power.

For Tolkien any true Utopia could only lie in the past, and the story is one of inevitable, irreversible decline toward the hateful present. The Fourth Age, the Age of Man, will eventually see its factories, its upstart lower orders, its power-corrupted rulers, its self serving bureaucracies.

Since all this is pretty much anathema to my own political and historical views, I prefer to just read LotR as a well written heroic fantasy and not get too caught up in what Tolkien’s political views might have been (but one thing is for sure, he was no fascist, whatever the racial overtones of the story may be).

Glen Tomkins #2: “a sort of Golden Age”

I agree. It seems like Golden Ages and Utopia are two sides of the same coin — perfection — one before and one after the inversion of the Great Chain of Being by modernism.

Before, the perfect age was irretrievably lost in the past, the Golden Age. Afterward, the perfect age might be invented by humans in the future, the (scientific) Utopia.

Before, the promise of redemption by the monotheisms gave you (as an individual or member of a chosen group) the chance to escape the corruption and degradation of the rest of the world, because the Golden Age was irretrievable.

Tolkien, a devout Catholic, looks like a conservative Golden-Ager who split up the Christian myth of redemption into different character parts: The meek one is the only one who can overcome the evil. The wizards and elves are in quasi-angelic hierarchies are able to read the hearts and minds of others. The human king reclaims the throne and marries eternity (Arwen) as an age of peace is ushered in.

Modernism made profound changes in possible narrative themes and character meanings. For Tolkien, the weakening of absolute control by the Church allowed fiction which the devout might have deemed uselessly silly, or else dangerously heretical, a few centuries before.

Yet other essentials like plot types (tragedy, comedy, quest, burlesque, etc.) and plot necessities (protagonists, antagonists, battles, revelations, climaxes) have not changed at all.

Fiction plots need always conflict. This leads to a structural distinction between Golden Ages and Utopia. A Golden Age needs to be re-memorialized or enshrined against a new resurgence of the evil which effectively destroyed it. On the other hand, a Utopia needs to fall via interior contradiction (i.e., it is revealed to be a dystopia), either to be corrected or destroyed.

I do not see how LoTR is in any way a utopian novel or even one that admits of its possibility, if one defines utopia as a place, state or condition of ideal perfection, and therefore devoid of tragedy and evil and unintended consequences. Gandalf infers that he, at least, has no expectation that utopia is possible to achieve in Middle Earth. Inherent in utopia is that all true questions have only one true discoverable answer; the universe being rational, all true answers are compatible and fit together in perfect complement, knowledge of which would allow the wise to foresee and ultimately achieve perfection. But Gandalf denies this vision at least twice. The first is when Gandalf replies to Frodo’s exclamation that Gollum deserves death and it was a pity Bilbo did not slay Gollum when he had the chance: “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.” Later, in The Last Debate, while acknowledging that the fall of Sauron would remove a great evil, Gandalf goes on to say: “Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.” It does not seem to me that striving for a better future by combatting evil alone is utopian, even if one assumes a shared definition of evil.

Macklin@18: completely agree about the Christian element. Plus the importance of Sam, who was Tolkien’s tribute to his fellow Tommies of the Great War. I’d say, if there was a Utopia in LOTR it was the Shire–otherwise, LOTR is a Catholic, conservative [small-c] Christian philologist’s re-imagining of Beowulf, but with elves.