Thursday, April 21, 2011
Friends
One thing that was brought up in class today I found really interesting. The fact that Aragorn seems to have better friends than Arthur, but that Aragorn's friends aren't human while Arthur's are. I wonder if that was some kind of statement by Tolkien about men, or maybe he was just bringing in more of the faerie element to his story. I don't know. Thoughts?
3 comments:
So I actually said that in class, and that's not exactly what I meant, haha.
What I really meant was that Aragorn has friends that are so ideal in character that they are hardly "human." I wasn't even thinking of race.
However, I think that this is an interesting point. Aragorn is sort of responsible for the salvation of men and yet he doesn't even hang out with men! Wasn't he sort of raised by Elves? At the end of the Lord of the Rings we see men as the dominant race and it also seems that they got that way by redeeming themselves from past wrongs and bad judgement. But their leader was raised by Elves (if I'm right about that.)
I don't think Tolkien is in any way trying to bash the world of Men. I mean he basically has them ruling the Middle-earth at the end of his books. And I think for as much weakness as they show, they possess equal amounts of strength. As to the debate of the Elves influence, I think we could say that in the beginning (think days of Numenor) Elves and Men were not so far removed from each other. Yes, the Elves were the first-born and obviously different from Men, but I think in their original form, Men were much more noble and regal than they have become by the time of the War of the Ring. Men used to be more similar than different from the Elves. So Aragorn being fostered by the Elves isn't so much exposing weakness on Man's part, but instead it's showing a return to old Numenor.
Also, the fact that the Elves are all leaving Middle-earth in my opinion shows their weakness. They can't stay indefinitely and are inclined to give up the ruling of Middle-earth to Men, which basically implies that Men are hardier and better able to survive in a more hostile environment. (I apologize, I feel as if this post rambled!)
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.