Tolkien and Power

For starters giving me very little guidelines for what I must write in my blogs and giving me a pseudonym is giving me way too much power, I like it. On that same note, I would like to discuss Tolkien’s use of power in his story as described by him in his Letter to Milton Waldman. Tolkien says that the word power in his books always carries a negative connotation, the only exception is when its associated with the Valar (@me). We can see this most clearly in “The ring of Power”, this ring holds extraordinary power and gives the wielder the power to accomplish all his wildest dreams, but we must be wary since this ring will corrupt the wielders purest wishes into a Machiavellian endeavor. This is an interesting view of power since in our modern American values having power is always a good thing, we have sayings like “knowledge is power” in order to motivate children to learn. However, there is also the not so positive and often not talked about the assumption that with money comes power. Does this mean that our perception of power comes from innocence and our faith in humanity’s innate goodness or was Tolkien oversimplifying the role of power in a society?