Throughout the semester the matter of selfishness vs. selflessness has come up. This idea had the most relevance with the Silmarillion. In the Silmarillion, selfishness was representative of evil and selflessness was representative of good. This is seen with Melkor's evil because he only wants things for himself and is further represented by Sauron. It is mentioned that Sauron became his most evil self when he stopped working for Melkor but instead worked for himself thus becoming more selfish than before. In the story of Beren and Luthien, selfless acts are seen and representative of how pure and good the characters really are.
During class we mentioned how Niggle in the story was somewhat selfish because he didn't want to help his neighbors because it was an inconvenience to himself. Although Niggle is not a bad character and does appear to go to 'heaven' (Niggle's Parish) he does appear somewhat selfish for a relatively good character written by Tolkien. This made me think what truly defines selfishness in society. Is selfishness the act of only thinking for yourself or only doing for yourself? For example with Niggle, is he being selfish for feeling burdened or is his selfless for helping Parish anyways even when he feels burdened?
1 comment:
I can't entirely say I agree with this perspective of the Niggle reading, but I think it's mostly because up to the very end, I found myself impatiently muttering "just get to the point already". For all of his complaints on Lewis' slow speech, Tolkien sure beat around the bush a whole lot in his writing. However, I like this string of thought about the self in relations to others and if Niggle should be interpreted as selfish or selfless. I'm not sure if he is either, exclusively, and so I began to think of alternatives.
Something I have been giving a lot of thought to lately is the difference between being selfish and self-full.By this I mean that people often forget that they must take their needs into account before giving arm and limb to others simply for the sake of not being considered selfish. Being self-full is about acknowledging you are vital and that if you do not fulfill your needs, you cannot help others (much like when you are told to put oxygen masks on yourself before assisting others on airplanes)
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