The Lord of the Rings and the War on Iraq
So a few weeks ago I went and saw the Two Towers. I'm a big fan of the books and I started rereading it again a few weeks ago.
There was something my brother said as we were heading out of the movie that surprised me. He implied that the Lord of the Rings was a pro-war movie, specifically a pro War on Iraq movie.
After reading the first book and about a third of the second book I don't consider the Lord of the Rings a pro-war movie. While the trilogy is about a war I know that you can't say it is a work about why war is necessary. Rather it seems to me to be a work about what power is, how it corrupts and how technology and ambition move people away from acting human. Certainly in the Lord of the Rings the war is necessary. In fact the characters in it don't have any choice but to go to war. But the people that perpetuate the war are evil incarnate. I suppose that's why in the forward J.R.R. Tolkien goes out of his way to say that his story is applicable to current international conflict (at that time WWII) but most certainly his work was not meant to provide an allegory to that conflict.
It seems to me the scope and depth of the book make it applicable to any world war. I suppose it's one of the reasons I enjoy the books so much. But I can't imagine why anyone would think that the Lord of the Rings is a book that says we must go to war must with Iraq. This is especially true when you look at the war being fought in the books. It's a war that everyone in the book is resigned to losing but are fighting valiantly to win against overwhelming power and odds. With the War on Iraq we are not fighting overwhelming power or odds.
