Playing The Mines of Moria expansion for The Lord of the Rings Online has prompted a thoughtful article comparing the fictional battle over Middle-Earth territory to modern-day events taking place in the Middle East.
Is Moria the Promised Land? at The Angry Bear begins by outlining the factions fighting over the right to claim residence in Moria; Dwarves, the original occupiers, Goblins, which moved in following the Dwarves departure and The Morroval, half-women, half-bat creatures.
Author Allen Rausch notes:
… there doesn’t seem to be any common ground between the three factions that could broker any sort of structured solution. It’s an endless cycle of violence where killing begets killing that merely begets more killing.
Hmm, that does sound familiar. Which group would Rausch side with?
In such a case, my sympathies must ultimately lie with the Dwarves not because of what the Morroval or the goblins do to them, but because of what goblins and Morroval do to each other and the kind of culture they create for themselves.
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Re: Middle-Earth as Symbolic Middle-East
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Re: Middle-Earth as Symbolic Middle-East
I look forward to reading this properly, but ultimately it's human nature (replace human with whichever fantasy race you like). It's the 'circle of blood'.
Warhammer fantasy battles goes all out with absolute racism on all sides, 'greenskins' are always to be killed and such.
Incidentally, I've been commentating on the original storyline script of StarCraft and one revelation I came across is that the situation is almost similar to North America with its colonisation and native inhabitants. Naturally, I mentioned that it's complete speculation and probably not even intended, as overanalysing is easy to do.
Re: Middle-Earth as Symbolic Middle-East
I would go even further and say it is a 'life' thing, not just a 'human' trait. These conflicts can usually be reduced to some variant of 'success for my gene line' combined with human's abstract social structures.
Re: Middle-Earth as Symbolic Middle-East
I'd say Warhammer 40,000s universe takes the absolute racism and holy wars even further.
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Re: Middle-Earth as Symbolic Middle-East
Agreed, though, I'll admit, 40K probably has more to do with the Crusades and Holy Roman Empire than Middle Earth, what with the Deistic approach to the Emperor, the organisation of the Marines, and the mentality of the 'Clergy', it's kind of like the 15th Century * 500 + Lasers ;)
Re: Middle-Earth as Symbolic Middle-East
WH40k is definitley closer to the middle-east situation than the mines of moria are.
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I LIKE the fence. I get 2 groups to laugh at then.
Re: Middle-Earth as Symbolic Middle-East
That I'll agree with, however, it's a very one-sided interpretation even then, I suppose it's a semi-accurate depiction of the situation but I'd have trouble deciding who are the Marines, and who are Chaos in this particular case, the line gets a bit blurred ;)
Re: Middle-Earth as Symbolic Middle-East
Whilst it's an interesting point of view, over-analysis is not always a good thing, the Dwarfs were, for example, driven out of Moria by both the Goblins and the remnants of Melkors army, including a Balrog, and Moria was created by the dwarves, at least until they hit the caverns underneath, before the Dwarves created it, there was no such place as Moria, secondly, the Goblinoids were a semi-animalistic race, distantly related to Melkors' Orcs, who were wholly dedicated to Murder and Bloodshed, I can't comment on the batwomen, since they are new to me.
I think it's easy to find comparisons in just about anything if you look hard enough, but the histories between the races don't really match to any extreme, it's a little too definitive of 'good guys' and 'bad guys'.
Re: Middle-Earth as Symbolic Middle-East
Oh, theres no "over-analysis" about it. When you read Tolkiens memoirs, you see that this guy was straight on (over-obvious, really.) Tolkien used LOR and the series all as metaphores for how things are going in this world, just like Lewis did in Narnia (Tolkien and Lewis were good friends, remember).
Re: Middle-Earth as Symbolic Middle-East
What memoirs were YOU reading? Everything I've ever read about Tolkien talked about how much he hated allegory, and how he was very adamant in saying that his books made no references to real world events or people, like Hitler or WWII.
Tolkien, by the way, HATED the Narnia books.
Re: Middle-Earth as Symbolic Middle-East
Yup, he always adamantly denied that there was any deliberate connection between the two, and that, if he had based LOTR on the War, it wouldn't have ended the way it had. In fact, the only direct comparison that I could find was the scouring of the Shire which, I believe Tolkein stated, reflected his own concerns about what would happen to Britain after the War.