Mastodawn

Hiisikoloart 1d ago

estrogenandspite

I’ve been thinking a lot about Tolkien.

It is often remarked that a central thesis of his books is that evil provides the means of its own defeat. Sauron crafted the One Ring that killed him, Shelob impaled herself of Sam’s blade, Smaug exposed his belly to Bilbo and let him see the weak point.

I think it is less often commented on that the corollary to that is that good must still act to use those weaknesses. The Ring did not cast itself into the fires of Mt Doom but was brought by the Hobbits. Shelob was only able to impale herself because Sam kept his arm strong and held it out. The black arrow still needed to be shot into Smaug’s belly.

And a final point that I don’t see often enough is that Tolkien clearly believes good only loses if it surrenders to hopelessness. Denethor’s suicide driven by fear would have broken Minas Tirith if not for the Fellowship, Frodo would have fallen to despair if Sam had not been there to carry him, if Bilbo had seen the shot as hopeless then he never could have warned of the weak spot.

But because in those cases someone provided hope, good triumphed.

I don’t know. I’ve just been thinking about that a lot lately for some reason.

Bubbles Oct 5, 2025

@estrogenandspite As long as there is Hope, there is Light. I think Tolkien wrote to show there is always a Way to move on. Whatever happens do not give up.

Michael Gemar Oct 5, 2025

@estrogenandspite @zakalwe We have to do the journey ourselves — there are no eagles coming.

James 🦉 #FBPE 🇪🇺Oct 5, 2025

@michaelgemar @estrogenandspite @zakalwe Can we, like, get one eagle tho? I'll fly coach.

Pixel Dunn Oct 5, 2025

@estrogenandspite hobbit was one of the good we had at primary school… i wish we had such things later too and not only "how they were suffering in auschwitz/russian gulags"… jeez 🙄

axxuy Oct 5, 2025

@estrogenandspite One of the biggest losses in the Lord of the Rings movies is how explicitly clear the books make it that despair and hopelessness are weapons for evil. And they are the most dangerous weapons.

Chris Siebenmann Oct 6, 2025

@axxuy @estrogenandspite There's a great series by a historian that discusses the siege of Gondor and the battle of Helms Deep from both the movies and the books. One of the things he points out is that in the books, Tolkien mostly or entirely has battles turn on morale, not directly on the actions on the field (although the actions on the field lead to morale shifts on both sides). This is sadly lost in the films.

Starting posts of both series:
https://acoup.blog/2019/05/10/collections-the-siege-of-gondor/
https://acoup.blog/2020/05/01/collections-the-battle-of-helms-deep-part-i-bargaining-for-goods-at-helms-gate/

Collections: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

(Note: Thanks to the effort of a kind reader, this post is now available in audio format! The playlist for the entire series may be found here.) This is the first part of a six-part (II, III, IV, V…

A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry

Geoff Coffey Oct 5, 2025

@estrogenandspite At the risk of summoning a lot of haters haha you might even say "That's how we're gonna win: not fighting what we hate, but saving what we love.." This is evident in Sam especially but really in every hobbit-as-hero.

andrea-smandrea Oct 6, 2025

@estrogenandspite @gwcoffey rose tico was a hobbit

Geoff Coffey Oct 6, 2025

@andrea_smandrea @estrogenandspite Yes! Rose Tico was the best thing to happen to Star Wars since Empire and the way the did her wrong was the worst part of that terrible third sequel movie.

andrea-smandrea Oct 6, 2025

@gwcoffey @estrogenandspite my big problem was they killed ben solo!

Edelruth, PBS Passport Holder 1d ago

@gwcoffey @estrogenandspite

I love this Geoff, and I am seeing it for the first time the day Iranians line up around their power plants and on their bridges in the faint hope that the U.S. will back off the war crime threats.

James 🦉 #FBPE 🇪🇺Oct 5, 2025

@estrogenandspite I've never heard it put like this before. But damn.

Knut 🏳️‍🌈 🇳🇴🧸Oct 6, 2025

@estrogenandspite I try not to think too deeply into Tolkien because.....you absolutely can. Beowulf is my MOST FAVORITE story of ALL TIME! And I've read dozens of translations of it, including Old English. And when I read Tolkien's translation...I had to totally rethink everything I knew about the story. Because it also includes his commentary. And like me, he spent his life studying the poem, and make breaks I never thought were there. He's a rabbit hole. Just don't do drugs reading him.

Christine Malec Oct 6, 2025

@estrogenandspite Beautiful, and often difficult.

14mission Oct 6, 2025

@estrogenandspite Put another way-things always seems totally hopeless. But you just keep going.

Jenica Lake เหล็ถเลถ Oct 6, 2025

@estrogenandspite know our enemy, see the weakness, expose the weakness, show up every single day. The power is US.

Le Monolecte 😷🤬🐧

@estrogenandspite

... and also that winning is a team effort, not a "chance" that falls from the sky.

Stoneface Vimes Oct 6, 2025

@estrogenandspite and don't forget the influence of 'bad actors', for example Wormtongue on Theoden, Saruman in his pride using the 'seeing stone' and becoming corrupted by the dark lord. These demonstrate that even the strong should be on their guard against whispering voices, and over confidence.

Nina Röckelein Oct 6, 2025

@estrogenandspite Yes, when rewatching one of the movies this year I got the exact same impression about the message in the story: Do not succumb to despair or evil has already won.

Juho Mäntysalo Oct 6, 2025

@estrogenandspite

That's a good reading. That the One Ring doomed itself (it uses Frodo to curse Gollum, which leads to sure-footed Gollum falling into Mt Doom) would support your case.

OTOH, Tolkien also believed in entropy in addition to good winning: thus elves leave, but Melkor was also out and his empire was ruled by a diminished clerk.

Further, the LotR sequel was about old-man-shouting-at-a-cult-run-by-ignorant-youths. Long way from Silmarillion! Also depressing: so much lost.

Juho Mäntysalo Oct 6, 2025

@estrogenandspite

While hope is a great tool and instrumental in each victory (and the loss of it is always precondition of evil winning: see also the tale of Húrin), there is also some ongoing thread of depression of things always getting worse. The elves leaving and industrialisation destroying both land and society being the easiest to see. Also Frodo's PTSD.

On the Crow Road Oct 7, 2025

@estrogenandspite you've captured the aspect of Tolkien that makes me love LotR, despite his sometimes dry style, the near total absence of women, and the excessive love for a staunchly conservative, class based society. The key to evil's defeat is in ordinary people being willing to take a stand.

Burning Joint USA Oct 7, 2025

I also was thinking about Tolkien today and about how it would be nice if there was a task like throwing the ring into Mt. Doom that would defeat evil, but there isn't really a straight forward task in our story... In our story, behind Sauron is Morgoth and behind Morgoth is another bad guy and behind that guy another one and it seems to go on forever. Evil isn't so much a guy that we defeat, but an impulse we resist... An impulse that the weakest of us haven't been able to resist. I think if I were to name that impulse it would be fear. Or something like fear. Those of us that live our lives guided by fear do the most shameful and horrifying things. The ICE officers that are afraid the white race will be replaced and that they will be treated in similar ways to how they have treated minorities, they go out into Latino communities and kidnap people to prevent that fear from manifesting... Trump is like a child that is scared of everything in the world that is unfamiliar to a person who has been sheltered by opulence their entire life. He is most afraid of just having to be like one of us, so he systematically targets each group of poor people in the US so he doesn't have to face that fear. They are afraid of their own shadow and so they commit these atrocities to try to vanquish the thing they are afraid will happen.

Burning Joint USA Oct 7, 2025

In the Silmarillian, Morgoth was filled with envy for all the wondrous things Iluvitar created and that is where his hatred came from. I imagine there is some of that in somebody like Trump too, who has never created a thing with his own 2 hands in his life. He is the poster child for impotence... Not just in the sexual way, but in the sense that he cannot do anything for himself. He has never had to and so he has never been tested and this has made him weak. I used to live in a van and often hundreds of miles from where I might seek help. I ended up in a lot of difficult situations that I survived and being tested in that way and finding that you can do things and survive hard things, it builds a kind of strength these evil people just don't have. In place of strength a lot of them have put loyalty, which makes them not dissimilar to an Orc. Orcs are kind of fear driven loyalty machines. I definitely think that ICE is analogous to a band of Orcs. Trump is a petulant child with no moral character or strength and so not your typical Tolkien bad guy. Morgoth and Sauron were both very skilled. Trump has no skills. I think our big challenge is to find that task we must do to defeat moron magic. There is some weird spell of moron magic over about half the country and having known these Orcish rednecks, it would be real nice if there were a one ring we could destroy to break the spell they are under.

Fiona Gregory Dec 11

@estrogenandspite How can we apply this to our present times, when it is no exaggeration to say, evil is rising?

Edelruth, PBS Passport Holder 1d ago

@estrogenandspite

This is a wonderful insight, and extra valuable for showing up in my feed on April 7, 2026, when our modern day Sauron is threatening ruin and hell to get his hands on some oil.

millennial fulcrum 1d ago

@estrogenandspite beautiful.

the crazy thing is, every orc wants its head cut off. every nasgul, wight, traitor and other hostile wants to be ground into powder and baked into bricks; it's the only outcome that can benefit them.

one fact of conflict that storytellers avoid is that systematic annihilation of a threat works. the slaughter stops when the aggressor is gone.

all conflict is a battle against apathy as much as against evil. but we do not need to fight evil if we simply hunt it.

kasdeya 19h ago

@estrogenandspite

AlsoPaisleyCat 🇨🇦13h ago

@estrogenandspite

I would add that add that Tolkein, as were the others such as C.S. Lewis in the Cambridge pub writing group, was very intentional in being clear that true evil does exist and needs to be stopped.

They were very conscious of the philosophical arguments of moral relativism of the time. And they understood that, at the extreme, moral relativism could lead to passivity, inaction and despair.

It’s a kind of analogue to the paradox of tolerance. There is a line where one can say a behaviour is evil or a war crime and therefore intervention is necessary.