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The Over-the-Bree-Hill Gang Rides Again - Page 2

© Michael Martinez

The second fundamental evil Tolkien gave us was Sauron. Sauron represents the diabolical side of our ambitions. He is the perverter, the twister of words and ideas. Sauron is the guy who moves into a party scene, starts telling great jokes, and gets all the women to flirt with him. Once he's stolen the limelight from all the lackluster mortal men, he leads the party down into damnation. That's basically what happened to the Elves of Eregion. They danced with the devil and ended up paying the ultimate price for their dalliance with power. Saruman fell to Sauron's wily ways, too. And so did other characters in the book. Sauron is the most realistic of Tolkien's incarnate evils, because he is most like to one of us. He stands just a little bit above men in some respects, is just a little bit larger than life. Keeping Sauron at a distance was Tolkien's way of preventing the reader from realizing (until the climactic ending) that Sauron was just another blowhard until. The third fundamental evil is Morgoth. As the original evil bad guy, Morgoth gets blamed for starting all sorts of grief. But he is too far removed in memory (of the characters in The Lord of the Rings) for the reader to get a true sense of him. And when we meet him in The Silmarillion, he doesn't quite come across like Lucifer tempting Jesus in the New Testament. Morgoth is the paramount villain before he becomes legendary. He is the essence of the corrupter in his prime. He doesn't have to be portrayed as larger than life, because everything he does has a profound effect on multitudes. Morgoth, unlike Sauron and Smaug, can set into motion chains of events with just a word. He thinks ahead in ways Sauron never really could. Morgoth returns to Middle-earth and takes control in the space of a few years. Sauron takes shape and then devotes 2,000 years to gathering strength and wearing down his enemies. The War of the Jewels was not a significant event for Morgoth. It consumed much of his attention. Tolkien points out that the rebellion of the Noldor ensured that Morgoth would remain fixed in one area of Middle-earth, thus sparing most of Middle-earth a great deal of harm and suffering. But Morgoth and the Valar had been present in the Halls of Ea for so long, had built worlds and stars, and had fought many greater battles in the past, so that what transpired in Beleriand and adjoining lands really pales by comparison with the previous wars. The War of Wrath looked back to the old days of raw, unmitigated power battling power. And yet, it wasn't the same. Morgoth was weaker. The Valar really didn't have to rip apart whole continents. In fact, mindful of the presence of the Children of Iluvatar, the Valar took special care not to unleash their full fury.

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