Race Is of Fantasy & Race Is a Fantasy: How J.R.R. Tolkien Popularized a Fantastic Element That Shared a Name With an Imaginary Real-World Concept

By John Giarmoleo

NOTE FROM DR. SHEENA MASON: As an assistant professor in English who specializes in Africana literature and studies, I teach my students the theory of racelessness, which includes teaching them all of the philosophies of race and about the history of human rights efforts in the US and Caribbean (primarily). I render transparent my ideas and offer the theory as a way to bridge how anyone thinks about race and what is conveyed in the literature. I help to create a classroom culture that empowers students to engage deeply with new information and express their own ideas without fear of reprisal.

Together, we navigate literature and history that illustrate all of the philosophies of race. And we frequently make connections to today’s context and imagine a future without race/ism—particularly antiblack racism. We also talk about how to create such a future and how hard it can be to imagine it as even possible. Inevitably, students leave my classroom thinking and feeling different ways about the content of the class.

It feels especially surreal when any student feels inspired enough to take anything they learn from my class into another class or setting. That is what happened here. Recent graduate John Giarmoleo, a student who took two classes with me (one in the Fall of 2022 and one in the Fall of 2023 school years), used his interpretation of the theory and applied it to his reading of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work. The following is a paper that John wrote for his English major Capstone project, a class taught by another colleague this semester. To be clear, John wrote this paper for another professor’s class. It illustrates his hard work and ideas. While he worked on this 43-page paper over the semester, I shared a very rough draft of my forthcoming book The Raceless Antiracist: Why Ending Race Is the Future of Antiracism (2024) for his use. You’ll see some direct quotes from that book here. He shared his final paper with me since he references and utilizes the theory of racelessness (both in my first and second books) to analyze Tolkien. And I am proud to share that he starts graduate school in the Spring 2024 semester. His future is limitless.

When I wrote my first book (the result of my dissertation), I presented the theory as a framework for the first time. That anyone can engage with it, turn it over in their minds and hearts, and apply it as a way to analyze and learn and talk about race/ism in any context is precisely what I imagined and why I call it a “theory” and “framework.” In my fields of study, that is the value a framework offers us. If used well, frameworks help us see better. And they can offer us increasingly expansive ways to see and be.

What better way to start 2024 than with fresh eyes and a fresh way to create a future without race/ism? Here’s to more students engaging and applying the theory. ENJOY!

ABSTRACT 

For centuries, humans have been conditioned to live in a racialized world where race is viewed as a mainstream tool to denote, discriminate against, or otherwise categorize each other into groups based on a multitude of factors. The prevalence of racial ideology in society has led to an unfathomably long list of conflicts, violence, injustices, and other issues at all levels of society(ies). Now, however, in the twenty-first century, more and more individuals are rejecting race and its problematic connotations, advocating for a post-racial world in the name of our shared humanity. In this essay, I will attempt to connect and enhance ideas about a raceless world by highlighting race as a strictly fantastic element in regards to both the real-world, everyday brain and the literary brain. The best and most effective way to highlight race as pure fantasy is to examine it through the work of the perhaps most influential fantasy author of all time, J.R.R. Tolkien. The popular Middle-Earth titles The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings amongst other related works and their adaptations, embody the perfect redefinition of race, detaching it from the way in which most people have been conditioned to understand it. By understanding what makes race purely fantastic through its development and application within the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and their adaptations, it is entirely possible that one could grasp a better understanding of the real-world raceless lens, lifestyle, and ambition for advocacy.

KEYWORDS: Lord of the Rings, racelessness, antiracism, race, James Baldwin, Mason, Hobbit, racial, Middle-Earth, Rings of Power, Tolkien

INTRODUCTION 

Before diving straight into J.R.R Tolkien’s racial Middle-Earth, it is important to first realize why “race” (synonymous with what we call “species”) as used by Tolkien is not identical to real-world “race" and was a perhaps necessary manifestation of his Middle-Earth writings. This Middle-Earth racial manifestation of Tolkien’s can be attributed to the fact that Middle-Earth races are integral to the stories that take place there. However, it is quite obvious that these created races are just that: created. Clearly, there are no Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves (not referring to humans with dwarfism), Orcs, Trolls, or Ents living amongst us. So, in order to create perhaps more justifiable racial conflicts in Middle-Earth, Tolkien–perhaps not knowing fully why–needed to create these various races (species) in the way he did. The “not knowing fully why” aspect of Tolkien’s recreation is due to real-world “race,” as it is imagined and acted upon, being just that: imaginary, yet unfortunately lived by. It is entirely possible that Tolkien subconsciously recognized the flaws of real-world racial frameworks birthed by the human imagination and in turn, also recognized that said frameworks could not be properly incorporated into his fantasy as a believable foundation for conflict and/or culture. This recognition then further led to the creation of the fantastic element of race and the surfacing of the intangibility of real-world race in the process. The creation of the aforementioned fantastic element would mean that Tolkien is not only the father of fantasy–by means of him being so important to and setting the bar for the genre from his time onwards–but also the father of race as well. In other words, race and fantasy go hand-in-hand because race or rather, the real-world imaginary concept we call race, has never truly existed in the real world and was created as a concept only real within the bounds of fantasy and popularized mainly by the hand and mind of Tolkien. In fact, one could even utter the phrase “race is fantasy” as a double-meaning: it’s a fantastic element in literature (Tolkien’s “race”) and media, but also a fantastic real-world illusion (real-world “race”). Tolkien stole the name “race” from an unjustifiable, imaginary real-world concept and applied it to a fantastic element that has real (in the boundaries of Middle-Earth) applicability and also called it “race.” 

THE THEORY OF RACELESSNESS & SUPPLEMENTAL WORLDLY VIEWPOINTS 

Though real-world race has already been highlighted above as imaginary, it is understandable if one is unfamiliar or initially unconvinced that race is in fact imaginary due to its prevalence in our shared society. However, as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) pointed out, race was disproven as biological decades ago even before then at the World Conference Against Racism in 2001. At this conference, Pierre Sane claimed that “as early as 1948, UNESCO initiated a programme which, through the dissemination of scientific facts, established the fallacious nature of racist theories,” highlighting the long-standing scientific skepticism of race. He also later went on to highlight that twenty-first century scientists are even further locked in on that belief, even after so many years: “Science - modern genetics in particular - has constantly affirmed the unity of the human species, and denied that the notion of ‘race’ has any foundation.” Now, over two decades after the conference, there are also many arguments claiming that race does not exist in any form, biological or otherwise. One such argument for the nonexistence of race comes in the form of the theory of racelessness. 

This theory was intellectually manifested, written about in original books and articles, and founded (website/organization) by Dr. Sheena Michele Mason, who is currently an Assistant Professor of English at SUNY Oneonta and a staunch advocate for antiracism. In Mason’s book Theory of Racelessness: A Case for Antirace/ism, she outlines the framework for her theory of racelessness (hence the book title) chapter by chapter, page by page, denouncing and disapproving of the foundations and upholding of race/ism (written this way by Mason to contend and illustrate that race and racism go hand-in-hand), mostly in reference to its influence in the United States, though the framework can be applied elsewhere. In the book’s introduction, Mason defines her theory as “a methodological and pedagogical framework for analysis that illustrates how the undoing of racism requires the undoing of ‘race,’ inspires a more astute identification and analysis of racism, and stops unintentionally reifying racism by upholding race ideology and its corresponding language” (1). In layman’s terms, Mason is proposing that the key to being an antiracist is to view ourselves and all others as raceless individuals, viewed by others under a racialized lens meant to uphold power discrepancies. Only if this mindset is adopted can we make truly significant strides in achieving a de-racialized society and uprooting racism at the foundational level. 

Importantly, through the raceless lens, Mason does not argue that racism does not exist. According to her theory, antiblack racism is a real, ongoing problem that is perpetuated through the wrongful, continued belief in race and racialized society(ies) in any format, old or new. As Mason states, “the effort to reconstruct race is truly an effort to reconstruct racism” (3). In other words, the belief in racelessness over race/ism is the only true path to a fully antiracist society(ies). With race outlined as imaginary but racism explained as real, Mason is able to produce an elaborate, innovative, and convincing approach to the imaginary concept that is race, overpowering any attempts by skeptics, preservationists, and all other believers in both biological or nonbiological race/ism to justify a continued belief in race/ism. 

In addition to Theory of Racelessness: A Case for Antirace(ism), Mason’s forthcoming book, The Raceless Antiracist: Why Ending Race Is the Future of Antiracism, also shares many of the same sentiments as her previous book, including a statement on colorblindness: 

Colorblindness operates on the assumption that “race” is real, that skin color, DNA, or culture can and should be interpreted into the thing called race but overlooked in sometimes sincere attempts to treat people with the humanity they deserve. In that way, colorblindness falls woefully short of helping people unify, heal, and reconcile around issues like race/ism. If we see “race,” a proxy for skin color to many people’s minds, everywhere, after all, most of us are not actually colorblind, then we are far more inclined to imagine race/ism in the same ways everywhere or absolutely nowhere, a happening that supports my fundamental point that race/ism often hides its face as “race.” (Chapter 4) 

Here, Mason argues that colorblindness, a concept popularized by Martin Luther King Jr., has failed to meet antiracist expectations over the years. Many people wrongfully equate race with color, so, when we see color, we also see race and therefore (likely unintentionally) uphold race/ism. The reliance on skin color is a mundane way to conclude how a person may be (wrongfully) racialized, especially when relying on a dichotomy of “whiteness” and “blackness,” originally created as a dichotomy of good and evil in the United States. 

Though Mason’s work focuses primarily on the United States, race/ism exists virtually everywhere else, she says. It is just that the racial/st structures in other parts of the world are not a matter of copying and pasting how they are in the United States. In James Balwin’s “On Being White…. And Other Lies” (Reproduced from “Essence,” April 1984), he claims, in reference to Jews who came to the United States from other countries that, “American Jews have opted to become white” (1). Baldwin’s claim points out—at least in reference to the specific Jews he is referring to—the Jewish desire to escape at least some of the ethnic and religious oppression and persecution they may have faced elsewhere by choosing to become part of a dominant social and racial group in the United States. He also asserts that in referencing America (the United States), he is speaking of “the European vision of the world–or more precisely, perhaps the European vision of the universe” (1), a vision that glorifies what Americans view as “whiteness.” He then goes on to build on this sentiment by further explaining how “whiteness” does not truly exist, but is rather chosen as an identity by those who can get away with it in the United States because of the advantages that traditionally come with American whiteness. Baldwin’s argument focuses heavily on the basis of “white being a moral choice (for there are no white people)” (3). He also claims that the black identity has been “forged” (3) by American whites in order to create a power dynamic. Like white-identifying people, black people are not always black outside of the United States and places like it. For Baldwin, race is subjective and assigned based on perception and imagination and the context of race/ism, not reality outside of racism. 

If one connects Baldwin’s point of view on race with Mason’s, a common theme arises: Race is an illusion and only racism is real, born of the mass belief in and assignment of the aforementioned illusion. The mass belief in and assignment of the imaginary concept that is race is the reason why individuals and societies unfortunately become entangled in “racial” conflict and power dynamics unjustly. The unjustifiable, blurry definitions of race in the real world do not hold persuasive power for skeptical eliminativist racial commentators like Mason and Baldwin and evidently did not for Tolkien either due to his reconstructionist approach to race in his work. However, Tolkien’s reconstructionist approach to race through The Lord of the Rings and other related Middle-Earth texts does not match the real-word racial reconstructionist approach; Tolkien created distinct traits for his races, aligning the word more so with the word “species” through undeniable and inflexible biological and geographical dissimilarities. Tolkien had to make race real because real-world “race” is, at the base-level, an unfortunate, collectively ingrained figment of human imagination. 

TOLKIEN’S RACES IN-DEPTH 

Now that the differences between Tolkien-popularized fantasy race and real-world race/ism have been laid out, an in-depth breakdown of the fantastic element that is race can also be presented. Though many of Tolkien’s races are inspired by Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon mythological beings, they are not identical to them. Tolkien took Anglo-Saxon beings and names, made them his own, and popularized them and in the process, created the fantastical element he called “race.” Tolkien’s use of race is–unlike real-world race/ism–characterized by a vast array of intelligent, biologically (though this biology too is not identical in all aspects to real-world biology and will be viewed that way throughout this essay) different groups that live across Middle-Earth. With this presentation of race considered, there are two main factors that solidify race as fantastic: the first is, as previously explained, that real-world race is imaginary. The other is that this type of race can only exist in fantasy. The existence and, thanks to Tolkien, racialization of non-human, intelligent, organic (meaning non-mechanical/robotic) humanoids such as Orcs, Hobbits, or otherwise and animals is purely fantastic. 

Appropriately, as perhaps the most iconic of Tolkien’s humanoid races, Hobbits offer much insight into Tolkien’s approach to race in Middle-Earth. As a whole, they were described in interruption of a description of Bilbo’s background–necessarily and extensively–by Tolkien early on in The Hobbit by their race-specific appearances and traits: 

They are (or were) a little people, about half our [human] height, and smaller than the bearded Dwarves. Hobbits have no beards. There is little or no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them disappear quietly and quickly when large stupid folk like you and me come blundering along, making a noise like elephants which they can hear a mile off. They are inclined to be fat in the stomach; they dress in bright colors (chiefly green and yellow); wear no shoes, because their feet grow natural leathery soles and thick warm brown hair like the stuff on their heads (which is curly); have long clever brown fingers, good-natured faces, and laugh deep fruity laughs (especially after dinner, which they have twice a day when they can get it). (4) 

With this early introduction to Hobbits, the reader is introduced to the fantastic element that is race before the narrative of the rest of the novel even truly begins. Here, Tolkien gives Hobbits biologically unchangeable traits that characterize them specifically, throwing the reader directly into a racialized Middle-Earth, even if they are yet to have learned more about the other races beyond the comparisons of a select couple to Hobbits. The immediately clear biological differences of races within Middle-Earth also allows Tolkien to assign believable fashion and speech homogeneity between the races as well, something real-world race/ism cannot effectively do without error. The specificity of Tolkien’s Hobbits as early as the first few pages of The Hobbit goes to show why Thorin and Company soon after chose, in fact, a hobbit (Bilbo) as their “burglar” (18), as well as how intricately crafted Tolkien’s fantastic element of race was, even before the much longer The Lord of the Rings even existed. This specificity and early emphasis on race is amplified even further by Tolkien’s inclusion of comparisons to Dwarves and even “us” readers, otherwise known as humans, who would be collectively referred to as a single race of “Men” in Middle-Earth (more on the implications of the homogenization of all Men/humans later). 

In addition to the stress Tolkien places on what exactly makes all Hobbits members of the same fantastic race within the bounds of the stories of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, he also solidifies the racial status of Hobbits by giving them a detailed racial ancestry. In the prologue to The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien informs the reader that Hobbits and Men are related but have clearly heavily diverged biologically long before the Third Age of Middle-Earth when the story takes place. It is here where Tolkien emphasized that “in spite of later estrangement Hobbits are relatives of ours: far nearer than Elves, or even than Dwarves” (2). Tolkien wanted to be sure that before the reader jumps into The Lord of the Rings, they understand that, at this point, Men and Hobbits are quite different biologically and are each separate additions to his concept of race. Perhaps this explains Merry and Pippin’s insistence that Treebeard add a new, separate line for Hobbits in his list of the free peoples of Middle-Earth, for example (The Lord of the Rings 465). 

Later on, throughout the novel, the extreme “estrangement” between Men and Hobbits is made obvious numerous times. Perhaps one of the greatest examples of this estrangement comes about in “The Battle of the Pelennor Fields” in the form of the showdown between the Lord of the Nazgûl (the Dark Lord) and Éowyn of Rohan. In this scene, Éowyn manages to defeat the Dark Lord seemingly by means of being a woman. However, a deeper examination of this sequence may reveal to us more about race and more specifically, the estrangement of Men and Hobbits. Despite the Dark Lord’s assertion that “no living man can kill me” and Éowyn’s response of “but no living man am I! You look upon a woman” (841) and her subsequent final blow to him, gender may have not actually had anything to do with her ability to strike him down. This disconnect from gender’s role is due to the fact that the Dark Lord was impaled by an enchanted blade designed to disrupt his magical protection at the hands of the hobbit Meriadoc (Merry) Brandybuck prior to Éowyn’s blow. So, if we strictly understand Eowyn to be a female member of the race of Men, then it is quite possible to interpret this scene–perhaps depressingly–not as the iconic feminist moment that it is widely accepted as, but rather as a triumph of outside help from magic and from a member of another race. If we do in fact view Éowyn as a “living man” in the context of her race, then we could also then assume that, despite the lack of capitalization of “man,” the Dark Lord’s claim about his invincibility to death by a man is in the context of referring to a single member of the race of Men as opposed to in the context of gender. 

Circling back to the ancestry of Hobbits, it is important to note that Tolkien had created “three somewhat different breeds [of Hobbits]: Harfoots, Stoors, and Fallohides” (The Lord of the Rings 3). Here, it is important to note that Tolkien uses the word “breeds” and not the word “races” to categorize the three types of Hobbits, implying that they are, in fact, all still one race. Tolkien describes the physical features and assumingly corresponding landscape preference of each breed in-depth: 

The Harfoots were browner of skin, smaller, and shorter, and they were beardless and bootless; their hands and feet were neat and nimble; and they preferred highlands and hillsides. The Stoors were broader, heavier in build; their feet and hands were larger; and they preferred flat lands and riversides. The Fallohides were fairer of skin and also of hair, and they were taller and slimmer than the others; they were lovers of trees and of woodlands. (3) 

With this vivid description of the ancestral Hobbit breeds, we can make a connection–or rather disconnection–to real-world race/ism. This connection is that, as highlighted by Mason, color is not an effective tool in (wrongful) real-world racialization. For Tolkien, it was not an effective tool in fantastic racialization either, as it seems. Tolkien, in his creation of the fantastic, Middle-Earth race, could not effectively rely on color to racialize. Racial identification by color was ineffective not only because members of the same race were a mix of colors, but because real-world race/ism cannot properly adhere to specific skin colors and thus also excluded it as an effective defining factor of Middle-Earth race. 

Tolkien’s Dwarves, described as “a tough, thrawn race for the most part” and as “secretive, laborious, retentive of the memory of injuries (and of benefits), lovers of stone, of gems, [and] of things that take shape under the hands of the craftsman rather than things that live by their own life” (The Lord of the Rings 1132), also play a vital role in understanding the concept of fantastic race due to their own robust ancestry. The ancestry of the Dwarves traces back to numerous clans spanned across Middle-Earth. One of these clans, the Longbeards, founded by Durin the Deathless, is the oldest and most dominant ancestral house of a vast majority of the Dwarves of the Third-Age story, The Hobbit. However, these numerous clans/houses were not of different races because they were all, in fact, Dwarves. This homogeneity is made clear by Tolkien through his creation of and use of Dwarves in his work in the bounds of fantastic race. 

Despite this homogeneity of Dwarves and his already outlined concept of race, Tolkien had seemingly–perhaps unintentionally–deviated from his own definition of Middle-Earth race in regards to the clans in which they belonged. This deviation is made most clear when Thorin Oakenshield claims that Durin the Deathless “was the father of the fathers of the eldest race of Dwarves, the Longbeards, and my first ancestor” (The Hobbit 50). It is here where Tolkien damages his foundation of Middle-Earth race and loses his sense of the fantastic to his sense of the real-world imagination. With this misuse of the word “race” in regards to his Dwarven clans, Tolkien is mistakenly giving the reader a sense of the real-world imaginary concept within Middle-Earth despite “race” having already been established as disconnected from race/ism. Tolkien’s misuse of the word “race” here could have been easily mended if he had made clear that Dwarves, like Elves (more on their variations shortly), are all of the same race despite their clan/grouping variations. 

Another important addition within Tolkien’s work that surfaces flaws in Thorin’s claim that the Longbeards are a “race” is their family tree in relation to the Dwarves of Thorin and Company. In “Appendix A” of The Lord of the Rings, Gimli’s outline of Durin the Deathless’ familial line can be seen (page 1073). Upon following this line, it is clear that Thorin Oakensheild is, in fact, Durin’s heir. However, it is also clear that a vast majority of the Dwarves in Thorin’s Company are either distant or close relatives of Thorin: Fíli and Kíli are his nephews, the sons of his sister, Dís; Balin and Dwalin are his distant cousins; and Óin and Glóin are also his distant cousins and first cousins of Balin and Dwalin. Below the line of Durin on that same page, there is also a portion of text that adds further context to the line in relation to The Hobbit. Here, the relation of the rest of Thorin’s Company to him is stated: “Ori, Nori, and Dori were also of the House of Durin, and more remote kinsman of Thorin: Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur were descended from Dwarves of Moria [where Durin founded his kingdom] but were not of Durin’s line.” So, even though Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur were not of Durin’s line, one could still consider them Durin’s Folk under the technicality that their ancestors were ruled by Durin and lived in his kingdom. However, regardless of any ancestral confusion or technicalities, these Dwarves are still just that: of the race of Dwarves, thus making Thorin’s comment about Longbeards as a separate race even more obviously inconsistent with Tolkien’s previously established definition.

Though this inconsistency in Tolkien’s definition of race through the Dwarves may seem like a hard-to-overlook mistake once it is pointed out, it becomes much more forgivable if the reader is continuously cognizant of the fact that Tolkien was not working through a Mason-esque real-world raceless lens when creating Middle-Earth. If not already made clear, the objective of this essay is not to highlight Tolkien as a raceless-thinking individual. The objective is, however, to highlight how Tolkien built a fantastic element that exaggerates a figment of real-world human imagination, as fantastic elements often do, and thus subconsciously highlights the flaws of the belief in real-world race/ism. With that said, it is safe to assume that Tolkien was conditioned to think and act through his imagination under a racialized worldview just as most other humans had and have been also conditioned. So, with the real-world raceless subconscious and racialized consciousness taken into account, one could understand how easy it may have been for Tolkien to regress from fantastic race back to a concept akin to real-world race/ism or just metaphorical real-world race/ism. 

While Tolkien’s Longbeard debacle is an example of a deviation from his own previously established definition of race through a concept akin to real-world race/ism, his Dwarves also represent a real-world racial–or something akin to racial–metaphor. This metaphor is that Dwarves are often considered the Middle-Earth version of stereotypical Jews. Even though Jews are largely considered as an ethnoreligious group as opposed to a “race,” the biologically disconnected stereotypes, oppression, dehumanization, and violence they have historically faced and continue to face on the world stage is strikingly similar to that of racialized groups, such as people racialized as Black in the United States, for example. So, this type of metaphor still applies to Jews in the same way it does to racialized groups. 

There are many different aspects of Jewish culture found within The Hobbit, especially, and they are not necessarily all harmful stereotypes. As Rebecca Brackmann points out in, Tolkien himself admitted in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien: “I do think of the ‘Dwarves’ like Jews: at once native and alien in their habitations” and that “their words are Semitic, obviously, constructed to be Semitic” (85). Tolkien’s words are undeniable evidence that Dwarves are, in fact, based on Jewish culture in regards to language, at least before The Lord of the Rings and Gimli. So, by keeping in mind that Tolkien viewed Dwarves as Jews linguistically, it is not far-fetched to assume that he included antisemitic tropes in his depiction of them as well. The first example of this negative stereotyping is the beards, so inescapable that even female Dwarves had them. Another example is the size of their noses, which Tolkien decided to exaggerate to the point of a “long nose poking out of the winding [spider] threads” (The Hobbit 149) being a not so far-fetched occurrence when wrapped up extensively by giant spiders. However, these examples fall flat when considering that “the Dwarves’ dominant psychological attribute in The Hobbit is their love of gold, which echoes the widespread antisemitic belief that Jews are greedy” (Brackmann 91). 

This comparison between Dwarves and stereotypical Jews as greedy is understandably a main point of Blackmann’s article due to its importance in the context of The Hobbit. It is for this reason, despite Tolkien’s intentional distancing of Dwarves from Jews over time (which she, herself points out), that Rebecca Blackmann still views Tolkien’s Dwarves as not heroic, but driven only by money in The Hobbit. It is from this viewpoint which she develops her title, “‘Dwarves Are Not Heroes’: Antisemitism and the Dwarves in J.R.R. Tolkien's Writing.” At multiple points throughout her article, Blackmann claims that the Dwarves' lust for gold is the sole motivator behind Thorin and Company’s quest for Erebor. However, Brackmann seems to overlook their desire for home too heavily. If the Dwarves had only desired riches, they wouldn’t have stayed at Erebor after the events of The Hobbit and rebuilt the kingdom that once thrived there. Also, if riches were their only motivator, their debts would have never been willingly paid back at all, Battle of the Five Armies or not. It is obvious that peace, alliances, and home are also important to Dwarves, taking precedence over riches on numerous occasions. They could have taken their reclaimed riches and enriched still-established Dwarven lands at that time. But, instead, Thorin and Company were able to break his sickly obsession with gold before his death, but not his desire to defend his true home, Erebor.

The Dwarven love for friendship and home, which oftentimes overruled the love for riches, is the reason why Peter Jackson, for example, was accurately able to have Thorin (Richard Armitage) tell Bilbo (Martin Freeman), with his dying words, that he would like “to part from you in friendship” and “that if more people valued home above gold, this world would be a merrier place” (The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies 1:55:33-1:56:51) in his film trilogy adaptation of The Hobbit. Brackmann’s claim that the Dwarves are not heroes in The Hobbit overlooks the redeeming protagonist qualities that snuff out their greed, whether it be in the original or, certainly, in its most popular adaptation. So, with the consistencies and inconsistencies of the direct Dwarven comparison to Jews considered, it is safe to say, that like race/ism, ethnoreligious stereotypes are not properly transferable from the real world directly into fantasy.

Ethnoreligion, a concept arguably even more rooted in reality than race/ism, was still not tangible enough for Tolkien to make use of in the fantastic element of race without heavy alterations, the canonization of biology, and eventual distancing of himself from it as a metaphor. So, thanks to the rejection of this much more real ethnoreligion (in comparison to race/ism, hence my insistence on outlining the Jewish comparison) by Tolkien, it is safe to say that race/ism is even further down his list of rejected concepts. Tolkien combined his rejections of real-world race/ism with his rejections of real-world ethnicity and religion and created the fantastic element, race, to take all of their places as Middle-Earth’s largest category of humanoid groupings and variation.

Like Hobbits and Dwarves, Elves too have a long, detailed racial history which is certainly even more complex and can thus highlight the flaws with the real-world belief in race/ism. The Elves of Middle-Earth are immortals originally from a place known as Cuiviénen in the far east of Middle-Earth. They later inhabited and could travel between the Undying Lands/Valinor, home of the Valar/gods of Middle-Earth, and Middle-Earth itself. However, some Elves never chose to make the journey to Valinor, opting to remain in Middle-Earth. There were also some Elves, such as Galadriel, who chose to make the journey to Valinor and then return to Middle-Earth afterwards. With these choices and with the timing and places where they settled Middle-Earth, Elves were divided into subcategories of many different names. The two broadest categories and most prominent in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are the High Elves and Silvan Elves. As a general rule of thumb concerning these two stories and their adaptations, Elves of Lórien and Rivendell are primarily High Elves whereas Mirkwood/Woodland Realm Elves are primarily Silvan. 

In addition to the locations of their dwellings, Tolkien also attributed the main differences between High and Silvan Elves to their intelligence and temper. When referring to Wood-elves (Silvan), Tolkien wrote: “They differed from the High Elves of the West, and were more dangerous and less wise” (The Hobbit 154). Clearly, Tolkien desired numerous distinctions and varying clans within the race of Elves in order to further add diversity to his world, a product of his near-untouchable attention to detail in his fantasy. 

Regardless of the estranged Elven cultures Tolkien crafted, through Haldir, he also emphasized that High and Silvan Elves are still “kindred” (The Lord of the Rings 343). Haldir’s willingness to acknowledge Silvan Elves and High Elves as kin is further enhanced by Legolas’ (an Elf of Silvan culture) ethnocentric reaction to this acknowledgement upon the Fellowship’s arrival in Lórien. In this portion of the novel, Legolas is the main mediator between the racially diverse Fellowship and the Elves of Lórien. However, in his attempt to mediate, Legolas clearly shows a reciprocated bias towards Haldir and the rest of his kin, often talking down to the dwarf Gimli and the group of hobbits. Across a short span of pages within the lengthy novel that is The Lord of the Rings, Legolas exhibits numerous instances of Elven ethnocentrism due to his sudden majority status amongst his kin. As an example, he responds sharply to Pippin’s disapproval of sleeping on tree platforms: “then dig a hole in the ground, if that is more after the fashion of your kind” (342). The tone in which Tokien intended this line to be delivered is one that is meant to knock Hobbit culture down and embolden Elven culture, at least from Legolas’ perspective. Shortly after, Legolas describes each member of the Fellowship to Haldir by race, intentionally saving Gimli for last knowing that Dwarven presence would be frowned upon by the other Elves, a product of conflict-born racism. Expectedly, Haldir exclaims that Gimli’s presence is “not well” and that “they [Dwarves] are not permitted in our land. I cannot allow him to pass” (343). However, thanks to the efforts of the Fellowship, Gimli is permitted to pass under the compromise that he must be blindfolded. When the time comes to be blindfolded, Gimli becomes defensive, prompting Legolas to wish “a plague upon Dwarves and their stiff necks!” (347). So, based on the actions of Gimli, Legolas feels the need to insult and wish ill upon the entire race of Dwarves. This blatantly racist moment by Legolas is heightened by his subsequent angry protest to Aragorn’s proposal that the entire Fellowship be blindfolded as a gesture of fairness towards Gimli: “I am an Elf and a kinsman here” (348). Here, we see the height of Legolas’ racism through an attempt to use his race as a shield and through a blatant display of a racial superiority complex. 

The creation of this exchange between Haldir, Legolas and the rest of the Fellowship by Tolkien not only progresses the events of The Lord of the Rings, but also indicates that all Elves–like the race of Dwarves touched on earlier–of different places and cultures are, in fact, of the single race of Elves. Unlike the real world and its belief in race/ism, Middle-Earth’s perception on race does not change from place to place. From the Shire in the Northwest to Mordor in the Southwest, race is a universal understanding, only differing in likability due to conflict. 

Another interesting aspect of Tolkien’s crafting of Elves is that they, like Hobbits, have ancestral overlap with Men. However, they are not as closely tied to each other as Hobbits and Men. Like how Hobbits and Men were implied to have been one race later estranged, Elves and Men were also viewed as a single race by Tolkien in terms of real-world biology but not by Middle-Earth’s. In one of his letters, Tolkien says “Elves and Men are evidently in biological terms one race, or they could not breed and produce fertile offspring” (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter #153). However, he also claims, 

But since some have held that the rate of longevity is a biological characteristic, within limits of variation, you could not have Elves in a sense “immortal” – not eternal, but not dying by “old age” — and Men mortal, more or less as they now seem to be in the Primary World – and yet sufficiently akin. I might answer that this “biology” is only a theory, that modern “gerontology”, or whatever they call it, finds “ageing” rather more mysterious, and less clearly inevitable in bodies of human structure. But I should actually answer: I do not care. This is a biological dictum in my imaginary world. It is only (as yet) an incompletely imagined world, a rudimentary “secondary”; but if it pleased the Creator to give it (in a corrected form) Reality on any plane, then you would just have to enter it and begin studying its different biology, that is all. (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter #153)

Here, it is clear that Tolkien is insistent that Elves and Men are one race despite biological differences in aging or lack thereof. However, it seems as if, like the Dwarven race debacle, Tolkien is working with two different definitions of biology and a rejection of the findings of gerontology. So, based on Tolkien’s assertion of one thing before story completion based on an acceptance of real-world biology and mistrust of gerontology (Elves and Men as one biological race) but development of another upon completion (Elves and Men as crafted separately by the Valar with varying capability, physical differences, and separate cultures), we can view Elves and Men as one race or as separate races. Since Elves and Men were written dissimilarly in the final drafts of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings–to the point where the reader would not realize Tolkien’s consideration of them as one race unless they read his letters–they can be viewed as separate races. Since their differences heavily outweigh their similarities in the final version of Middle-Earth, and since the names of their races are capitalized individually, they will continue to be treated as separate races throughout this essay. 

As mentioned by Tolkien, Elves and Men could interbreed. The prime example of this interbreeding in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is Elrond. Tolkien described Elrond as a “Half-elven” being who “chose to be of Elven-kind and became a master of wisdom” (The Lord of the Rings 1034). This choice by Elrond to take on the Elvish lifestyle is permitted by the fact that his ancestors were also carriers of blood from both the race of Elves and the race of Men. For his choice, Elrond “was granted the same grace as to those of the High Elves that still lingered in Middle-earth [by the Valar]: that when weary at last of the mortal lands they could take ship from the Grey Havens [an Elven port city] and pass into the Uttermost West [Valinor]” (1034). Elrond’s brother, Elros, was also Half-elven and given the choice between living the lifestyle of Elves or Men and chose the latter, although he was granted a longer life than most other Men.

The significance of these choices is that they show the inflexibility of Middle-Earth race. At first glance, this choice by Elrond and Elros may seem to actually show the flexibility of Middle-Earth race. However, the inflexibility shines through any flexibility due to the fact that Elrond and Elros’ lifestyle choices were limited to Elves or Men, groups of which they both were biological members of. The brothers were not presented with the choice to be a Hobbit, Dwarf, or otherwise because they were not biologically of those races in the same way a Hobbit, Dwarf, or otherwise could not choose to be of Elven-kind or of the race of Men. This biological inflexibility of Tolkien’s fantastic race is a rule that real-world race/ism wrongfully ignores. If all humans, as Tolkien did, recognized that biology only truly allows for the recognition of one real-world “race,” synonymous with “species,” then perhaps they too would view the real-world as raceless by the definition of real-world race/ism that they are conditioned to identify with. Through this raceless lens, they could then instead identify themselves and all others as what Tolkien labeled the race of Men, a singular biologically homogenous group of sentient beings. 

Speaking of Men, their Middle-Earth lore is certainly not to be overlooked either in regards to the fantastic element of race. Physically, they are identical to real-world humans as they are meant to be our Middle-Earth counterparts, but without all of the negative connotations of race/ism, of course. There are many different variations of Men, but they are still all one race; this homogeneity is made evident by Tolkien’s grouping of all Men together in “Appendix F” and “Index” of The Lord of the Rings, where he breaks down Middle-Earth languages of the Third Age by race and defines Middle-Earth terminology, respectively. In The Hobbit, the only large group of Men that appear in the story are the Men of Laketown (later the Men of Dale). There isn’t actually all that much to say about them except that they are all, in fact, of the same race, despite any potential variations in skin color or any other supposed (wrongful) indicators of real-world race. In addition to Laketown, Beorn too is technically considered a man, despite his ability to skin-change into a huge, menacing bear.

In the much longer The Lord of the Rings, however, Men play a much more crucial role in the story’s unfolding. The first Men that the reader is introduced to are the Men in the village of Bree such as Bill Ferny, Barliman Butterbur, and Strider. The significance of these three Men being among the first the reader is introduced to in The Lord of the Rings is that they highlight the importance of Men to the story so early into the novel. The first Men of The Lord of the Rings all hold immediate importance: Bill Ferny is the man whom Sam took his horse, Bill, from and who would, as expected, be revealed as evil and in league with Sharkey (Saruman); Mr. Butterbur grants Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin shelter at his inn, The Prancing Pony, and delivers news from Gandalf that was meant to be sent to Frodo as instructions and in regard to Strider; and Strider is revealed to be Aragorn, heir to the throne of Gondor.

Later on in the novel, we are introduced to other Men of Gondor such as Boromir, Faramir, and Denethor, among others as well as Men of Rohan such as Theóden, Éomer, and Éowyn (referring to race, not gender), among others. Along with Aragorn, the six other previously named Men all have detailed ancestry: Théoden, Éomer, and Éowyn are all members of the House of Eorl, the founding clan of Rohan; Boromir, Faramir, and Denethor are in the line of Stewards of Gondor, top advisors of the kings and caretakers of the throne in a king’s absence; Aragorn himself is in the line of kings of Gondor. Aragorn (along with many other former kings of Gondor) is especially interesting, however, because he is descended from a line of Númenórean royalty otherwise known as the Dúnedain. The Dúnedain were descendents of the Edain, survivors of the Fall of Númenor and Elf-friends. These Men lived extremely long lives by the blessing of the Valar, hence why “Aragorn indeed lived to be two hundred and ten years old” (The Lord of the Rings 1044). Despite Tolkien’s comparison of the Dúnedain to other Men by means of claiming that they “lived to twice the age of Men” (The Lord of the Rings 1044) and that “the Dúnedain alone of all races of Men knew and spoke Elvish tongue” (The Lord of the Rings 1128), he likely did not mean to refer to them as a different fantastic race; they are more so established as a divinely favored breed of Men, but still Men nonetheless, just as Harfoots were a breed of Hobbit. Here, like he did with Dwarves, Tolkien is yet again blending real-world racial concepts with his previously crafted new version of race in fantasy.

Though Gondor, Rohan, Bree, and Laketown are the main countries and towns of Men (Bree was also home to many Hobbits as well, however) featured in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, there are also many other groups of Men in Middle-Earth. To name a few, there are Easterlings, Southrons/Haradrim, Dunlendings, and other groups of Northmen (the Men of Rohan and Laketown descended from Northmen). Due to the vast array of Men spread across Middle-Earth, one could easily make the mistake of thinking that they have always been the most powerful race, even before the end of the Third Age when the Elves departed Middle-Earth and Aragorn took the throne of Gondor. However, this expected power is not the case. Rather unlike Hobbits, Dwarves, and Elves, the Men of Middle-Earth engaged in many instances of infighting. In The Lord of the Rings alone, we see the Men of Rohan fight the Dunlendings at Helms Deep and then the Haradrim at Pelennor Fields alongside Gondor, for example. But, this infighting amongst Men is not a new concept previously unheard of in Middle-Earth before the War of the Ring; they have fought each other for many ages. For example, many years before Aragorn, the old royals of Gondor bore such animosity to Northmen at one point in Middle-Earth’s history that they considered them an “alien race” (The Lord of the Rings 1046). So, like real-world humans, Men of Middle-Earth have a history of race/ism problems, instead of recognizing that they have always been a single race (referring to the fantastic element).

Certainly, Tolkien’s choice to build race/ism as a pain point for the race of Men but not for any other race of the free peoples of Middle-Earth is hard to digest as purely accidental. No one can deny that Tolkien himself lived in a racialized world and understood the implications of widespread human belief in race, even if he clearly did not realize that race was something that did not have to be believed in. Perhaps Tolkien wanted to incorporate race/ism into Middle-Earth through Men in particular in order to highlight flaws in human racial belief systems. The presence of race/ism within the single race of Men has allowed for a lack of unity that has certainly harmed their race as whole over the years just as in the real world. In Middle-Earth, this harm culminated in ways such as the fall of Gondor's sister kingdom, Arnor, and the decimation of the skin-changers/Beornings–who could’ve been great protectors of their race had they been shown unity when they needed it most–to the point of one remaining member by the time of The Hobbit. So, whether Tolkien intended it or not, the damaging reverberation of widespread human belief in real-world race/ism, as represented by Men in Middle-Earth, comes across as much more mundane and disheartening when a viable racial framework is built in the larger world around it. In ways such as this, Middle-Earth provides an understructure of clarity for the reader in regards to the flaws of real-world race/ism.

In addition to humanoid, free peoples of Middle-Earth, the fantastic element that is race also extends to intelligent, sentient animals, oftentimes including spoken language, but sometimes not. Though fantasy authors before Tolkien made use of anthropomorphism, such as Lewis Carroll with Alice in Wonderland, Tolkien popularized the inclusion of it non-verbally into the fantastic element that is race alongside humanoids, even if he was not fully aware. It is true that Tolkien used the verbal aspect of anthropomorphism just as his dear friend C.S. Lewis often did. However, unlike Lewis, who wrote animal sentience and speech as an inseparable duo in The Chronicles of Narnia, Tolkien was a bit more flexible. In The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien makes (a rather unbalanced) use of verbal and non-verbal anthropomorphism, enriching his Middle-Earth and more finely fleshing out race in the process. The verbal side of Tolkien’s anthropomorphism is shown by creatures such as the Shire Fox, the Dragon Smaug, the Spiders in Mirkwood, and the Eagles–or just through Gwaihir, at the very least–while the non-verbal side is shown through creatures such as Horses. 

Interestingly enough, Tolkien never capitalized “horses” in his novels even though they were written to exhibit sentient qualities and to be quite intelligent. As University of Macau Professor of English Literature and Tolkien scholar, Nick Groom, points out, “[Horses] clearly have knowing sentience and a bearing of the plot, but not deer or dogs or smaller creatures, which barely feature in the texts under discussion” (xiv), hence his decision to convert “horses” to “Horses” throughout his own book and in the process, correct a potential oversight by Tolkien. Though Groom is not operating under the Mason-esque, real-world raceless lens in his book, his assertion about the capitalization of “Horses” certainly can be debated over and/or applied within the bounds of race, the fantastic element. It is difficult to argue against this lack of capitalization in Tolkien’s work as, in fact, an oversight thanks to occurrences such as when Tolkien himself, through Gandalf, described Shadowfax as “the chief of the Mearas, lords of horses,” as an example, assigning not only the human and/or humanoid-esque titles of “chief” and “lord” (The Lord of the Rings 504) to Shadowfax, but also implying an organized hierarchy that exists within the anthropomorphic race of Horses. This evident racialization of Horses–also made clear through Bill’s seemingly sentient friendship with Sam–but lack of address as such by Tolkien is the reason behind the aforementioned unawareness of his non-verbal anthropomorphism as an addition to race. 

Tolkien’s inclusion of anthropomorphistic races in his novels also enhances the sentiment that real-world race/ism is too loose for Tolkien to work with. The emphasis on Tolkien’s anthropomorphism is not to indicate that Tolkien himself was writing through the real-world raceless lens. Instead, the emphasis on Tolkien’s anthropomorphism is due to the fact that real-world race is so far from existence, that he had to incorporate not only fantastic humanoids, but also animals into race in order to even highlight it as purely fantastic, even subconsciously. Biologically unchangeable and dissimilar humanoids alone would not have been enough for Tolkien to reinvent the term “race” into a purely fantastic term/element in the way in that he managed; real-world humans and their ingrained, continued belief in race/ism will almost always force them to see these humanoids as parallels to real-world race/ism regardless. Animals, however, are much less approachable through that lens and thus act as gatekeepers of the fantastic element of race from tangible, real-world comparisons to race/ism. 

Though the free peoples (and animals) of Middle-Earth offer much insight into race and race/ism on their own, it would be a crime to skip over Orcs due to their prominence and importance within The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien describes this “foul people” (The Lord of the Rings 1131) and their early forms of communication in detail in “Appendix F” of The Lord of the Rings: 

The Orcs were first bred by the Dark Power of the North in the Elder Days. It is said that they had no language of their own, but took what they could of other tongues and perverted it to their own liking; yet they made only brutal jargons, scarcely efficient even for their own needs, unless it were for curses and abuse. And these creatures, being filled with malice, hating even their own kind, quickly developed as many barbarous dialects as there were groups or settlements of their race, so that their Orkish speech was of little use to them in intercourse between different tribes. (1131) 

Here, Tolkien explains not only the violent and cruel nature of Orcs, but the inconsistencies in their own languages which led to their adoption of the languages of Men and the Black Speech, the language of Sauron. 

In regards to the physical appearance of Orcs, there surprisingly isn’t much description of them within The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings besides that they are supposedly made “in mockery” (The Lord of the Rings 486) of Elves, and thus highlighting their separate racial status. However, there is mention of many dwellings of Orcs across Middle-Earth: Mordor, Moria, Gundabad, the Misty Mountains, and Isengard, to name a few. Also, the physical traits of these Orcs do vary from place to place. Notably, the variations were most defined in places where Uruk-hai (Uruks) were bred, such as Mordor and Isengard. Though there were many strong non-Uruks in the race of Orcs, such as Azog the Defiler (Moria Orc)–described as “a great orc” (The Lord of the Rings 1074)–Uruks were the most physically unique and strong breed of Orc and were too, as a whole, described as “great Orcs” (The Lord of the Rings 437). In Peter Jackson’s film trilogy adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, Gimli appropriately distinguishes them from other Orcs: “This is no rabble of mindless Orcs. These are Uruk-hai. Their armor is thick and shields broad (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers 1:59:03). Despite their standout strength, however, they were of the same race as the “mindless Orcs.”

Interestingly, the various types of Orcs did not always get along too well, especially when Uruks were involved, as demonstrated by the bickering of Mordor Orcs with Isengarders while they held Merry and Pippin captive and by the the bickering of Shagrat and Gorbag which led to the Battle of Cirith Ungol. However, despite their extensive bickering and killing of each other, Orcs were never able to make significant territorial and/or cultural losses due to their turmoil in the same way Men did. Their avoidance of significant losses of territory and culture is due to the fact that they are slaves to Sauron and other forces of evil. Any losses they suffered were due to Sauron’s decisions or those of their other masters. The Orcs, from their beginning, were born to die as servants of their evil creators and commanders, lacking any free will to form their own complex societies. So, the question of whether or not they would be hindered by infighting and race/ism in the way Men were on their own without control of their masters remains unanswered. Therefore, despite Orcish infighting, the absence of their independence only allows for the reader to recognize the implications of race/ism through Men, the Middle-Earth counterparts of humans. The ability of the reader to identify Men as the only free race of Middle-Earth negatively impacted by race/ism can heighten their recognizability of the flaws of said real-world race/ism. 

COLOR & EVIL IN TOLKIEN 

Orcs are the perfect segway into touching more on what the definition of evil is in Middle-Earth, particularly on what the definition of evil is in Middle-Earth in regards to darkness and color as a whole. Throughout The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Sauron/The Necromancer and his servants are denoted by both darkness and evil. There are many articles out there that are among the first results of a Google search relating to both racism in fantasy and racism in Tolkien that tunnel visioned evil as only darkness and therefore as racism. The fact that these articles are among the most popular results when the keywords, “race” and “fantasy,” are lumped together in the search bar is certainly concerning as it is a gateway to a casual audience to–despite any metaphors he did use in his work–wrongfully view Tolkien as a full-blown racist.

One such article, available on the Public Medievalist, comes from Dr. Paul B. Sturtevant, a historian specializing in medieval studies. In his article, Sturtevant claims that “Tolkien’s conception of ‘race’ is a huge problem” and that “the problem is that Tolkien conflates race, culture, and ability” (Sturtevant), overlooking the positive aspects of Tolkien's format for race and inclusion of culture and ability. The main issue with Sturtevant’s assertion is that he is viewing “race” as race/ism and not as fantastic race, and is therefore unable to differentiate Tolkien’s race from the imaginary real-world concept referred to as “race.” If Tolkien’s race was equivalent to race/ism, then Sturtevant’s concern with culture and ability as clear-cut, unchangeable aspects of race would be appropriate. However, this is not the case. If not already made clear in this essay, Tolkien’s construction of race is a fantastic element and therefore can rightfully assign culture and ability to race. So, Sturtevant’s “hope that, had [Tolkien] better understood what race is and what it isn’t, he would have been more careful in his descriptions of its peoples” is overshadowed by the fact that Tolkien, as he was with every other aspect of Middle-Earth, was careful with race. So careful to the point of eliminating and/or highlighting the inexcusable flaws of race/ism within the newly created fantastic element of race. 

All of this is to say that when Sturtevant touches on darkness and color in Tolkien–in conjunction with the Dungeons and Dragons franchise–it comes across as a view through the wrong lens if we do view real-world race as imaginary. His comments on color and evil are as follows:

Making “races” like orcs and dark elves inherently evil does two things. First, it presents a world in which good and evil are so simplistic that an entire culture, race, or species can be inherently evil. If someone were to transpose that way of thinking onto cultures or races today, it could lead to the worst sort of prejudice. Second, this smacks of the worst sort of colonial racisms, which sought to make American Indians, Africans, and other people of color not just seem less human, but inherently immoral. Making “evil races” (like the orcs and uruk-hai, as described in The Lord of the Rings, and dark elves, in D&D) dark-skinned creates fantasy worlds that are structured along racist lines—and mimicking those that plague us in the real world. It would be foolish to explain that away as mere coincidence. Whether the creators did it intentionally or not, their worlds are loaded with the idea at the core of white-supremacy: that having dark skin is bad. (“Race: the Original Sin of the Fantasy Genre”)

Though Sturtevant’s connections between color and evil initially come across as understandable, they fall off quite heavily when we dive deeper into the aspects of his statement. The first questionable statement that Sturtevant presents in this portion of the text is his claim that an entire race cannot be evil and that said mindset would lead to much real-world prejudice. However, Tolkien was not assigning evil to any group of individuals racialized by real-world race/ism, but was instead creating the fantastic element, race. So, if Tolkien included evil as an inherent trait of any Middle-Earth race, then it would be no different than him assigning inflexible physical traits, intelligences, tempers, cultures, and abilities to said race or any other race as he often did. 

Secondly, Sturtevant’s claim that the creation of evil dark-skinned creatures in fantasy mimics the dehumanization of Africans or American Indians and thus upholds white-surpremacy is also debatable. Tolkien himself, when comparing the evil of Orcs to real-world conflict, claimed that “in real life they are on both sides'' (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter #71), regardless of the color of the people involved. This open-ended view of not only Orcs, but a larger overarching evil has allowed for various interpretations of Orc color over the years. This is not to say that there are not dark-skinned Orcs, but rather to say that Orcish skin-type ranges widely on a scale of pale to dark.

Due to this subjectivity of Orcish skin tone, many of the Orcs, despite their evil nature, have been portrayed as light-skinned in many film adaptations of Middle-Earth. Peter Jackson made use of many pale-skinned Orcs (and Trolls) in his movies. The strongest example of this Orc paleness from Peter Jackson comes in the form of Azog in his The Hobbit trilogy, quite literally nicknamed the Pale Orc. Despite Azog’s death before the events of Tolkien’s original The Hobbit, Jackson was able to bring him back in a menacingly accurate depiction for the film trilogy adaptation. Jackson captured Azog’s animosity and brutality towards the Dwarves seamlessly (including his enjoyment of beheading and mutilation), making him the epitome of Middle-Earth evil despite his lack of dark skin. However, long before Jackson incorporated Azog and other light-skinned Orcs into his The Hobbit trilogy, he did so for his The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Gothmog, the Orc lieutenant from Jackson’s The Return of the King is outstandingly pale as are other unnamed Orcs seen in the films, such as the one who responded “Yeah! Why can’t we have some meat?” (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers 0:22:19) to an Uruk’s starved rage at “maggoty bread” (0:22:16). The multitude of light-skinned Orcs in Jackson’s films goes to show not only that evil and physical darkness don’t always go hand-in-hand in fantasy, but also that Tolkien’s evil beings do not consistently tie into real-world, color-based racism. 

The assertion that physically dark colors do not always denote evil and that light ones can denote evil in Tolkien's work–or even fantasy as a whole– is also reinforced by other evils in Middle-Earth besides Orcs. One–or rather nine–examples are the Nazgûl. In The Hobbit, Bilbo overhears Gandalf's explantation of his earlier absence and subsequent success in driving “the Necromancer [Sauron] from his dark hold in the south of Mirkwood” (The Hobbit 270) during the return journey back to the Shire at Rivendell. However in Peter Jackson’s The Battle of the Five Armies, we actually see the director’s vision of this sequence play out. In the scene, Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), Elrond (Hugo Weaving), Saruman (Christopher Lee), and Radagast (Sylvester McCoy) save Gandalf (Ian McKellen) from the Nazgûl and Sauron by force. Here, the Nazgûl are, unlike in most of The Lord of the Rings, uncloaked and are represented as translucent spirits. It is true that they wore seemingly dark armor, even in spirit form, but the aura that radiated off of their holistic forms had a tint of whiteness.

If Jackson’s The Battle of the Five Armies Nazgûl were not clearly depicted enough by an inclusion of whiteness, then his The Fellowship of the Ring Nazgûl can also be helpful examples. Much more so than in his The Battle of the Five Armies, Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings Nazgûl (when decloaked) are depicted by whiteness. In Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring, the Nazgûl can be seen during Galadriel’s (Cate Blanchett) opening monologue in their light-skinned, before death forms. They are also seen later at Weathertop in spirit form when Frodo (Elijah Wood) is able to see their true form beneath their robes thanks to the One Ring. In fact Tolkien himself, in The Lord of the Rings, outlined Frodo’s vision of Nazgûl paleness at Weathertop: 

There were five tall figures: two standing on the lip of the dell, three advancing. In their white faces burned keen and merciless eyes; under their mantles were long grey robes; upon their grey hairs were helms of silver; in their haggard hands were swords of steel. Their eyes fell on him and pierced him, as they rushed towards him. Desperate, he drew his own sword, and it seemed to him that it flickered red, as if it was a firebrand. Two of the figures halted. The third was taller than the others: his hair was long and gleaming and on his helm was a crown. In one hand he held a long sword, and in the other a knife; both the knife and the hand that held it glowed with a pale light. 

Frodo’s experience with the Nazgûl both in Tolkien’s original novel and in Jackson’s film is concrete proof that Tolkien’s evil was not always denoted by darkness and/or dark skin. 

Saruman the White–or rather “Saruman of Many Colours” (The Lord of the Rings 259)–is also heavily associated with brightness, even after his turn to evil deeds. Even his Uruks called him the “White Hand” (The Lord of the Rings 446). Saruman’s brightness carries even into his time as Sharkey and “The Scouring of the Shire.” After the Hobbits reclaim the Shire, Sharkey is killed by Wormtongue. Even in death Saruman/Sharkey appeared as “a pale shrouded figure” (The Lord of the Rings 1020). In Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, Saruman also sports his white robes, hair, and staff head throughout his time on screen, but meets his end long before he could ever wreak havoc on the Shire. The everlasting brightness of Saruman despite evilness is further excused by Gandalf’s resurrection as Gandalf the White. As Gandalf the White, Gandalf initially lacks clarity. This lack of Clarity goes to show that White status of wizards is not a clear indicator of salvation at all times. The meaning of a White Wizard varies from good and powerful, to forgetful, to powerful and evil in the span of a single novel. Like real-world race/ism’s globally ambiguous (or potentially absent) definition of “whiteness” and white advantages, Tolkien’s whiteness too is ambiguous in Middle-Earth.

In addition to light-skinned Orcs, the Nazgûl, and Saruman’s association with lightness despite their evils in the originals and in Jackson films, there are many new Middle-Earth characters that can be associated with lightness despite a presence of evil. The newest live-action Middle-Earth adaptation, Amazon Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, includes the quite-pale Orc father figure, Adar (Joseph Mawle), and the light-skinned Halbrand (Charlie Vickers), who is later revealed to be Sauron himself in this version of Middle-Earth. These two fair-complexioned characters serving as forces of evil also give the “evil is always darkness” crowd a new challenge.

Other obvious examples of darkness lacking evil in Middle-Earth are Tolkien’s dark-skinned Harfoots. In their live-action debut in The Rings of Power, Harfoots such as Sadoc Burrows (Lenny Henry) and Marigold Brandyfoot (Sara Zwangobani) embody the dark skin tone of Tolkien’s Harfoot vision and yet are certainly not evil. However, other Harfoots such as Elanor Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh) and Poppy Proudfellow (Megan Richards) are light-skinned, eliminating the “evil versus good based on skin tone” debate entirely for an entire breed of Hobbits and, perhaps, the race as a whole. 

The Rings of Power also presents dark-skinned members of historically “non-evil” races of Middle-Earth such as, Disa the Dwarf (Sophia Nomvete), Tar-míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) of the race of Men, and Arondir the Silvan Elf (Ismael Cruz Córdova). The inclusion of these characters shows the subjectivity of good and evil across all races of Tolkien and thus shows a separation of race and race/ism, which is often wrongfully associated with skin color. If Tolkien had created races in a way that were unchangeably dark or not dark at all times, then this subjectivity would not be possible.

Though The Rings of Power is an adaptation–and a very recent one at that–its depiction of characters is still important to the widespread perception of Middle-Earth as Peter Jackson’s adaptations clearly also are. It is for this reason that the vast criticisms of The Rings of Power are important to discuss when highlighting how Tolkien’s races have been understood and thus adapted. Despite a large amount of mostly understandable backlash from many viewers due to how the events of The Rings of Power unfolded in terms of plot, timeline, and character portrayals, there is also a large chunk of backlash that stemmed from the aforementioned darker skin tones of some of the series’ characters. One aspect of The Rings of Power criticism in regard to dark skin is how it historically lacks resemblance to Europe. While it is true that Tolkien’s Middle-Earth was heavily inspired by the largely light-skinned Europe, both of and long before his time, it is also true that–as previously touched on in regard to their subjectivity–Tolkien’s races function as intended even with skin color variation (though the choice to cast groups of actors with varying real-world accents as members of the same Middle-Earth race arguably remains an odd one).

In addition to the Europe/Middle-Earth parallel, the debate surrounding whether or not dark skin is flexible in Middle-Earth in the way The Rings of Power portrays it also stems from real-life biology, specifically in regard to how sunlight impacts melanin levels. Even if the Dwarven, Elvish, or otherwise peoples generally live in low-sunlight domains, we cannot assume that Middle-Earth follows the same biological rules as the real world all the time. This inability to assume is due to the fact that Tolkien’s Middle-Earth biology–as previously highlighted–is inconsistent with real-world biology in various areas. The influence of sunlight/melanin in Middle-Earth remains subjective and as a result, so do Middle-Earth skin tones, it seems. For the outlined reasons, it is safe to say that new variations of skin tones are able to coexist within single Tolkien races without disrupting their intended function(s).

Unfortunately, the mass conditioning of humans to believe in race/ism has wrongfully equated “race” with skin color, thus prompting blatant racism against The Rings of Power’s cast in some instances. The wrongful equation of skin color and real-world imaginary “race” and the widely conditioned belief in it restricts perception of Tolkien’s races outside of said “race.” The reader and/or viewer is set up to fail at perceiving race within the bounds of the fantastic element of race due to their previous convictions of what “race” means or does not mean. Until humans can adopt the raceless identity, the fantastic element of race and the true version of what Middle-Earth races can or cannot be will forever be misunderstood.

CONCLUSION

The fantastic element of race as a concept becomes quite clear once the raceless mindset and/or lifestyle is adopted. However, if the raceless mindset is rejected, then the continued belief in the imaginary concept of real-world “race” will forever cloud our understanding of what the word “race” means, even if it means something detached from said real-world race/ism, as Tolkien’s concept of race often was. 

In Anglo-Saxon mythology, which Tolkien was heavily inspired by, “scop” is a title given to a great storyteller, but not just any great storyteller: Scops would “master old songs and sagas and retell them afresh, crafting new ones as they went along, and in doing so would shape the tribe or court of people to which they belonged” (Stratford 11). In a way, Tolkien himself was a scop, a master storyteller who influenced not only a genre for the rest of time, but all people everywhere who know and, potentially, love his stories. Tolkien’s recrafting of the meaning of the word “race” and of fantasy as a whole will forever influence the literary community and the entertainment industry. Scops’ “narratives shaped and reshaped all who heard them” (11), much like The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, their adaptations, and all other things Middle-Earth certainly have. However, a raceless figure such as Dr. Mason can also become a scop, influencing and reshaping the world around us and all we have to do is open our minds to new ideas in the name of our shared humanity. 

WRITER’S BIOGRAPHY

John Giarmoleo is a recent graduate of SUNY Oneonta’s English program. During his time at SUNY Oneonta, John has taken on a heightened interest in fantasy literature and media. He especially enjoys Tolkien. He hopes to highlight the importance and prevalence of the fantasy in literary studies and beyond over the course of his academic and occupational future. With his publication debut, John aims not to lecture but to open mutual discussion around the topics/themes of his essay. Further, he hopes to create new psychological avenues. With the conferral of his undergraduate degree, John begins graduate school at the University of Albany in the Master of Arts in English, where he is confident he will further refine his skills to make future contributions to literary studies.

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