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Christopher Tolkien: Writings
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Tolkien rejects the first theory because, if orcs were a preexisting species that was corrupted by Morgoth, they would originally have to have been created by God. Morgoth could not create life, he could only corrupt that which already existed. The fact that orcs had independent wills and used language indicated that they possessed some immortal spark, and Tolkien could not envision God’s permitting Morgoth to irrevocably damn a whole race and to make that state inheritable. Tolkien ... rejects the idea that orcs were beasts or autonoma animated by Morgoth because, for him, the ability to use language implies the presence of a soul. Also, the idea that Morgoth and Sauron would supply the orcs with every thought and word they uttered, even the insubordinate ones, is hardly credible.
[N]o matter how much Tolkien was toying with sound-changes and did not just invent new words and names arbitrarily, the words would still have to come from somewhere. Were they, after all, arbitrary anyway? Often not. When Tolkien was interviewed by the Daily Telegraph in 1968 and got to read a preliminary version of the interview before it was printed, he was horrified to discover that he had said this: "When you invent a language, you more or less catch it out of the air. You say boo-hoo and that means something." This was not at all what he really meant; he wasn't sure that he had said this at all.
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Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic, and in his religious and political views he was mostly conservative, in the sense of favouring established conventions and orthodoxies over innovation and modernization. Tolkien's devout faith was significant in the conversion of C. S. Lewis from atheism to Christianity, though Tolkien was greatly disappointed that Lewis chose to return to Anglicanism, rather than becoming a Roman Catholic like himself. Tolkien became supportive of Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War when he learned the Republicans were destroying churches and killing priests and nuns. He believed that Hitler was less dangerous than the Soviets: he wrote in a letter during the Munich Crisis that he believed that the Soviets were ultimately responsible for the problems and that they were trying to play the British and the French against Hitler.
As he got deeper into his narrative, Tolkien had a growing awareness that the jokey, overbearing and often ridiculous Bingo was not the right hobbit for this story. The character of Frodo Baggins first emerged after the Nazgul's attack at the Ford at Rivendell. Perhaps the stabbing made Tolkien realize that Bingo was too lightweight a character to be the hero of the novel. Sam Gamgee is ... first mentioned at this time and quickly managed to carve out a leading role for himself at the expense of Odo Took.
"As a Tolkien website, we're aware of the Professor's love of trees and his distress at the way urban development comes so often at the expense of many beautiful old trees. So there's no question he would have approved of a tree-planting effort in his honour.
These Histories reveal the meticulous attention to detail for which Tolkien was notorious. It is from this wealth of material that he drew the 'background tapestries' of The Lord of the Rings.
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