I noticed something interesting when thinking about the monsters of middle earth, which is that they are more about the attributes that they represent than their actual physical forms.
I first started thinking about this with Smaug, the way that the emphasis is mostly on his greed and wrath, not his wings or his claws. The wings and the claws are mentioned sure, but the crucial points of his character are his love of gold and his hatred of thieves. This lets Thorin become a dragon after Smaug is slain, when he is overcome by his greed, and lashes out at those who he perceives at thieves.
In the case of goblins and orcs, they are characterized as creatures of wanton violence and destruction. Or the giant spiders who are essentially gluttons.
This whole idea suggested to me that the monsters of middle earth are more allegorical than I had thought, with monsters really just being men with different vices taken to the extreme, so that they become less than men.
I honestly love this comparison of the creatures of middle earth to negative traits that the more human characters show. To me it makes these traits even worse and more dramatic because instead of seeing a beloved character we start to see a dragon or a spider.
ReplyDeleteI find this very interesting. It makes sense to create monsters that bear traits that we find scary in the real world, thereby emphasizing their "evilness". Rather than being afraid of a monster's appearance, it is their character that we should truly fear. I feel as though that mentality can be applied to real life situations as well.
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