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Evil is ever-present in J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional realm of Middle-earth. Tolkien is ambiguous on the philosophical question of whether evil is the absence of good, the Boethian position, or whether it is a force seemingly as powerful as good, and forever opposed to it, the Manichaean view. The major evil characters have varied origins.
The Elf Ecthelion slays the Orc champion Orcobal in Gondolin. 2007 illustration by Tom Loback. J. R. R. Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, [T 1] created what he came to feel was a moral dilemma for himself with his supposedly evil Middle-earth peoples like Orcs, when he made them able to speak.
The Wizard Saruman turns to evil and is wholly corrupted, lured by pride and power, but never gets the Ring. Tolkien uses the Ring to illuminate the moral choices made by each character. Sméagol kills his friend Déagol to gain the Ring, and is corrupted by it, becoming wholly miserable as the creature Gollum.
Tolkien, while denying that absolute evil could exist, stated that Sauron came as near to a wholly evil will as was possible. Commentators have compared Sauron to the title character of Bram Stoker 's 1897 novel Dracula , and to Balor of the Evil Eye in Irish mythology .
Tolkien was similarly equivocal about the nature of evil, as seen through the One Ring, created by the Dark Lord Sauron to dominate the whole of Middle-earth; it behaves both as an inanimate object, and as a thing with constantly evil intent, seeking to enslave whoever bears it. Shippey admired Tolkien's ability to balance between pagan and ...
Tolkien's Roman Catholicism gave him a clear sense of good and evil, and a ready symbolism to hand: light symbolises good, and darkness evil, as it does in the Bible. [ 10 ] [ 11 ] In The Fellowship of the Ring , the first evil being that the Hobbits encounter after leaving the Shire on the quest to destroy the One Ring is Old Man Willow , a ...
In J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy writings, Isengard (/ ˈ aɪ z ən ɡ ɑːr d /) is a large fortress in Nan Curunír, the Wizard's Vale, in the western part of Middle-earth.In the fantasy world, the name of the fortress is described as a translation of Angrenost, a word in Tolkien's elvish language, Sindarin, a compound of two Old English words: īsen and ġeard, meaning "enclosure of iron".
J. R. R. Tolkien's novels The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–55), set in his fictional world of Middle-earth, have been the subject of numerous motion picture adaptations across film and television. Tolkien was skeptical of the prospects of an adaptation.