The Politics Of Gene Wolfe

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 19 Mar 2009, 19:54 · from 2009-March.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:54:17 -0700
Subject: (urth) The Politics Of Gene Wolfe
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On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 12:40 PM, Jeffrey Brent McBeth
<mcbeth at broggs.org> wrote:

> Of the three major races in Tolkien (Man, Elves, Dwarves), only the
> Men have the semblance of a divinely-appointed king.
>
> The elves appear to be a meritocracy, and only in, one occasion can I
> think of, do the elvish choices coincide with those most liked by the
> gods.

In what way are the Elves a meritocracy? The Silmarillion, and for
that matter the massive "History of Middle-earth," are silent on how
the three original Elven-Kings were chosen from those who
awakened at Cuivienen, and all the kings who followed are their
descendants in one direct line or another.

> The dwarves claim to be hereditary from the original 7 dwarves, and
> seem to be largely ignored by any except Aule, which seems to be the
> god that the bad guys in LOTR come from (Saruman, Sauron)

Again, there are seven original Dwarves who are created directly
by Aule and ensouled by Eru; their descendants become the kings
of the Dwarves in later days. Sounds like a divinely-chosen lot to
me.

It's interesting, by the way, that there are three original Elf-kings,
three Elf-rings, seven original Dwarf-kings, and seven Dwarf-rings.
This implies that there are originally nine Kings or clans of Men,
but by the time Men came out of the East they didn't talk about
their past.
-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

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