Tolkien's Moral Outlook

I just watched the third Hobbit movie again this weekend with my son. It occurred to me that Tolkien, at first glance, seems off base and exaggerative about the psychological character of his characters.

It seems that wizards, elves, humans and dwarfs are the good guys. These protagonists are capable of sinning and shortcomings, but they are relatively decent and moral people when contrasted with their antagonists, Sauron, Balog, the orcs and goblins, that are pictured as pure evil.

At first glance, his portrayal of the protagonists seems more realistic and nuanced. His portrayal of the bad guys is depicting them as so purely wicked as to be without a single virtue.

As a moderate truth-teller, in several places elsewhere, I have pictured the good--even saints--as possessing some faults and sinful ways.

I characterize the wicked as mostly, not totally bad.

With a more vigorous examination of Tolkien's moral outlook, it may be that he characterizes the wicked as purely and solely wicked.

But they worship Sauron as a demon-deity. They are a mass movement out to conquer the world. Their residual good will and free will are extinguished. Their violent and aggressive war against all that is freed, good and decent, their complete uniformity and utter conformity, produces a pure self-loathing in them that allows them to give fanatical group allegiance to their Master and his minions.

Portraying such zealots as pure evil, in this light, makes it accurate to so paint them.