I Can’t Stop Thinking About Grima Wormtongue
The spineless, forked-tongue ‘Lord of the Rings’ villain is a hero to many
I wonder what The Lord the Rings author JRR Tolkien would think of our times. I’m positive he would be pro-Brexit. I’m sure he’d be shocked by the diversity and dysfunction of his beloved England and most of the West.
The man had one of the most creative minds of the last century but he was certainly the type of person who’d call the police if they saw someone in their neighborhood who didn’t look exactly like everyone else who lived in the neighborhood. He definitely wouldn’t be in favor of letting non-Hobbits live in The Shire. The Shire is for tiny fussy white people with gorilla feet and only tiny fussy white people with gorilla feet. If you’re not tiny, nor white, nor gorilla footed — or worse, French — then bugger off.
Was Tolkien racist? I don’t know. He was a product of the British Empire, and those fancy gentlemen never met a culture run by people of color they didn’t want to immediately subjugate and then exploit. I love his books though. They’re examples of a human imagination transcending the limits of a single person’s prejudices.
I do think he’d be dismayed to see his island — and the whole of the English-speaking world — populated by Grima Wormtongues…
