Tolkien Part IV
One of the authorities on Tolkien referred to in both the Bird and OHair articles is a guy named Michael Martinez who has quite a few interesting posts about Tolkien. They can be found at www.Suite101.com.
Martinez argues that Tolkien was
a man of his timemeaning he had attitudes that were informed by his experience of having lived thru two World Wars and the 1960s. In the Salon article, Andrew OHair says Tolkien
is the product of his background and era, like most of our inescapable prejudices.But he insists,
at the level of conscious intention he was not a racist or anti-Semite.
Both writers basically say the same thing: that Tolkien would have been conscious of the discussion of the shallowness of anti-Semitism and all forms of racism that occurred in intellectual circles following World War II.
I think I am going to have to agree with Bird and Martinez. The Legolas/Gimli relationship is a major theme in the books and it is entirely focused on teaching us to move past pre-conceived ideas about people based on race.