WW2 and the myth of redemptive violence
As humans, we’re storytellers, and we use stories to guide our actions and form our communities. If we want good and life-giving communities, we must tell good stories.
This is why we must, somehow, get over our obsession with World War 2.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean we should forget World War 2, which—along with its holocausts—is rightly considered the major event of the twentieth century. We do need to remember history. But we also need to question what aspects of history we focus on, and what lessons we are taught.
I’m American. Some of my older relatives and friends were WW2-era veterans, and I honor their courage, loyalty, and sacrifices. It’s also absolutely essential to remember crimes like the Holocaust, the fire-bombings of Dresden and Tokyo, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and so much more. These things must be remembered. They must also be examined so that we can learn from them.
And it did seem, in the period before I was born and even into my childhood, that we were trying to draw the right lessons from the horrors of this war. The war led to the Nuerenberg trials and also to many laws meant to ensure such things never happened again—the Geneva conventions, for example, and the declaration of human rights and more. The principal lesson of WW2 seemed to be how utterly cruel and inhumane we human beings could be to each other, given the right provocations.
But, along with these lessons, we learned several others. First, we learned that the world could be divided into “good guys” and “bad guys”. We Americans and our allies were the good guys. The Nazis, the Italian Fascists, and the Japanese were the bad guys, and had to be fought strenuously and totally defeated.
Which—well, it seems true, doesn’t it? There’s just no doubt that the Nazis did evil, and the Japanese, too, did unspeakable things to the countries they occupied. Both Nazis and Imperial Japanese were following a false story they had learned: that they were the superior human beings and that others—such as Chinese, Jews, and Roma—were inferior creatures worthy of slavery at best and death at worst. These lies led to horrific, unspeakable evil. And that evil did have to be fought.
But here’s the problem. If we are the good guys and the Germans, Japanese, and Italians are the bad guys, doesn’t that make them inferior to us? There’s the trap, you see.
In fact—and this is the major lesson the Holocaust, in particular, should teach us—we are all human beings on this planet together. No group is superior or inferior to another; we are all brothers and sisters. As a Catholic Christian, this is one of my core religious beliefs, but it’s backed by science. The whole concept of race is bad science and false; all human beings have the same origins, if you go back a million years or so, and that’s a blink of an eye in the face of geologic time—or of eternity.
But we humans do like to get together in gangs of various sizes. We do like to see our gang, whatever it is, as good and superior and other gangs as bad and inferior. Looking at the Nazis of the 1940s, or supremacists of any type today, shows us exactly where that type of thinking gets us. And those supremacists do include Zionists, Christian and otherwise. I empathize with Jewish Zionists who are ruled by fear and anger after what their people suffered in the twentieth century. I think they’re wrong, like all who would divide human beings into superior and inferior groups. But I can see why they act as they do. To achieve real peace and real justice, however, we have to live in truth. And that means that we must move away from nationalism and groupthink of all kinds.
There’s more, though. There is the idea that violence—even the utterly horrific violence of war—can be good. It can be redemptive. It can save us, and save the world, if the “good guys” use sufficient violence against the “bad guys” and defeat them thoroughly enough. After all, that’s what we—the good guys—did in Word War II. We defeated Japan and Germany utterly, and forced them to surrender without conditions. Then, so our version of history goes, we rebuilt their countries into prosperous and peaceful democracies. But they had to be shattered before they could be rebuilt.
There are a couple of things to note here. First, Germany had suffered a humiliating defeat already in World War I. Our rebuilding of the country after World War 2 was, in part, based on what we learned from the failed peace after the first World War. Second, even if everything I’ve said above is true—even if Germany and Japan did have to be utterly defeated in order to be rebuilt—that doesn’t justify war in general.
For war is always a crime, the worst crime human beings can commit. It is always a failure. My Church developed a theory of a just war in the Middle Ages, but many are now arguing that no war can ever be just. No war can ever be justified—not if you are truly a follower of the Jesus movement. My dad was one of the World War 2 era veterans I mentioned earlier. During one of the Gulf wars, he said, with great sincerity and sadness, “There’s no justification for war in the New Testament. None.” He was right.
And that’s why, though we must always remember the facts of Word War 2, we must somehow let go of the myth. The myth teaches us that war is just, and that we have a right to do whatever is necessary to our enemies in order to win, because we are the good guys and they are the bad guys. And only violence can defeat evil. This is the myth that has guided my country’s actions for the last seventy years. No matter what we do, we are still the good guys. So we—or our allies—can bomb civilians relentlessly. We can impose sieges. We can destroy entire cities, including priceless historical sites and even schools, pharmaceutical plants, religious buildings and hospitals. We can kill millions through our bombings and sieges—and we remain the good guys. We are judged not by what we do, which is often monstrous, but by who we are.
And that is toxic. That is a lie. It’s a lie we must let go of if we are to live as mature, free, and peaceful humans in a free and peaceful world. We must also somehow repent of the harm we’ve done in so many places, from the Congo to Haiti, from Honduras to Palestine.
May we live in truth and let go of lies.
Harfoot Life
(Note: quotes are all taken from the Folio Hardcover edition of the Lord of the Rings)
Among other criticisms of TROP. I’ve heard it said the Harfoots are not Hobbits. They’re mean! They have no sense of community! They abandon their own and laugh at their misfortunes! I can certainly see how a casual viewer would think this, but is it true the Harfoots we meet in the show bear no relation to the Hobbits we know and love? And is it true—as I’ve also read (Brad Deveraux’s very thought-provoking essay can be found at this link: https://acoup.blog/2022/12/16/collections-why-rings-of-powers-middle-earth-feels-flat/)--that their nomadic way of life makes no sense and has no similarity to actual nomadic cultures?
In both cases, I would answer no. The Harfoots strike me as extremely probable Hobbit ancestors. And their way of life actually tells us a lot about who they are, what they value, and why.
Let’s start with two vivid expressions of Harfoot culture. The first is the oft-repeated mantra, “Nobody goes off trail, and nobody walks alone.” This is drummed into the heads of Harfoot children, to the extent that they use it as a call and response during one of their major festivals. What does it mean, though, and how does it play out in the show?
We see that Harfoots disguise themselves and stay away from other peoples. They also migrate according to the seasons, coming to various places of bounty—abandoned farmlands, a forest full of mushrooms, an orchard—when the natural resources there are most available to them. In addition, they hunt for small game—frogs, fish, snails—and keep birds and rabbits, presumably for meat, eggs, and hair for yarn. We don’t see any wheelwrights, carpenters, or clothmakers, but we do see skillful use of natural materials—reeds, leaves, bark, etc.—to make disguises. And the existence of the wheels, which are treasured possessions, argues for the existence of wheelwrights, etc.
So who are the Harfoots? A clannish small people, good observers of the natural world, whose main goal in life, other than staying together and staying fed, seems to be avoiding notice. Their special skill is vanishing. In this, they are similar to their Hobbit descendants; in his prologue, Tolkien says, “They possessed from the first the art of disappearing swiftly and silently (prologue, page 15 of FOTR)
But why is it so important for the Harfoots to avoid notice?
This brings me to the other vivid—and beautiful—expression of Harfoot culture: Poppy’s song. If we listen carefully, we learn exactly why Harfoot life is governed by fear of discovery. They are survivors of a cataclysm, possibly a war. Here is a reddit link to the full text, which I’m quoting below: https://www.reddit.com/r/LOTR_on_Prime/comments/xm2cxk/full_lyrics_to_poppys_song/
The sun is fast falling beneath trees of stone,
The light in the tower no longer my home,
Past eyes of pale fire, black sand for my bed,
I trade all I’ve known for the unknown ahead.
Call to me, call to me, lands far away,
For I must now wander this wandering day.
Away I must wander this wandering day.
Of drink I have little and food I have less,
My strength tells me no but the path demands yes,
My legs are so short and the way is so long,
I’ve no rest nor comfort, no comfort but song.
Sing to me, sing to me, lands far away,
Oh, rise up and guide me this wandering day.
Please promise to find me this wandering day.
At last comes their answer through cold and through frost,
That not all who wonder or wander are lost,
No matter the sorrow, no matter the cost,
That not all that wonder or wander are lost.
What do we learn from this? As the redditor mentions, many things are ambiguous. But we do learn that, in the past, the Harfoot people were forced to wander. We don’t know what the tower is, nor where those black sands are, but there is a strong hint here not only of disaster, but also, perhaps, of war. If that’s true, it explains much about them. It’s reasonable that secrecy, and the survival of the group, would be high values for the Harfoots.
It's also clear that they were once settled—they weren’t always wanderers. So it’s very possible that some of their artifacts, including their wheels and their carts, are generations old. Certainly, they’re good at repurposing and reusing what little they have. But this may explain why we don’t actually see them forging, making wheels, weaving cloth, and so on. They may rely on handing down, foraging, and mending what they can get.
This brings me to Harfoot economy. It’s absolutely true, as Brad says in his essay, that modern, human nomads rely to some degree on their contacts with settled people. The Van Gujjar, in Michael Benanav’s excellent book Himalaya Bound, are a good example. The people normally keep to themselves, but they trade milk and cheese, and sell buffalo calves, to settled people in order to buy what they themselves can’t produce.
But, in another way, the seminomadic Van Gujjar are quite similar to the Harfoots. They have intimate knowledge of the natural world, and they move to take the best advantage of resources. Like many nomads, they are pastoralists. They stay in the jungle during the winter, when leaves and vegetation are available for their animals. In summer, they move to the slopes of the Himalayas, where their animals can graze.
The Harfoots, as we see, do likewise. They have a path they follow each year, that leads them to water and to food in season. What strikes Brad as unrealistic is that they would stay completely hidden as they travel, and never have any contact with the outside world. But is this really so unrealistic?
There may be other Harfoot clans that live differently. We don’t know; we only see this one group. And it’s a small group, consisting of probably no more than a dozen families. A small group of little people who are gifted at disguises and at vanishing into the landscape. Gathering and preparing food seems to take up much of their time, and we see them take advantage of various resources—they eat fish, snails, frogs, mushrooms, berries, and apples. They clearly gather other greens or herbs, because they prepare tea of some sort as well, and it wouldn’t be surprising (though we don’t see it) if they gleaned grain and wool from nearby fields as they passed by. And they actually do have livestock; we see chickens and rabbits. This seems like a workable economy to me. In fact, the Harfoots as depicted in TROP bear some resemblance to “fairies” of European legend—people leave food out for the fairies in return for labor, or a blessing, or simply in order to keep safe. The fear the human hunter expresses at the Harfoots hints at this sort of exchange—though, to be fair, we don’t see it. But it isn’t impossible.
Nobody leaves the trail because the trail leads the people to the food and water they need, while keeping them safe from big folk who might be a danger to them. As to walking alone—
Well, this brings me to the other criticism people have of the Harfoots. They just abandon their friends when those friends can’t keep up, and then they laugh at their misfortune. The hobbits aren’t mean!
Aren’t they, though? And are the Harfoots really so cruel? When we actually see someone (the elder Sadoc, beautifully played by Lenny Henry) leave the trail, it doesn’t seem cruel at all. (Note: this image of Sadoc is from the Tolkien gateway) 
His companions are truly grieved for him, and he, with the wisdom of an elder, accepts the inevitable. He’s been gravely wounded and cannot live. His last words are of hope and beauty: he will sit awhile and watch the sun rise. All his companions can do for him is what they promise to do in the memorial ceremony we’ve seen earlier. “We walk with you,” they say. They remember their comrades and the circumstances of their deaths, knowing that someday, every one of them will leave the trail, one way or another. The trail is life, and the Harfoots are not immortal. This doesn’t strike me as cruel or inhumane. It’s harsh, but the Harfoots lead a harsh life. All the same, it’s not devoid of love.
As to the insistence the Harfoots are not hobbits, they’re not. At least, not yet. But I think the showrunners have made a quite reasonable guess as to where some of the Hobbits may have come from. We do know they were wanderers, coming over the Misty Mountains and eventually settling in Bree, and then the Shire. As Tolkien explains, the Harfoots were the first to head West, and “Their most ancient legends hardly looked further back than their wandering days.” (page 17, prologue) We also know most Hobbits are deeply conservative and dislike adventures. “Nobody goes off trail!”. Those who do “go off trail” aren’t considered quite respectable. “… old Bilbo was cracked, and Frodo’s cracking,” says Ted Sandyman. (FOTR page 62) We may not like this—we may not like Ted Sandyman—but, in The Hobbit, Tolkien makes it quite clear his attitude is more common among hobbits than we might like. When introducing Bilbo and his family, Tolkien emphasizes their respectability: “The Bagginses had lived in the neighborhood of The Hill for time out of mind, and people considered them very respectable…because they never had adventures or did anything unexpected: you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the bother of asking him.” (The Hobbit, Folio Hardcover, pages 11-12.) It’s quite clear most hobbits don’t go off trail, and those who do are looked down on.
As to meanness, Malva is worse, initially, than Lobelia Sackville-Baggins. Malva wants to take away the Brandyfoots’ wagon wheels, while Lobelia merely wants to take Bag End away from Bilbo, and then Frodo. Both women are out to deprive others of their homes, but in Malva’s case, that might well be a death sentence. In Lobelia’s, she merely wants to bring a social ‘death” to her cousins. However, both the Harfoot woman and the Hobbit woman change. Malva becomes the stranger’s champion after he saves her life, while Lobelia is one of the few Hobbits who stands up to Sharkey and his men. And she is reconciled to Frodo at the end of the story and willingly gives Bad End—which he’d sold to her—back to him.
There’s more. Hobbits love food, and eat five meals a day when they can get them. But, as Gandalf says, they can endure privation much better than anyone would expect. “..ease and peace had left this people still curiously tough. They were, if it came to it, difficult to daunt or kill; and they were, perhaps, so unwearyingly fond of good things not least because they could, when put to it, do without them, and could survive rough handling by grief, foe, or weather in a way that astonished those who did not know them well. (page 20, prologue)
They are still foragers, as well as farmers, with extensive knowledge of herbs (they introduced the world to pipe-weed) and desperately fond of mushrooms. Their Harfoot ancestors are shown to have knowledge of herbs and mushrooms.
Hobbits in the Third Age of Middle Earth, though settled and secure, are extremely good at hitting targets. “If any hobbit stooped for a stone it was well to get quickly under cover, as all trespassing beasts knew very well.” (page 20, prologue) We see this is a valuable skill for the Harfoots, too.
“Nobody walks alone.” As I said above, Hobbits are deeply conservative (in the true sense of the word—I’m not talking about politics!) They know their local geography intimately, know how to take advantage of its resources, and they know their family histories. Most Hobbits aren’t literate, or are barely so, but all of them know who is related to whom, and how, and why. As Tolkien says, “All hobbits were, in any case, clannish and reckoned up their relationships with great care.” (page 22, prologue) In their recitation of the dead, Harfoots are starting to compile a similar type of knowledge.
Harfoots aren’t hobbits, some critics of the show say. No, they aren’t. Not yet. But for all the reasons I’ve given above, they strike me as extremely probable Hobbit ancestors. Speaking of ancestors, I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if some of Nori Brandyfoot’s descendants became Brandybucks, or even Tooks!
What do you think?
…”Or there maybe ‘tis cloudless night/and swaying beeches bear/the Elven-stars as jewels bright/amid their branching hair” (Sam’’s song, from The Return of the King, page 194 Hardcover Folio edition)
A. What sort of trees are Mallorns?
You can find the rest at my livejournal, here? https://mary-j-59.livejournal.com/111915.html
I am not saying anything new in this post. Martin Luther King, Jr., said it long before I was capable of thinking such things, and so did Thomas Merton, and so, I am sure, did many other good and wise men and women. But it bears repeating.
To get back to my original question, what do Emma Gonzalez and Ahed Tamini have in common? Not that they are teenage young women in the news; not that both are being attacked by right-wingers; not even that both, in their different ways, are fighting for justice. What, exactly, are these girls fighting?
You might say: Ms. Gonzalez is fighting for gun control and Ms. Tamini is fighting the Israeli occupation. Fair enough. But look a little deeper.
I’m not sure how he’d feel about being quoted, but my father, a WWII vet, once said ,“There is no excuse for war in the New Testament. None.” He also said we had to get away from the wartime economy.
When you look at the horrors happening right now in the Middle East, in Gaza, in Yemen, and in so many other places, what do they have in common? To be blunt, they support the wartime economy. Just like the militarization of our police; just like the prison industrial complex, the massive amounts of bloodshed in the Middle East make profit for the merchants of death.
Ours is still a wartime economy. In some ways, I truly believe we are still fighting WWII. And our leaders would not know what to do with themselves if there were no enemy they could demonize. For some of them, that enemy is Russia. For others, it’s brown-skinned people, particularly Mexicans and Muslims. For some, it’s both of these.
The Palestinians, it’s been said, are lab rats for the military industrial complex. The billions of dollars we give to Israel every year go mostly for armaments. Those weapons are used against the Palestinians. Arms merchants can then sell more of these weapons, claiming they are battle-tested.
This must stop. The sooner we stop it, the better. The bloodshed going on right now has nothing to do with justice. It has nothing to do with self-defense. It has everything to do with power-grabbing, greed, racism, and fear.
Just imagine what the world could be like if we actually beat our swords into plowshares and spent our treasure on peace rather than war!
I am cheering on Ms. Gonzalez with all my heart. Her classmates, too, and Ms. Tamini and all the people of Gaza, Bilin, Nilin and other places where the indigenous Palestinians are protesting peacefully. We do not need more occupation. We do not need more weapons of war. We need food, clean soil, clean air and water, and to give our children a chance at a better future. Think how much skill and technological innovation our horrible drone wars have required! If we can put that kind of energy into peace, what might we achieve? Let’s starve the merchants of death and feed the children!
That woman who fell,
Cut down
Clutching the flag
Of the land she loved--
She fell like a flower,
Cut down like the grass.
Remember her.
Remember,
The grass dies.
It will rise again.
She will rise again.
(Written during the Easter vigil, Mary Johnson)
On Damsels, Crones, and Heroines—a review of A Wrinkle in Time
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