Tolkíenism Saturday

The Greater Good of Isengard

  "A strong place and wonderful was Isengard, and long it had been beautiful [...]. But Saruman had slowly shaped it to his shifting purposes, and made it better, as he thought, being deceived - for all those arts and subtle devices, for which he forsook his former wisdom, and which fondly he imagined were his own, came but from Mordor; so that what he made was naught, only a little copy, a child's model or a slave's flattery, of that vast fortress, armoury, prison, furnace of great power, Barad-dûr, the Dark Tower, which suffered no rival, and laughed at flattery, biding its time, secure in its pride and its immeasurable strength."

As we watch the fruits of Liberty become abused by those who would create a new Utopia in their own image, this quote from the books reminds me what is really going on. A beautiful tower, turned into a pale shade of evil, thinking it’s being done for some “greater good.”

Maybe the answer lies with the Ents and their marching song as the evil of the pale shadow of the dark tower waxes full even now in our own country ruled by lying liars who murder their way out of the next mess, certain the new crisis they’ve created next for us to endure is the path to some dark salvation of a dystopic Utopia.

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