Middle-earth on the Ukrainian Battlefield
Door Jam: August 31, 2024
The Door Jam is a place to squeeze in relevant articles written about C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, their work, adaptations of their fantasy worlds, and other potentially interesting news, information, and articles. Unless otherwise stated, I’m not necessarily endorsing (or criticizing) any of these, but merely sharing them with you.
This week, we read about Middle-earth battles reflecting real-world wars, a recent New York Times best-seller with a Narnia connection, pictures of a letter from C.S. Lewis just months before he died, more discussion of how Tolkien fits with politics, and reviews of The Rings of Power.
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Lord of the Rings in Ukraine’s War: A full history
This is a fascinating look at how The Lord of the Rings has been used by both Ukraine and Russia.
The word ‘orc’ has been widely used as a synonym for a Russian soldier since Russia launched the full-scale war against Ukraine. Such associations had existed long before, but they became a national narrative as a reaction to Russian atrocities and war crimes in 2022. …
Comparisons between Mordor and Russia go back to the Soviet era, when the regime considered Tolkien's literature politically threatening. The USSR banned Tolkien's books because they saw the orcs as an analogy for the Soviet people. …
Russians themselves increasingly identified with Mordor and its inhabitants, the orcs. In the late 1990s, for example, Russian writer Kirill Yesskov published ‘The Last Ringbearer,’ which reinterprets The Lord of the Rings as a Cold War allegory, but from an orc perspective.
