The identity of the One Ring

The other day over at World Wide Webers, Karl took Rick Santorum's LOTR analogy apart for its essential inhumanity, pointing out:

Santorum's analogy implies that our 130,000 soldiers in Iraq aren't serving any actual purpose. They're in the Middle East merely as a feint,

and asking

what exactly gives us the right to pick a country and launch a war there--killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in the process--merely as a ploy, in order to distract an enemy from our real purposes elsewhere?

I left a comment, agreeing, and pointing out that the analogy was, as Karl had called it, "semi-coherent". I mentioned the big line that's running around - "Aragorn didn't start the war!" - in my comment.

So, Saturday morning I woke up at 5, as I always do, but it being Saturday I didn't have to get up. I found that line in my head, I don't know why, and I was thinking about it as I lay in bed. I went back to sleep, but when I woke up again, three hours later, the thought was still there, and it had grown a bit. Let me share with you what it grew into.

Here's how I see the Santorum analogy laying out: The enemy attacks the Shire (that's the US, I guess) and Frodo et al. flee to Rivendell for help. At Rivendell Elrond (who's he?) puts together a coalition of all the races of Middle-Earth (umm ... not so much) and they move to attack Sauron (bin Laden) in Mordor (Afghanistan?), battling Saruman (Saddam?) along the way. I think you can see that the analogy fits in a very general sort of way (especially if you strip it to its most basic form: Good against Evil, clash of cultures kind of stuff); but it stops working the closer you look.

The Shire as the USA fails miserably. The Shire is a small place, rarely involved in world events, and many of the people in the book have never even heard of it. (Of course, I rather doubt Santorum has read the book, so let's confine ourselves to the movies, here.) Are we supposed to be Rivendell, then? In a more perfect world (that's "more nearly perfect", of course; don't write to me about absolute adjectives), Rivendell would clearly be the UN - but perhaps not now. I don't know - I don't have to, I guess; it's not my analogy. But obviously Aragorn is meant to be the US - despite his being stateless, destined to rule Gondor, so perhaps Gondor is the US? Let's move on for now.

Saruman as Saddam - not a bad fit, except that of course he really was working for Sauron, and he really did have WMD - his Uruk-hai and his magic. Creepy-sick Théoden - enthralled by Saruman - and strong, healthy Théoden could be viewed as personfications of Iraq (Rohan) before and after the US invasion. Or perhaps as Saddam and Chalabi or the Provisional Government, with Éomer being al-Maliki? At any rate, Aragorn's arrival in Rohan and subsequent rallying of the Rohirrim to fight and defeat Saruman's army (with a little help from allies - the Brits as the Ents???) is clearly meant to be the US's liberation of Iraq. The ruler of Gondor who's all weak and cowardly - dare I say Clinton? I'm sure Santorum would.

It sort of works. Sort of. I don't know who Faramir and Boromir are meant to be. I don't know who Legolas and Gimli are meant to be either, but I think maybe Legolas is Blair? Some elves do show up in Rohan in the movie, anyway. Perhaps they're Europe - hey, maybe Gimli's Chirac? - and in the movie that would be because the dwarves don't fight, except Gimli (who might be Spain, then... ). In the book of course, there are more fronts to the war than the one the narrative follows, and maybe that works for the analogy too - London, Madrid, Indonesia - but it's maybe more than the Santorum analogy can carry...

But here is where it all falls apart. The final battle - fought by a coalition army - is actually at the Gates of Mordor. It's not in Rohan. And if we're Gondor it's on our doorstep, too. The Eye of Sauron is being drawn away from Frodo - but Frodo is not in the Shire, safe at home. Frodo is in the heart of Mordor itself, carrying the Ring to its destruction.

Let's look at that for a moment, shall we? I said earlier that the catchphrase around the net is "Aragorn didn't start the war." Well, I'm sure that if you asked him, Santorum would say we didn't either. Osama did, he'd say.

Now, interestingly, that, I believe, does fit into the LOTR structure, and very neatly indeed. 9/11 would be the strike on Buckland (in the book) or the chase to the boat (in the movie). The suicide hijackers would be the Nazgûl, the Ringwraiths. And I think that is indeed a beautiful analogy: when your religion has caused to you to so devalue your life on Earth in favor of some existence after death that you are willing to die - and murder as you die - in its name, you have become neither living nor dead, in thrall to your master, and dwelling in shadows.

Their attack on the Shire is not simply malicious, of course; they're after something specific: the Ring. Which Frodo has. Now, if we drag in Dinesh DeSouza, we could say the Ring represents our freedoms - that they are attacking us because of our freedoms. We have to destroy our freedoms to keep from being attacked again. But of course the Nazgûl want to take the Ring to Sauron for him to use it, and that doesn't fit well. So what do we have that they want to take away and use against us? Whatever it is, it has to be something we need to destroy to win. I think it might be, not our freedoms, but our faith - our capacity for faith, for doing horrible things in the name of god. They want to turn us into them; we want to remain ourselves and free. What is it we need to destroy, in ourselves, to keep us free and not like them?

Whatever it is, Frodo is carrying it into the heart of Mordor to destroy it. The Eye is being drawn away - not from the Shire, not from Rivendell, not even from Rohan or Gondor, but from Mordor itself. And where is it being drawn to? Not Rohan or Gondor, but the very Gates of Mordor. In other words, Santorum's analogy fails at its most basic. As Karl said, Aragorn was not drawing the Eye away from his home to someone else's, not turning someone else's home into a battlefield to spare his own, not sacrificing tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of some other country's people to spare his own. More importantly, he was taking the fight to the enemy, in the enemy's stronghold, himself.

Who rode to the Black Gates with Aragorn in the movie? Virtually every main character who is still alive (except Frodo and Sam, of course), and the ruler of every country except Faramir. And why isn't he there? Because he is lying close to death in the Houses of Healing after having fought valiantly on the Pelennor Fields outside the walls of Gondor. Éowyn, too, not a ruler but an important person in her homeland. (Elrond and Galadriel aren't there, either, but both of them are doing what they do, the way they do it; they are not sitting at home, uninvolved.) Aragorn is the leader of the coalition, and he is first into the battle, charging the Gates.

And drawing the Eye away only from an even more perilous attack, the last hope. To destroy the Enemy Frodo had to confront him - Sauron himself had to be undone by the destruction of the Ring. Of Islam's capacity for doing horrible things in the name of god - of our own. Of mankind's capacity for thralldom.

What precisely Santorum thinks the Ring symbolizes doesn't matter. As J.M. Coetzee once said, once the words are out there the author no longer controls them. I don't think the war in Iraq fits the War of the Ring the way that Santorum thinks it does.

But I do think it fits.

And yes, a certain beauty vanished with the Rings - the Elves passed away into the West. And so did the Wizards. So too did Sauron. But Men remained, stronger and freer than before.

The Rings given to Men were their undoing. The undoing of the One Ring - the One True Way - was their salvation.