Three episodes into the Lord of the Rings: the Rings of Power, it's very clear that the writers of this show are trying to capture the central theological framework of Tolkien in their story. Tolkien's view of providence and the portrayal of the faithful remnant in Numenor is simply getting him right, at least so far. I was expecting this to be completely insensitive to Tolkien's major themes, perhaps even contradicting them, as Peter Jackson did numerous times in his original trilogy (less so in the Hobbit, ironically, given how much more hate there is from Tolkien fans about that). I could list numerous things:

1. Aragorn as reluctant king rather than biding his time for the right moment to assume his rightful throne while working behind the scenes to meet his kingly responsibilities, as in the books

2. Eowyn as seeking the second-wave feminist goal of trying to make women be like men rather than Tolkien's view of recognizing differences between men and women as something to affirm in women as equally good to any virtues more typical of men

3. Faramir's reduction to being a second-rate Boromir rather than the faithful remnant within Gondor who valued the right things

4. the Ents' motives for helping at Helm's Deep being presented as a hasty decision, completely contrary to their character

5. the presence of any elves besides Legolas at Helm's Deep running contrary to the entire theme in Tolkien of the elves in the Third Age largely hiding and avoiding the evil that was on the rise

I don't see anything as egregiously offensive as that in this show.

Some are upset that this show has been forced into inventing their own details to fill in, because the Tolkien estate refuses to let them use Tolkien's actual second-age materials outside the appendices, but that is the fault of Tolkien's heirs, not the creators of this show. What matters more is whether it is consistent with the world Tolkien gives us, and so far it mostly is. And what matters even more than that is whether the moral and theological framework is compatible with Tolkien's, and it seems from the third episode that they are actually trying hard to get it right.

Now there are a few things they could do to alienate Tolkien fans that I sure hope they do not do. If Meteor Man turns out to be any of the Istari other than Alatar or Pallando (or whichever other names Tolkien used -- I know there are several versions, and one version does have them appearing in the Second Age), then there is reason to be outraged. I think he is more likely to be Sauron than Gandalf, though, but we'll see.

If they don't follow through on the promise they have made that this is a transformation of a very imperfect Galadriel into what we see in the Lord of the Rings story, then that would be bad. But I am taking them at their word on this and thinking the claims of critics are simply premature. This is the Galadriel who becomes that Galadriel, and these experiences will serve to explain why she would know herself well enough to think Frodo's offer of the ring to her would play to all her bad tendencies. They have to had existed sometime in her long life for that whole scene in the Lord of the Rings to make sense.

Some I see are complaining that the show is woke, which of course is a stupid term at this point in its unclarity and lack of precision. I can think of a couple things that the now-orthodox social justice movement in our society wants to see that this show is doing, but they seem hardly concerning to any healthy conservative on social justice issues. There might be some issues on faithfulness to Tolkien's world, but I'm conflicted on that, even.

I just read a thoughtful post on the Pop Culture and Philosophy blog about the concept of balance in the Force in Star Wars. I’ve been struggling to understand that concept myself as I’ve been reading through a lot of the Star Wars comics, both Legends canon and new canon, and thinking them through in light of the movies, Clone Wars show, and Rebels show. I don’t think the post I linked to has it right, but I’m linking to it as a thoughtful piece trying to come to grips with this issue. A quick Google search revealed quite a number of other views on this, again none of it seeming to me to get things quite right. So I wanted to put some of my own thoughts on this into writing, however, so here are some rough musings attempting to put many months of thought on this into something somewhat digestible.

Here are several things that didn’t make a lot of sense to me, when put together:

We were at the bookstore yesterday looking through the science fiction and fantasy section, and I decided to get the one-volume Chronicles of Narnia edition, given that several of ours are falling apart or not even around anymore, mostly because of the efforts of one particular child. Most annoyingly, it has the wrong order of the books, so I had to write the correct order in the table of contents so the kids know what order to read them in.

Now I have good friends who like to support the publisher’s chronological order for reading these books, and I don’t really hold it against them, but they’re simply wrong. The books should be read in the order of publication. Sometimes people point to a letter Lewis wrote suggesting that it can be read in chronological order, and there really are times when you can appeal to authorial intent to establish something in the canon of the fiction. For example, Dumbedore is gay and always was. How do we know that? The author said so. Period. She made the fiction, and she can tell us what’s true in it. It’s her intellectual property, and she has the right to say what’s true in her fiction.
​

But this is a separate question. Lewis was trying to dissolve a dispute between a mother and child about what order to read the books in, and the reason he gave was silly. Here is the letter he sent to the child who wrote to ask about this:

• I think I agree with your [chronological] order for reading the books more than with your mother’s. The series was not planned beforehand as she thinks. When I wrote The Lion I did not know I was going to write any more. Then I wrote P. Caspian as a sequel and still didn’t think there would be any more, and when I had done The Voyage I felt quite sure it would be the last, but I found I was wrong. So perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone read them. I’m not even sure that all the others were written in the same order in which they were published. (Dorsett, Lyle (1995). Marjorie Lamp Mead, ed. C. S. Lewis: Letters to Children. Touchstone. ISBN 978-0-684-82372-0.) per Wikipedia
  
  

With all respect to Lewis as the author, this is a simply a terrible reason for reordering the books, and he as a literary critic should have known better. Not knowing that another book is coming later does not mean that it didn’t come later. So not planning out the whole series at once does not mean you can read them in any order. In fact, there are all sorts of literary reasons not to read them out of order.

Snow White and Prince Charming are the Evil Queen's primary targets. She wants revenge against Snow White for something we haven't seen yet (as least as of last week's episode). She wants to ensure that they are not together. They have no memory of each other, certainly not of having been married to each other. He was in a coma when the show began, and apparently he had been since the curse began. She has no memory of him. When he awakes from his coma, he has no memory, until the Evil Queen at some point seems to have interfered to give him memories of being married to someone else, someone who turns out to have been engaged to him in the Enchanted Forest before he broke it off to marry Snow White. But when they meet up, they feel such a longing for each other, as if they have always been meant to be together.

Prince Charming tries to rebuild his marriage, but he can't ignore his feelings for Snow White. This woman whom he (falsely) thinks is his wife brings out no current feelings, but he seems to have memories of feelings for her, and he tries to make it work. Technically, he's living in an adulterous relationship with her while thinking his feelings for Snow White are the adulterous ones. But Snow White is really his wife, and some process within him is leading him to think he should be with her. But he has no access to what would be leading him to that. An externalist would say that he has some process within him that he can't understand that's leading him to know that Snow White is the one for him, and his false beliefs about his past do not interfere with that knowledge. An internalist has to say that his most justified beliefs are the false ones.

So suppose there's some reliable process whereby his body's memories of his love for Snow White are leading him to know that she's really the one he's supposed to be with. His resistance to this woman who isn't his wife, whom he believes is his wife, is then grounded in processes that he has no access to. An externalist could say that his belief that he should be with Snow White (whom he knows now by another name, of course) is justified by these processes he's unaware of, and it's bogus to rely on his memories for the belief that he's married to the other woman. An internalist would say that his belief that he is married to the other woman is in fact false but is justified. Which belief is justified, then, depends on which epistemology is correct.
​
Which view you adopt would seem to have significant moral implications. He's doing something clearly wrong, according to internalism, by having clandestine romantic interactions with Snow White. But what if he has knowledge on some level that can somehow cancel his seeming knowledge (that isn't knowledge at all) that this is adultery? Those are false beliefs, based on false memories. If he doesn't know those things but falsely believes them, and he also knows on some level that Snow White is his true love, is it enough to remove the wrongness of the adultery? Perhaps that's too much, but it does seem to be ethically different in some ways.

I was involved in a conversation several weeks ago about the fiction of Tolkien, Lewis, and Rowling and the theological-ethical frameworks that those authors apply to their characters' use of magic. One viewpoint among the participants was that Tolkien and Lewis have clear criteria for when the use of magic is evil, and Lewis has a complete theological framework. Tolkien argues that magic is perfectly appropriate for beings created with it as part of their natural abilities. In their case, it's not actually supernatural, because it's part of their innate capacities. As long as they keep the use of such abilities within their proper limits and in the appropriate circumstances for the right motivations (as with any natural ability or function), there's nothing wrong with it. Lewis clearly disapproves of Lucy's use of magic to overhear what her friends are saying about her and her desire to change her looks with magic. (This was one of the most disappointing things about the third Narnia film, which completely misunderstood that scene and left out both in exchange for a different misuse of magic.)
​
I didn't agree with all the details of how this was presented, but the basic thesis struck me as correct. But then came the claims that J.K. Rowling's treatment of magic is very different. There are some differences in the magic of her world, but they are incidental to this issue. The claim that struck me as most difficult to support was that she treats magic as casual, ordinary, and mundane, and there's no sense of the serious import of magic with dire consequences if it's misused. In responding to that, I realized that it was probably worth writing up a more careful presentation of why her treatment of magic is nothing like that.

First of all, one of the early distinctions we learn in the Potter books is between curses and charms. Curses are never intrinsically good, and when she presents them as morally permissible it's only because a greater good is at stake. They aren't intrinsically good, just like violence, but some of them can be used in certain contexts, perhaps, to achieve a good purpose. The same restrictions would apply as with violence in the real world, and any arguments against the of use of curses would parallel those pacifists make against using violence. Snape takes Harry to task for using Sectumsempra on Harry, but he's willing to use a nasty curse (but notably not one that would kill) against George Weasley as part of his masquerade as a Death Eater. There's no question that she distinguishes between good and bad use of magic, and it's not hard to see much of what she's doing as an analogy for technology in the real world. The ethics of magic is a major part of her series.

Even on relatively small-scale misuses of magic (meaning not Death Eater level but just things Harry and his friends do that seem fun), there's a lot of moral reflection going on. Take love potions as an example. Rowling is pretty clear that love potions don't actually produce love, just an intense infatuation. She distinguishes that from genuine love. We see the consequences of love potions most clearly in the case of Voldemort's parents, but a love potion also has serious consequences for Harry and Ron in the sixth book. We also receive a number of serious warnings from Professor Slughorn about the Felix Felicis potion, which Harry does put to great use at the end of book 6, but it helps him mostly in ways he doesn't recognize at the time, and Slughorn's cautionary urgings demonstrate mature reflection on important moral principles, and we see tight regulations on its use (e.g. the restrictions on its use in Quidditch). We encounter severe warnings about splinching from apparition (called apparation in its earlier appearances in the series), and becoming an Animagus is so dangerous that it requires registration with the government. The warnings in the third book about the dangers of time travel require a metaphysically-impossible theory of time, but the moral considerations brought to be there show that Rowling certainly has a moral framework at work to evaluate the use of magic.

The true horror of dark magic is front and center from book 4 on. You have the unforgivable curses. She seems to be tolerant of the use of the Imperius curse for a greater good (she certainly has Harry thinking so), but she doesn't seem to take the other two unforgivable curses to be ever all right (except for Snape's use of the killing curse on the already-dying Dumbledore to continue his masquerade as a double agent and to prevent Malfoy from doing so and harming himself in the process). You can't even use the Cruciatus curse without deeply evil intentions. Harry tried and failed. Harry's killing blows almost always come from redirecting evil characters' curses back at them (something the Death Eaters consistently make fun of him for). The depth of evil required for making horcruxes is vividly portrayed both in what Voldemort comes to look like as he's been losing pieces of his soul and by what he appears like in the afterlife-like scene in King's Cross toward the end of the final book. He destroys himself by using magic in this way.

Then there's the moral evaluation of the Deathly Hallows. It's clear by the end of the book that Rowling wants us to see the invisibility cloak as the only Hallow of continuing value to Harry. The elder wand is most appropriately acquired and used by someone who never wanted it. The resurrection stone is most appropriately used so Harry could get moral support in his preparation for giving up his life, not holding on to it. He ends up leaving it out in the forest where it had fallen. There's a clear sense of the illegitimacy of trying to hold on to your loved ones who have died, and the idea of acquiring power just to have more power leads her to write of the elder wand's history with one owner after another, each losing their prize and their life from the continued pursuit and acquisition of the wand by the next possessor. Harry uses it to repair his broken wand and then buries it with Dumbledore.

Rowling's "deep magic" based on love, a magic Voldemort never understands, is a clear tribute to Lewis. A voluntary sacrifice on behalf of someone else provides magical protection. She has Harry protected from Voldemort's magic in this way in his very body, until Voldemort takes Harry's blood into himself in a perverse use of magic that comes to backfire on him (because he in effect made himself serve as something like a horcrux for Harry, preventing Harry from dying when he finally could deliver a killing curse to Harry, which in the end only destroyed the scar that served as a horcrux for Voldemort. But Harry's mother's sacrifice continued in an extended way in the protection of the home of Harry's mother's sister as long as he officially lived there, and Harry's own voluntary sacrifice on behalf of all those who opposed Voldemort, together with the fact that he was using a wand whose loyalty was to Harry, ended up preventing his curses from doing anything after he and Harry returned to the world of the living from the King's Cross scene.

The contrast between these kinds of magic is one of Rowling's major themes, and the idea that she has nothing of a theological-ethical framework for the use of magic just flies in the face of all the work she does to present exactly such a framework. It's true that she's nowhere near as theological as either Lewis or Tolkien, but you have to have a pretty superficial reading (if you read the books at all) to suggest that she's treating magic is purely mundane, with no serious consequences, no sense of when it might be misused. There's quite a lot of reflection in her series about the ethics of magic, and her reflections strike me as thoughtful and morally mature, with few exceptions.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I wanted to preserve the comments and replies on the original post, which don't easily transfer over as comments and replies from the original blog format to the current one, so here they are as part of the post itself:

4 CommentsBy c.orthodoxy on September 15, 2011 4:42 PMThere's certainly a legitimate case to be made that Rowling is overly casual about moral choices, with Harry and his friends routinely getting away with things that his enemies are condemned for, including the use of curses, lying, spying, and breaking the law. Harry even uses the cruciatous curse in front of McGonagal in the Deathly Hallows, when a simple stunning spell would have be more than sufficient. Your example of Snape and Sectum Sempra is also inaccurate, as that is indeed exactly the spell he wounds George with, though it was actually aimed at a Death Eater but missed. And of course Snape's killing of Dumbledore is highly morally dubious, despite the rationalizations given for it.
Nevertheless, you are absolutely right that to claim Rowling's series ignores or denies the distinction between good and evil is preposterous. Beyond all the reasons you mentioned, there is a clear tendency in the later books to address even the issues I just raised, as Rowling is sometimes brutal in showing the consequences of Harry's moral failings, especially in the death of Sirius Black. Indeed, a major theme of The Deathly Hallows is to criticize the idea of doing evil "for the greater good," a conclusion that has broader implications for the series than are made explicit.
Thanks for the post!

By Jeremy Pierce on September 16, 2011 10:04 AMRowling tells the story from the perspective of a child, and that child makes questionable choices that he doesn't always see the implications of. It's his own meddling that causes certain of his problems, and it's his refusal to come tell Dumbledore certain things that causes other problems. But you have to read for subtlety and think about it to see this, and the fact is that people do get away with things sometimes, so she doesn't want him having bad consequences for every bad choice. So I don't see as much problem with that as some people do.

I also have a moral theory that explains why certain normally wrong acts can be morally justified, without it being consequentialism. What she doesn't like is trying to give a justification for evil acts by appealing to the consequences, but not every instance of doing something normally evil is actually evil, and sometimes the consequences to play a role in explaining why. In grave circumstances, killing innocents is morally permissible, perhaps even morally required, even if we shouldn't just kill people because it leads to slightly better consequences if we do so.

I'd defend Snape's actions as morally necessary, not just permissible. I don't see anything problematic about his killing of Dumbledore. It was the right thing to do. I'd say the same of Harry's use of the imperius curse. (I don't remember a Deathly Hallows use of cruciatus. When was that? I didn't say Snape thought his sectum sempra curse was morally wrong to use, just that it was too dangerous for Harry to use. He did know the dangers of it, and he was (1) masquerading as a Death Eater and (2) in the heat of battle. It's unclear if it's the best curse to use in such circumstances, especially if it's a signature move and was intended against a Death Eater, but that's a practical concern about his getting discovered as a double agent. I have no problem with the use of such a curse to stop Death Eaters from possibly killing Harry. That George got hit accidentally doesn't make it wrong for him to have used it.

By c.orthodoxy on September 16, 2011 10:42 AMI would mostly agree with your first two paragraphs. As for the last, I have real issues with the argument (made explicitly in the books to justify Dumbledore's killing) that he would have died/been killed by someone else anyway, so it is ok that Snape does it. Besides the strong hints of justifying euthenasia, it essentially forces Snape to kill rather than save, something he declares himself uncomfortable with and which runs counter to everything he stands for since the death of Lily.

Harry uses the Cruciatous curse in Ravenclaw tower against one of the Carrows, after they spit in McGonagal's face. He then states explicitly that "Beletrix was right, you really do have to mean it." McGonagal at first objects, but when he says he couldn't bear to see her treated in that way, she lets it go as (misguidedly?) "noble."

As you already note, his use of the Imperious curse (in Gringotts) is also allowed to slide, and indeed even McGonagal uses it on one of the Carrows right after the scene just described, again when there seems no necessary reason for it (all she forces him to do is hand her their wands and lay down on the ground--surely she could have just stunned him and taken the wands herself).

Since Rowling does not shy away from strongly condemning both these curses in many other places, I find this whole scene very odd. At least in Gringotts one could argue that there would have been no other way to access the vault without the Imperious curse (the ends justify the means?), but here that was clearly not the case, so why include it? The only thing I can think is that it is Rowling's way of marking the transition from passive resistance to active war, as from here on the battle of Hogwarts really begins. If so, that would explain why the "good guys" do go on to kill several Death Eaters (perhaps a great many, we are not told). But where does that leave Adava Kadavra? It is still never used by the good guys, but on what grounds, if neither killing in general nor the other "unforgivable curses" are not, in fact, unforgivable in the context of war?

By Jeremy Pierce on September 17, 2011 7:52 AMBut you can oppose euthanasia when the only issue is that the person will die anyway and will experience pain in the meantime, while thinking that is a factor that can contribute to the moral evaluation when other, stronger factors are in play. In this case, who kills Dumbledore is important for several reasons.

First, it serves to confirm to Voldemort that Snape is really on his side, which helps put Snape in place to help Harry as headmaster of Hogwarts, which wouldn't happen if Voldemort trusted him less and put someone else into that job. There are crucial elements at stake, such as access to the Sword of Griffindor and the painting of Phineas Nigellus Black. It's not just allowing Dumbledore to die in a non-painful way.

Second, Snape's killing of Dumbledore is compatible with compassion for Dumbledore and prevention of Draco's doing something truly evil (since he wants to kill Dumbledore to prove himself to Voldemort).

Third, Snape's resistance to the killing actually goes a long way toward what makes me think it was morally permissible. Killing in extreme circumstances for moral reasons ought to be accompanied by extreme resistance because of the usual wrongness of killing. It confirms that he isn't still motivated by his old Death Eater habits and attitudes. It shows that he isn't just acting against Voldemort out of revenge about Lily, but he really cares for Dumbledore and has learned to hate killing.

I thought Rowling's presentation of this showed far more sensitivity to moral reasoning than usually comes up in euthanasia discussions.

As for the unforgiveable curses, I think she wants to demonstrate that morality isn't really about absolutes in the Kantian sense, meaning not what Christian apologists mean by the term (i.e. objective moral truths) but what philosophers have long meant by it (i.e. principles that apply in every circumstance no matter what). Rowling certainly holds to objective moral truths, but she thinks very few of them will always hold no matter the consequences. That's compatible with rejecting the principle that the ends always justify the means. See my discussion of the ethical theories of Geisler and Ross. I think she's got a view something in the ballpark of Geisler and Ross, and I think she presents the characters, especially Harry, struggling over when circumstances are appropriate to use methods that are normally very wrong, and they do get it wrong at times.

When she presents characters strongly rejecting these curses, what she's doing is expressing the usual attitude toward them from people who aren't thinking of whether they can ever be all right in extreme cases. But she does indicate that some aurors and ministry officials were all right with them. Barty Crouch Sr., for example, thought some circumstances warranted it when hunting Death Eaters down was the issue (but he is also shown to be willing to use it in a more suspect case, after having swapped his son and wife with Polyjuice, clearly being less motivated by justice and morality in that case). I think her presentation of Harry's use of the cruciatus curse is more to show that good intentions aren't easily compatible with its use, and that's probably one reason McGonagall doesn't make an issue of it. She realizes Harry intended to use it, but his intentions were good, and that doesn't actually amount to using it.

The imperius curse is wrong particularly because it prevents people from choosing their own actions. But it's perfectly all right to prevent people from choosing their own actions when those actions are harmful, especially if they're devastatingly bad, as in the case of the Death Eaters. So using it against the twins in Ravenclaw tower isn't a lot different from stunning them and taking their wands or putting handcuffs on them and leading them along to prison, as police do with criminals all the time. It's not a case where violating freedom is something we frown on. I don't see the moral problem. But you're right that it's weird she'd need to use that illegal method when legal methods were available. Harry's use, as you pointed out, has much more serious consequences at stake. This is about a horcrux, without which they can't defeat Voldemort. Violating innocent goblins' freedom is going to take pretty extreme circumstances to justify it, but I think this case has that.
​
The killing curse might have the same issues, but she doesn't explore it, and I think there's a reason. The killing curse, even in outright war, kills instantly upon contact. Snape missed with his sectum sempra curse and hit George. If they use it and hit the wrong person, they kill friendlies. If they have methods of subduing Death Eaters without killing them and without risking killing their own, it's better to use those. If killing in war is supposed to be avoided to minimize casualties on the other side (as just war principles require), then it's important to use spells with at least the possibility of not killing. Bullets can kill, but they can also wound significantly enough to prevent the enemy from shooting you without killing. The killing curse can't. The only times I can think of for when the killing curse is all right would be when you know you have to kill the person and nothing else will do. Harry doesn't even use it with Voldemort, because he's hoping for remorse and repentance, even though it's ridiculously unlikely. He'd rather Voldemort's own killing curse does him in, which is what happens. Snape's killing of Dumbledore is the only time she has a good character use the killing curse, and it may be because it's the only time she could come up with when it's morally permissible.

In a paragraph in my dissertation, I explain a (supposedly) pre-theoretical approach to mixed race that made sense to me when I was a kid. It seemed to me that a helpful way to explain what I would have thought (and what many Americans seem to me to think) is sort of parallel to the way Tolkien speaks of half-elves in his fictional world. In the process, I realized how Tolkien speaks of this is much more complicated than I'd though, and I couldn't in good conscience leave it the way I had initially stated it, so it led to a long clarificatory footnote that I thought a number of the readers of this blog might appreciate for its geekiness.

Here is the sentence in the text of my dissertation that led to this:

​"I confess that this is how I thought of these matters in my unreflective, supposedly-pretheoretical analysis of things in high school. I would have taken a Barack Obama to be half-black in the same way that I took Elrond in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings to be half-elf, his daughter Arwen to be three-quarters elf, and her children with Aragorn to be three-eighths elf."

I realized there was a complicating factor, though. Aragorn had an elvish ancestor as well, and I wanted to check to see how far back it was. In the process, I was reminded that Elrond himself wasn't the product of a full elf and a full human, and it led to a much longer and much geekier footnote than I ever expected to be putting into my dissertation, but it's hard to be fair to Tolkien without acknowledging this, and it turns out to illustrate a different phenomenon in how racial classification works in some places outside the U.S. Here is the footnote as it stands now:

"Tolkien buffs may quibble here, and they would be right to, for two reasons. (1) Aragorn was the sixteenth in the line of Elros, Elrond's brother, and thus he himself has elvish ancestry, even if minuscule (I believe one over two the thirty-second power). (2) Elrond and Elros themselves weren't exactly half-elves to begin with. Their father was actually half-elf, and their mother was one-fourth human, one-eighth Maia (a kind of lesser angelic-like divinity), and five-eighths elf. That would make Elrond and Elros nine-sixteenths elf, three-eighths human, and one-sixteenth Maia. Arwen's son twenty-five sixty-fourths elf, by these measurements, not the three-eighths that would result if Elrond were literally half elf. But we get the language of half-elves for a number of Tolkien characters with mixed ancestry, regardless of actual percentages. What this suggests is that the culture of Tolkien's world seems to treat someone as half-elf for having any level of mixed ancestry, eschewing a one-drop rule in either direction but insisting on little expression of nuance or gradation among those labeled half-elves. This would presumably operate something like the label 'brown' in some Latin American and Caribbean countries, applying to anyone of mixed heritage regardless of the particular number of ancestors of each race."

This doesn't (at this point) make it into my dissertation, but compare Rowling's terminology in the Harry Potter books. There are two systems of classification, the one that is dominant until Voldemort's rise to power (and presumably again afterward) and the one operating during his reign of terror. In the method of classification that we learn throughout most of the series, someone with a magical parent and a Muggle parent is a half-blood. Harry's mother, Severus Snape, and Voldemort himself are half-bloods. Someone with no magical parentage but who has magic is called a Muggle-born. But in the generation after a half-blood, if the other parent is magical, there is no discussion of being a half-blood. Harry himself is never called a half-blood by anyone in the mainstream of wizarding society. There's no one-drop rule in either direction, but there's a sufficient-drop rule apparently, because once you get to three-fourths magical parentage you're no longer consider partial, and even if you have no magical parentage you're treated as magical in one sense. It's what you can do and not your parentage that makes the difference in terms of the law.

But then there's Voldemort's regime. Muggle-borns are Mudbloods by the pureblood mindset even before Voldemort's return to power, but once he takes control of things they simply become Muggles. They're assumed to have stolen their wands, because they're not magical. Half-bloods (other than Voldemort and Snape) are sometimes called Mudbloods, and Harry (who had a full magical parent and a Muggle-born magical parent) is considered a half-blood, because his mother was a Muggle.

There's something more like the one-drop rule operating here, although not quite. But neither of these systems of classification works out quite like Tolkien's. And keep in mind that elves in Tolkien don't think of humans as corrupting or impure. A half-elf can choose to be mortal or to be an elf in ways that don't involve just legal status. It affects whether they become mortal. Arwen, with much more elf ancestry than human, still could chose to become mortal. There's nothing parallel to that in Rowling's classifications. Perhaps if we had enough evidence for how half-orcs were classified (there are only a couple suggestions in Tolkien that there are such things but no clear cases where it's more than just simple one-human, one-orc parentage). If he treated three-fourths orcs as half-orcs in a case where the human is mixed with something seen as corrupting, we'd have a good test case for whether his principle would expand to other cases of mixing. But I know of nothing in his fictional world that gets any more complex than simple one-one mixing except when it comes to elves (and the one Maia in the line of Elrond).

​Now that I've had a couple weeks to think since having seen the third episode in Peter Jackson's visualization of the best novel in history (Tolkien saw it as one novel), I've finally put together my thoughts on the overall project. I haven't seen every extended scene in The Two Towers extended edition yet (but have seen all the completely new scenes), and the final version of The Return of the King isn't done yet, but here's what I've come up with.

I should say that almost all of what I say in this is a critical evaluation of what I didn't like, focusing on the more deep and meaningful things Jackson left out or ruined. I haven't focused as much on things I did like (which I should probably do at some point just for balance, though that sort of thing is much harder for an ISTJ inspector/troubleshooter), so it might be easy to get the impression that I didn't like these movies. That would be a mistake. I enjoyed them thoroughly. The Two Towers was the most disappointing of them all, and I still look forward to going through the special features of the extended edition with a fine-toothed comb when I get it, as I did with The Fellowship of the Ring.

I also haven't bothered as much with things I was just disappointed not to see. The important stuff that really should have been there is my focus in these reflections, including significant character-twisting, huge Tolkien themes that were ignored or contradicted, and major plot points that were dismissed as unimportant but were in fact crucial to the storyline. As always, feedback and evaluation are welcome.

I have to say that I very much enjoyed Peter Jackson's take on The Lord of the Rings, and I think he did an excellent job capturing the feel of most of the books. The casting was largely excellent, the look of Middle-Earth was far better than I could have imagined, and the visual effects, of course, were stunning.

What I've been wanting to write up for a while are the things that disappointed me. These fall along a few different axes, with some of them more important than others, and I wanted to compare how Jackson did with the different films in terms of how devastating his changes were to the story and the world of Tolkien. Some of them were downright awful, and others were just annoying. I should say before I start that I am a Tolkien purist in the sense that Tolkien created an entire world, with the relations between the races, the character of each character, and the events throughout the story all contributing to grander themes and what might be called the over-story to the whole epic. Any change that sacrifices on that gets my condemnation. Any change irrelevant to that is merely an annoyance at missing a fun component of the story, sometimes a particularly endearing piece.