Pearl
Usuário
Gente eu tava lendo um texto no TORN no mínimo curioso contra os elfos, e um tanto pró-orc. Leiam e diga o que acham...
http://gtexts.blogspot.com/2002_06_16_gtexts_archive.html#77950793
DISPELLING ELVISH PROPAGANDA. Something is rotten in the state of Middle Earth. And it's not the rise of Sauron's forces. It's the Elves. On the surface, one gets the impression that the Elves in Lord of the Rings are pretty swell. But on closer inspection, it becomes clear that something is seriously amiss.
Perhaps you will not agree, but for all their grand talk of saving the world, it seems Elves play a rather limited role actually doing anything about stopping Sauron. Sure, the Elves give away one or two presents to the Fellowship (the rest they keep for themselves), and sure, the Elves organize a council, but who do they actually put in harm's way? Really only Legolas. Not to slight Legolas, an Elf for whom I have the utmost respect, but this is a pretty meager contribution to the cause for the supposed archenemies of Mordor. Perhaps Elves fear to put their immortal lives in harm's way when they can have others do their bidding? Throughout Lord of the Rings, the Elves are consummate hypocrites: Elron chides the dwarves for "hiding in their mountains", but all he and the rest of the Elves do is hide in their forests. Elron may heal a person or two, and Galadriel may dole out a gift here and there, but all in all, it's a pretty weak showing.
Elves may be mostly talk in Lord of the Rings, but even their talk about saving the world from "darkness" is really not all that admirable. Elves want to save the world because it is a world that benefits them, and they've constructed a useful typology of good and evil which serves their ends. Of course the elves don't want change, safe in beautiful country-club-esque forest homes like Rivendell while everyone else scrapes by in the dirty, muck-a-day world of Middle Earth. When it comes down to it, the one thing the Elves really do seem to care about is keeping everyone else out of their beautiful forests. Above all else, Elves are defenders of the status quo. They are the Middle Earth's reactionaries.
You may protest that I am being unfair to the Elves; that while perhaps they could have done more at present time, one need only look to the past for examples of Elvish bravery. But can we trust accounts of the past? After all, the ancient histories of Middle Earth are all written in Elvish; of course they would portray themselves as the good guys. But keep in mind that the Elvish history is a history told by the conquerors. Without an Elvish Procopius, we will never get the full story. And even in the history as told by them and their apologists, we can pick up signs that the Elves were really no different in the past. Their legends paint man as weak; the story is that Isildur blew it for all the world when he failed to follow Elron's orders and destroy the One Ring when he had the chance. Perhaps there is something to this, but then again, while Elron was cheerleading from the sidelines, Isildur did all the dirty and dangerous work battling Sauron, putting his life on the line, and actually cutting the ring from Sauron's hand. One almost feels some pride in Isildur's defiant refusal to be a puppet to the manipulative Elron. If Elron wanted the Ring destroyed so badly, he should have done something about it rather than going home like a crybaby to concoct a propaganda tale to force gullible Men and Hobbits to do the Elves' bidding for the next three millennia.
While the Elves are problematic, one doesn't have to look far for some more positive figures in Tolkein's wonderfully imagined fantasy world. For instance, despite all the jabber about Saruman's treachery and evil, building an Orcish army and tearing down the trees at Isengard, he was a man of considerable vision with a serious desire to improve the world. After all, the Elves had been in power for centuries, with things in Middle Earth staying pretty much the same. Orcs were always treated as second-class citizens by the other races and not invited to share fairly in the bounty of a world in which they belonged as much as anyone. Orcs might be ugly, but that doesn't mean they don't have feelings. Ultimately, while the Elves would be content to gaze out contentedly from the porticos and verandas of their forest mansions, as Orcs struggled by unemployed, Saruman tried to change the sorry social order of Middle Earth for the better. One may question his methods, but it is difficult not to respect his ingenuity in finding ways to employ the idle Orcs in his region as construction workers and military contractors. The Orcs, no less than any other creatures in Middle Earth, deserve the dignity and satisfaction that an honest day's work provides, and Saruman gave it to them without recourse to a welfare state. Saruman gave the Orcs a hand-up, not a hand-out.
Indeed, the state of relations between the races of Middle Earth had always been reprehensible, and the Elves did nothing to remedy this; if anything, they just fanned the fires of hatred. None of the members of the anti-Sauron alliance, Elves least of all, ever gave the Orcs or the Goblins or the Trolls any respect whatsoever, when all these misunderstood creatures have ever wanted was a fair share of the beautiful world the Elves had taken for their own. The Elves' blindness to their own bigotry suggests a need for radical action on the part of underappreciated citizens of Middle Earth, and Sauron - the most unappreciated of them all - stepped forward as their leader. Sure, Sauron may have been a bit overzealous in his pursuit of social justice, but at least he was willing to do something, to shake things up, to give Orc children a chance to grow up in a better neighborhood than the slums of Mordor. That's a good deal more than we can say for the Elves.
http://gtexts.blogspot.com/2002_06_16_gtexts_archive.html#77950793