The Orcs

I first read “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” when I was a teenager. It was one of the first books that I became totally immersed in. I was with Bilbo when he found the one ring, when he passed it on to Frodo on his eleventy first birthday and I was there when Frodo and Gollum fought for it on the precipice of Mount Doom. I was in Helm’s Deep when we rode out to certain death, only to find a forest where millions of Orcs had been the day before. I sat with Merry, Pippin and Quickbeam while the less hasty Ents were deciding what to do about Saruman at the Entmoot. It was a wonderful adventure!

I have read those books many, many times and know them far too well according to those who don’t know them as well as I do. Can you imagine creating a world and its history for the enjoyment of generations of people? Fantastic legacy.

I liked the movies that Peter Jackson has made and look forward to the last instalment of the Hobbit which will hopefully come out this year. Being a bit of a purist, I can understand why Peter Jackson left certain parts out of the movies and added others that weren’t in the book. I wish he had left my favourite parts in. The part with Tom Bombadil I miss terribly, and I   felt that the scouring of the Shire should have been a part of the movie. It tied the books up so well for me and I think it would have been a more fitting ending for the movies. That is just my opinion, and those that haven’t read the books done get to voice an opinion.

 

Saruman is driven out of Orthanc and disappears for a time with Wormtongue. When the Hobbit heroes return to the Shire they find that it has been changed for the worse due to Saruman and Wormtongues influence. Saruman teaches the lesson that “the wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.” We try to protect ourselves, our families, homes and even our country from the dangers of the wide world. Sometimes we are successful for a time and then we have to deal with reality face to face.

 

There was an unarmed soldier gunned down in Ottawa today. We thought the troubles of the world were just that, troubles of the world and that somehow we could avoid them. I guess we couldn’t avoid them forever. When you play ball with the big boys, sometimes you get injured. Canada has for many years been world wide peacekeepers. We were respected for that and we were quite good at it. Sometime, I don’t know when, we decided to take sides and once you declare yourself a friend of someone’s enemy, you become an enemy.

Don’t get me wrong, I agree with that decision and it is unfortunate that young men and women from all sides will have to die. I just hope that the powers that be don’t settle for an uneasy truce. If we are to do this horrible thing, then it should be taken to the end. The orcs should be decimated and dispersed, ending once and for all this insanity.

 

What bothers me most I suppose is that we just may be the Orcs.