The Amazons of Far Harad

This lady appears for less than 10 seconds in the film, yet she is by far the most interesting character in the entire ensemble.

I went to see The Hobbit: The Disenfranchisement of Smaug. I cannot really say anything I didn't already say about the first one. What follows is a snippet of one of the strange mental gymnastic routines that happens to me when thinking about justifying narrative issues.

Scene: a group of friends are playing a tabletop role-playing game, not unlike Dungeons & Dragons. There is Pete (the Dungeon Master), Ian (a Wizard), Eva (an Elf), John (a Dwarf), Vickie (a Ranger), and Fran (a Hobbit). Their game is very loosely based on The Hobbit, where the DM has decided to make a few changes for the sake of inclusion and to keep the group's interest. Everything in italics is "in character," with breaks in character denoted by normal text.

DM: You now take in the sights around you, shaking the fish-slime from your eyes. An eclectic and unusual town stretches beyond. It is not built on the shore, though there are a few huts and buildings there, but right out on the surface of the lake, protected from the swirl of the entering river by a promontory of rock which forms a calm bay. A great bridge made of wood ran out to where on huge piles made of forest trees was built a busy wooden town, not a town of elves but of Men, who still dared to dwell here under the shadow of the distant dragon-mountain. They still throve on the trade that came up the great river from the South and was carted past the falls to their town; but in the great days of old, when Dale in the North was rich and prosperous, they had been wealthy and powerful, and there had been fleets of boats on the waters, and some were filled with gold and some with warriors in armour, and there had been wars and deeds which were now only a legend. The rotting piles of a greater town could still be seen along the shores when the waters sank in a drought. Among the townsfolk you see strange people unlike any you've seen in Bree - men with dark beards and unusual garb, ladies with strange eyes and silken hair, a woman with the darkest skin you've ever seen on a human - 

The Wizard: Where did they come from?

DM: (Sighs) Is this going to be a problem for you, Ian?

The Wizard: Is what going to be a problem?

(The rest of the group sighs and mutters, knowing what's coming next)

The Barbarians of Middle-Earth: The Haradrim

 

"But we have our tales too, and news out of the South, you know. In the old days hobbits used to go on their travels now and again. Not that many ever came back, and not that all they said was believed: news from Bree, and not sure as Shiretalk, as the sayings go. But I've heard tales of the big folk down away in the Sunlands. Swertings we call 'em in our tales; and they ride on oliphaunts, 'tis said, when theey fight. They put houses and towers on the oliphauntses backs and all, andd the oliphaunts throw rocks and trees at one another. So when you said "Men out of the South, all in reed and gold," I said "were there any oliphaunts?" For if there was, I was going to take a look, risk or no. But now I don't support I'll ever see an oliphaunt. Maybe there ain't no such a beast."

 - Samwise Gamgee, The Lord of the Rings, Book IV, Chapter III, “The Black Gate is Closed”

 This week, in celebration of Toller’s eleventy-eighth birthday, I’ll look at some of his Men of Darkness, the Haradrim: exploring their appearance, history, culture, historical and Howardian analogues, and their motivations for aligning with Sauron. Far from the faceless, generic “bad guys” a surface analysis would suggest, the Haradrim are very human, and the monster they became in the Third Age was created not just by Sauron, but by the protagonists’ own ancestors. A stark rebuttal of the black-and-white morality some critics level on Tolkien’s peoples, the Haradrim have a long and complicated history.