Lord of the Ring - Michael Evans

Having been through much of this class, I have had a lot of what we have learned in my mind. So the other night when I watched Lord of the Rings, I applied some of what we learned to the movie. I noticed how landscape tended to measure the levels of good and evil in the characters. The best characters in the film were the Hobbits. They were typically much less mischievous and more kind hearted than the other characters. If we look at where they live, however, we notice that they lived in a place that was nearly completely natural. The Shire was removed from cities and full of abundant grass and water and other natural resources unavailable elsewhere. It was a landscape closest to what Eden would have been. They were, in some sense, living in an Arcadia. The elves, too, were good people and lived in the forests. They were also in an Arcadia of sorts in that they were also less technologically advanced and lived as one with nature. Now if we look at the humans, they all lived in cities. They were all also more corrupt. Several of them wished to steal the ring and others to harm one another. They all were less good, but they also lived further from Eden. The orcs and the evil wizard, however, lived with rocks. Barren rock faces and boulders surrounded them where relatively nothing grew. It was a wasteland of sorts, and they were the vilest of the characters. After realizing that these connections were evident, I realized that it kind of showed how living closer to Eden was the best, the cities were not quite as good, but they were better than the barren wasteland that they could be.