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Re: Where is everyone??

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  Posted by Michael Martinez on December 26, 1999 at 23:58:17
In Reply to: Where is everyone?? posted by Gunga Flynn on December 26, 1999 at 21:45:43:



: I realize in a work of fiction that the author concentrates on : the primary characters and events, leaving everything else kind : of shadowy. Still, I've allways wondered why Middle Earth : seems so sparsly populated. All those wide streaches of : wilderness. It shouldn't matter, but Tolkien spends so much : time in building his world. Then there's the fact that folks : don't seem to get around much. Rohan doesn't seem to be that : far from Lorien, but you notice that Eomer knows nothing of : that land. Is this all an offshoot of that fact that while : Numenor was enjoying the limelight, things in Middle Earth : weren't nearly so grand. I almost get the impression that even : at the time of the War of the Ring, Middle Earth was a land in : recovery.

I don't think there are any satisfying answers. A lot of people have expressed similar concerns to your own. One of Tolkien's themes, however, is the gradual estrangement of peoples (which was part of Sauron's strategy in the Third Age).

The large populations were mostly to the east and south. Sauron used them to continuously hammer at the western peoples, and I guess the effect isn't really what the author seems to have intended. By that, I mean the reader doesn't seem to perceive the massive presence of the enemy forces just beyond the horizon of the western peoples.

I suppose to many people it just doesn't seem plausible that the Easterlings, Haradrim, Southrons, Corsairs, and other peoples could be held at bay for so long. But then, they did make serious inroads. Southern Mirkwood and the neighboring lands were settled by Easterlings. That's not so obvious to the casual reader.

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