Ambivalence of "Knowledge"?

[ged]

Hi all,

I only read LOTR and the Silmarillion plus parts of Unfinished Tales as of yet, so sorry if this aspect is maybe picked up in another book...

Even when I first read LOTR (w/o knowledge of Silmarillion) I wondered if the Ring could stand for knowledge and I applied this concept to our modern science-oriented approach to the world. Not as an analogy; Tolkien himself disliked analogies, like to the events of WW2, but "allowed" readers to apply his ideas.

After reading the Silmarillion, my impression grew but were also modified a bit and I wonder what you think of it.

Most notably "knowlegde" seemed to gain an ambivalent feature that I see reflected in Aule and Melkor. Both are "creators". The main difference is the motivation: Melkor creates to gain power, Aule creates because he likes it (ie, without "bad" intensions). But even as Aule creates with good intensions, he can fail and sometimes create "nearly-disasters", like the creation of dwarves (I can't help feelinh reminded of the Golem saga, or Genetics as modern scientific discipline).

This Aule-Melkor ambivalence continues in the characters of their Maiar. Sauron was originally a Valar of Aule, and just later became one of Melkor. Also the origins of the Istari (wizards) are notable, namely Saruman having been a Maiar of Aule (a fact that was also stressed in the Istari essay in the Unfinished Tales), which naturally represents a familiarity between Saruman and Sauron.

If I apply this whole complex to our world of today, I wonder what it could mean to us. Originally, by only reading LOTR, I saw science represented in the Ring and its destruction as try to destroy knowledge which does harm to men (and could not agree with it). Now it seems to me that the Ring represents science with the intension to gain power, how Sauron tried to mislead humans curiosity.

Ged