h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What people dont seem to realise about Tolkien and his LOTR is that the dudes from South Africa...a place largly occupied by mines and miners. I haven't read the whole of the LOTR but did see the movies. Come to SA and see the resemblance of the movie to alot of SA. The creatures are taken from the lower class black people and their culture...not all from old english/european myth as the author of the write up on LOTR would like to believe.

Tolkien left South Africa when he was only 4 years old, and never returned, so his memories of the place would have been very dim. Some how I doubt that creatures in LotR are based on "lower class black people and their culture" - Tolkien himself said in his letters* that LotR was inspired by north-west european myths. Orcs, goblins and the like are common fare in Norse myths.

* The Letters of JRR Tolkien, 1981, George Allen & Unwin
see - http://www.tolkienbooks.net/html/1981-present.htm

As I've said in other conversations much of the inspiration comes from the story of Sigmund and Sigurd, much the other concepts, names and characters are fairly similier or direct copies from Norse/North Europian myth. He kept extensive notes as he wrote all his works and it is clear where he got his ideas from, it was nothing to do with "lower class black people and their culture".