The Real Heroes of Middle-earth? Public Servants

You're invited to rethink The Lord of the Rings. Not as a fantasy epic about kings and wizards, but as a parable about humble public service. Not about the lust for power, but the quiet strength of those who prioritize people, justice and community.

Michiko Kakutani warns in her New York Times piece this week, Why Silicon Valley’s Most Powerful People Are So Obsessed With Hobbits that many of today’s most powerful figures are reading Tolkien all wrong. Silicon Valley billionaires and global far-right movements are embracing The Lord of the Rings as a guidebook for domination, conquest, and tech-enabled immortality. They idolize the Ring's promise of power while missing the core message: Power corrupts. The Ring must be destroyed.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s story is not an aspirational roadmap for empire builders. It’s a cautionary tale. The Ring of Power doesn’t just control others—it consumes the soul of the one who tries to wield it. It tempts even the noblest of characters. Gandalf, Galadriel, and Faramir all reject the Ring because they understand this truth: to rule by force and fear is to become the very evil you set out to defeat.

But some modern readers are missing the point entirely. Kakutani describes how leaders like Peter Thiel name companies after the magical objects in Tolkien’s world—Palantir, Andúril, Narya—while embracing the kind of authoritarian, transhumanist ideology Tolkien warned against. It’s not just ironic. It’s dangerous.

Because The Lord of the Rings was never about ruling. It was about resisting. About restoring.

And that’s why the real hero of Middle-earth isn’t a warrior or a wizard. It’s Samwise Gamgee.

Sam is a gardener. Not a general. He doesn’t crave adventure. He doesn’t want the Ring. He follows Frodo out of loyalty and love, not ambition. And when Frodo falters, Sam picks him up and carries him. He doesn’t just carry him up a mountain. He carries the moral weight of the entire story.

And when the Ring is finally gone, and the world saved? Sam goes home.

He marries Rosie. He becomes Mayor of the Shire—seven times over. He raises thirteen children. He helps rebuild a broken community. Not with magic. Not with force. But with care, consistency, and civic duty.

That’s public service.

Tolkien himself, a survivor of World War I, saw this kind of quiet courage up close. In a 1956 letter to H. Cotton Minchin, he wrote:

"My ‘Samwise’ is indeed (as you note) largely a reflexion of the English soldier—grafted on the village-boys of early days, the memory of the privates and my batmen that I knew in the 1914 War, and recognized as so far superior to myself.”

Tolkien also built this truth into the narrative itself. In The Fellowship of the Ring, during the Council of Elrond, he writes:

"Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”

He believed deeply in the power of small acts, done by people not seeking greatness, but simply doing what needs to be done.

There are other public servants in the story too:

• Faramir, who says: "I would not take this thing [the Ring] if it lay by the highway."

• Aragorn, who serves first and rules only when called.

• Éowyn, who walks away from war to become a healer.

  
  

And perhaps most profoundly, it’s the hobbits—the ones who love food, gardens, and peace—who save the world.

That’s the truth Kakutani reminds us of: Tolkien didn’t write about domination. He wrote about stewardship. About resisting the impulse to control and embracing the call to serve.

It’s time we reclaim this story.

The Lord of the Rings isn’t a tech fantasy or political playbook. It’s a tribute to the power of ordinary people doing the right thing when it matters most.

So yes—maybe the real heroes of Middle-earth were the mayors, the gardeners, and those who cared for each other and their community.

And maybe they still are.