FaerieStories

Not really. Sauron and the orcs are morally unambiguous - it's true. Nothing 'grey' about those guys. But Sauron isn't really present, despite the fact the book is named after him. He's barely a character in fact - he's more like bad weather: a problem for everyone else to deal with who lingers in the background.

Everyone else is morally flexible. One of the book's main themes is moral flux. The idea that under certain environmental conditions - anyone's morality can shift. Though it does contain plenty of morally apathetic characters - Gandalf, Treebeard, Bombadil, many of the characters undergo moral change - most notably Boromir, Theoden, Denethor, Saruman, Galadriel. Social conditions dictate our moral behaviour. The ring is a sort of thought-experiment: what if the conditions were tweaked to bring out the very worst in everyone it encounters?

Entire societies undergo moral shifts in Tolkien for this very reason. The Scouring of the Shire is a chilling reminder that we only live in a bubble of cosy 'morality' when we have the 'moral luck' (as thinkers such as Bernard Williams term it) to be comfortable enough not to have to confront our own greedy, violent natures. When tempted with power, even Hobbits can turn sour. This is a depressingly realistic depiction of morality, if social psychologists such as Milgram and Zimbardo have shown us anything.

And then we have Gollum - one of the most morally ambiguous characters in modern literature. Victim or villain? In the films he's presented as having a sort of multiple personality disorder, but in the book he's a gorgeously morally complex being, who wrestles with our sympathy and our disgust equally.

In Game of Thrones, morality is rather more mundane. In some characters it is realistic and interesting. In others it is tediously simple and gimmicky; Joffrey, for example, is just as morally one-dimensional as Sauron, but unlike Sauron he is actually given scenes and dialogue and screen-time.

Do you have any funny stories about your anonymity causing misunderstandings or confusion? For example: is it hard for the nameless ghouls to recognise each other when in-costume? How do you deal with that?

Yeah I can imagine that might get a little awkward at times. Maybe you should consider wearing colour-coded socks or something?