J.R.R. Tolkien, drawing on the work of George MacDonald in particular, formulated an enduring vision of goblins (also called “orcs”) as evil, crafty, corrupted, dark-skinned troglodytes that threatened the well-being of the nobler races in Middle-earth. They are agents of evil in a binary conflict of lightness against darkness. As such, they are slaughtered without guilt across the pages of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. These goblins retain their historical associations with darkness and malevolent conduct, but Tolkien infused them with racialized language that was common in contemporary English discourse and broadly associated them with a non-European other. Connotations of humor and merriment are gone in these goblins. Instead, they are antagonists whose destruction ought to be celebrated. Tolkien’s American contemporaries did not craft the same kind of detailed worlds as Middle-earth, though they nonetheless drew on an amalgamation of folklore and literature in their works. Therein, goblins range from grim markers of the sinister supernatural to dark-skinned thralls. However presented, they are a far cry from the valorous heroes in these fantasy stories, which tend to feature protagonists that reflect the audience of (primarily) young, white men that read these texts.