“Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.” –Gandalf, The Return of the King
Recently, a friend of mine tried to convince me that The Lord of the Rings is a story of good versus evil, a simplistic fable of light triumphing over dark, and that Tolkien liked to write in black and white morality. This is a deep misunderstanding of morality and the nature of conflict in Tolkien’s storytelling: in fact, the pull toward loss and catastrophe is far stronger than the certainty of victory, and the world of Middle-earth is always on the edge of a fall into darkness.
The promise of destruction hovers constantly over The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. The Silmarillion in particular is, in many ways, a story of what Tolkien once called “the long defeat” (Letters, no. 195)—the entire world is devastated not once but twice in battles that shatter continents. Of the six major battles against Morgoth, the rebellious god and Satan-like figure of Tolkien’s mythology (Sauron, in comparison, was only a henchman), three are devastating losses, one is a temporary victory that ends in the death of one of the greatest Elves to ever live (if also one of the most divisive), and one causes the aforementioned destruction of half a continent.
Oh, sure, the latter ends in Morgoth’s imprisonment. But lest we forget, eventually he will break free again and throw the world into darkness.
Splintered Light by Verlyn Flieger is one of the first full-length studies of Tolkien’s writing and one of the few on The Silmarillion (a sort of mythological history of Middle-earth—to give you some perspective, the entirety of The Lord of the Rings is encompassed in two paragraphs in the last chapter of The Silmarillion). In it, Flieger argues that the back and forth pull between two emotional poles of despair and hope is a constant of Tolkien’s writing.
Following Flieger’s lead, it’s necessary to look closely at The Silmarillion, and specifically at Tolkien’s creation myth, to understand the complex nature of good and evil in his world. The first section in the published Silmarillion, the “Ainulindalë”, describes the universe as created by Eru (roughly speaking, God) and sung into being by the Valar (roughly speaking, angels). However, all is not well in the choir: the rebellious Melkor seeks to make his own music outside of that composed by Eru, thus introducing discord and conflict into the melody.
It’s this rather poor decision that precipitates Melkor’s eventual fall (more on that later), but its significance for Tolkien’s cosmology is far greater than that: Eru weaves the rebellious theme into the overarching music, making it part of the grand design, but the problem with incorporating angelic rebellion into your creation is that—well, you’ve incorporated angelic rebellion into creation.
As Tolkien put it in a letter to a friend in 1951, explaining his conception of the Middle-earth mythology:
In this Myth the rebellion of created free-will precedes creation of the World (Eä); and Eä has in it, subcreatively introduced, evil, rebellions, discordant elements of its own nature already when the Let it Be was spoken. The fall or corruption, therefore, of all things in it and all inhabitants of it, was a possibility if not inevitable.” (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 131)
He contrasts this with the version of creation given by “what may be perhaps called Christian mythology,” where “the Fall of Man is subsequent to and a consequence (though not a necessary consequence) of the ‘Fall of the Angels’” but not an inherent part of the world’s nature. In notes, Tolkien described the entirety of the Middle-earth universe as “Morgoth’s ring”—the essence of his evil is baked in, as it were, from the start.
Perhaps this inherent corruption is why the idea of the Fall endlessly haunts Middle-earth. The Silmarillion is dotted with falls, figurative and literal, great and small. The mighty Elf Fëanor falls to his pride and jealousy, just as Melkor did. The house of Hurin collapses into ruins amid tragedy that can only be described as sordid. The great sanctuaries—Nargothrond, Gondolin, Doriath, and the island of Númenor—are all sacked and destroyed.
Númenor itself makes a perfect test case for the ways in which goodness in Tolkien is not a given, even in his heroes. Founded as an island nation for the descendants of the savior-hero Eärendil, Númenor is created as a kind of in-between land, a liminal space between the paradise of Valinor and the mundane world. Númenor and its people are favored above other humans—but even before Sauron manages to slip in as an advisor to the king, the island has already begun to fall apart. Driven by a fear of death, the Númenoreans turn away from their special relationship with the Valar, dabbling in the twin evils of necromancy and imperialism.
This gradual moral decay eventually culminates in a disastrous attempt to invade Valinor by force, and the island of Númenor is utterly destroyed by Eru himself, in his first direct intervention in events, ever. A remnant survives (the ancestors of Aragorn and the Rangers), but the glory of Númenor is gone forever, and as an additional consequence, Eru reshapes the world, sundering Valinor from the earthly realms.
The reshaping of the world after Númenor’s destruction is a loss that resonates with another major theme of Tolkien’s: the world is moving ever away from the divine. In the beginning the Valar walk among the Elves, but they gradually retreat from the world, eventually leaving altogether. This is a process begun at Númenor’s fall, and the resultant removal of Valinor. Tolkien wrote that
The Downfall of Númenor…brings on the catastrophic end, not only of the Second Age, but of the Old World, the primeval world of legend (envisaged as flat and bounded). After which the Third Age began, a Twilight Age, a Medium Aevium, the first of a broken and changed world. (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 131)
The course of Middle-earth’s history is the gradual motion away from a beautiful past that is always growing further beyond reach. Tolkien’s nostalgia for a bygone age is a simultaneous yearning for and awareness of things lost beyond recovery; not only are the Valar retreating from the material world, but even the Elves begin to leave the world of Men.
It isn’t only on a grand scale that Tolkien illustrates the tendency of the world toward destruction, however—the falls of individuals are every bit as dramatic. The history of Middle-earth is dotted with other characters who succumb to pride or arrogance: Fëanor in the First Age, Isildur in the Second Age, and others. No one is so pure that they are not at risk: not without reason do Gandalf and Elrond both refuse to take charge of the Ring, and while hobbits are able to resist longer, Frodo ultimately fails to let the Ring go, claiming it as his own (it’s only Gollum’s intervention that prevents disaster). The Ring may be a force of its own, but it speaks to the inner darkness in everyone.
Tolkien’s pessimism shows clearly in an unfinished “sequel” to The Lord of the Rings that he began writing but never finished, which takes place in Gondor during the reign of Aragorn’s son. In the story, a sort of “Satanic” cult has arisen and young boys play at being Orcs. Human beings, Tolkien wrote in his letters about the tale, grow quickly dissatisfied with peace (Letters, no. 256 and 338); the title “The New Shadow” alludes to the growth of new evil even after the destruction of Sauron. Tolkien deemed the story too dark and never finished it.
On the other hand, there is a version of Tolkien’s cosmology that holds out hope for a final victory: the Second Prophecy of Mandos promises that while Morgoth will escape and cover the world in darkness, in the end he will be killed and a new world created, free of the flaws of the old. This messianic, Revelation-like story lingers in a few places in The Silmarillion. In the story of the creation of the Dwarves, Tolkien mentions the role they will play in “the remaking of Arda after the Last Battle” (The Silmarillion, “Aule and Yavanna”). However, the prophecy itself was not included in the finished version, and it seems Tolkien did not intend it to be. Not only does Tolkien’s history not reach this promised conclusion beyond prophetic mention, but by its exclusion it is eternally deferred—always just beyond reach, positioned in a nebulous future-conditional.
Thus far, I’ve mostly focused on the darkness that dwells in the heart of Middle-earth, but that is primarily because it is the facet most often overlooked by readers. Equally important is the other side of the coin—glimmers of hope, the turn toward the light: what Tolkien called “eucatastrophe” in his essay “On Fairy Stories”.
According to Tolkien’s definition, eucatastrophe is “the sudden joyous ‘turn’” at the end of a story that averts disaster. It gives “a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world” that does not deny the existence of sorrow and failure but nevertheless offers hope for something other than universal and final defeat. The story of Beren and Luthien is one such glimpse, as is the ultimate destruction of the One Ring even after Frodo’s failure. Each victory may be small, or temporary, but that does not make them meaningless.
In the 1950s, Tolkien wrote a philosophical dialogue between an Elf and a human woman called “Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth,” (subtitled “Of Death and the Children of Eru, and the Marring of Men”). In this piece, Tolkien offers two different Elvish words for hope. One, amdir, describes the expectation of good “with some foundation in what is known”—a realistic kind of hope based on past experience. The other is estel, which the Elf Finrod describes thusly:
“But there is another [thing called hope] which is founded deeper. Estel we call it, that is “trust.” It is not defeated by the ways of the world, for it does not come from experience, but from our nature and first being.” (“Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth”, Morgoth’s Ring)
Estel describes a hope that flies in the face of expectation but is nonetheless sustained, remaining despite loss and despite defeat. It represents what might be called faith, not only in the religious sense but in the manner of a deeply held belief that does not require “evidence.” Tolkien’s hope seems closer to estel than amdir, not to be defeated by the ways of the world. Estel, it is worth noting, is one of Aragorn’s many names.
The story of Lord of the Rings, and of the history of Middle-earth more generally, is not that of one battle of good versus evil, but of instances of a battle that is ongoing, where the final victory (or defeat) is always deferred, just at one remove.
Tolkien’s ethos is not that good will always triumph over evil. Rather, it is that good is locked in a constant struggle against evil, and that victory is far from inevitable and always temporary. Nonetheless, the fight is still necessary and worthwhile. Even in the face of futility, even if it is all a part of “the long defeat,” as Galadriel describes her ages-long fight against the dark (The Fellowship of the Ring, “The Mirror of Galadriel”), it is valuable to remember the infinitely wise words of Samwise Gamgee’s song in The Two Towers:
Though here at journey’s end I lie
in darkness buried deep,
beyond all towers strong and high,
beyond all mountains steep,
above all shadows rides the Sun
and Stars forever dwell:
I will not say the Day is done,
nor bid the Stars farewell.
Elise Ringo is an enthusiastic nerd putting her English degree to good use by writing about anything other than the literary canon and thinking far too much about pop-culture. She runs a blog at Becoming the Villainess and tweets as @veliseraptor.
That first quote reminds me why I struggled to finish Lord of the Rings. Can we get a new King James version?
If the story has gone from the high and beautiful to the low and dark, that is the fate of Arda Marred…
This. Thissss soooo much.
Recently I was on an informal chat where somebody mentioned they were reading LOTR to their son; the first book was kind of slow, and they wanted to know if the second book was any better. Various people chimed in of varying opinions and I said that yes, in a way it is slow, but Tolkien’s books aren’t meant to be quick reads – they are an immersive work that even as an adult who has read them dozens of times, still finds new things to unpack each time. Then somebody said something like, ‘oh, they were revolutionary when they were written, but there’s better stuff out there now’ and I was just like nooooooo. (Which is not to say that there is some awesome stuff out there, but to dismiss Tolkien’s work as cliche or tropey is missing the mark.)
Another of my pet peeves is
when people try to make a false dichotomy between things like Tokien and other more modern fantasy (GRRM being a common variant) surrounding this idea that modern, ‘adult’ fantasy is grim and dark, and things like Tolkien are childish and fluffy. Yes, they are different (and I enjoy both), but not quite for those reasons. Tolkien is dark. Perhaps it’s not grim and gory and vulgar, but it is dark. (It could even be said to be metal, but I’ll spare you the most metal deaths of Tolkien article even though everybody should read it.) In some ways the movies obscure a little of this, but the ending of the books are bittersweet at best. The heroes are changed. Frodo doesn’t even really get a happy ending, at least not the one he set out for. The fact that Frodo tries to claim the Ring at all was controversial at the time it was published – he received hate mail for it. This is a book where the hero FAILS at a crucial point. Now, of course that could have been taken to an even darker extreme and subverted a la the Mistborn series (I love those books) but the fact that there is any triumph at all has to do with Tolkien’s views on grace, providence, etc (I am not sure I would classify him as a pessimist, although he certainly was not an optimist). Your line about the poles of despair and hope and the importance of small victories against a long defeat echo a line of thought I have been forming myself for the past several years, especially as I deal with the world as an adult, as a person of faith, and a person with a depression-prone personality. To me it is also the most important message of the books. Despair seems to be a prime sin for Tolkien – we see how it corrupts Saruman (who turns to the Enemy) and Denethor (who just gives up).
Also, you mentioned several of my favorite things (like the sequel, the Athrabeth and Sam’s poem which I have as an epigraph on my own journal :D).
It’s hard to say what Tolkien really intended in the end because towards the end of his life he was revising a lot of it – even to the point of positing that the world was actually round all along and that the flat earth stories were just Mannish misinterpretations of the Elvish histories, etc. But he also talked extensively about the concepts of Arda Marred/Arda Restored (along with a lot of interesting ponderings about what Elvish immortality-but being tied to the world/Mannish death means in light of all of that).
Well, it must be a different Silmarillion to the one I read, because the words “Oh look, Morgoth is losing yet another battle. Again.” came out of my lips enough times while reading it to become an in-joke.
I won’t comment further on defining Melkor’s desire to create his own music “rather poor”. As practically everyone here, I admire Tolkien and The Silmarillion is my favourite book of his, but I find the morality in his books abhorrent, and I enjoy them despite their implicit defense of the idea that all evil came to the world with the rejection of the notion that Daddy Knows Best, not because of it.
Excellent essay. Yes, the entire history of Arda (Marred) is one of constant defeats punctuated by bright, fleeting victories. Thus joy and sorrow are constant companions. The Lord of the Rings is exceedingly dark sometimes—indeed, anyone thinking Tolkien is light and fluffy compared to more contemporary books isn’t paying attention—and when you read beyond the trilogy, you only find more and more sorrow. And more beauty made meaningful by the sorrow.
But yes, always there comes the eucatastrophe. And in the long view (the longest view) I’m certain Tolkien does envision good will overcome, in the end of ends, reflecting his real beliefs. And even when Eru Ilúvatar allows Melkor’s initial discord—all evil—to endure, he declared that he would always turn it towards his own purposes.
And one must remember that in Tolkien’s legendarium, Arda is still just one world out of all creation—all of Eä. Others existed beyond this one planet. Best encapsulated, I think, by Samwise’s observation in Mordor:
@3 The need to read them slowly explains why I never really got the ending of tRotK. I’m a crash reader so by the time I got to the last book, I was so word drunk that I couldn’t make sense of anything.
@5 – yes, I think that belief (both personally, and in his works) in some kind of ultimate triumph is what keeps him from being a pessimist.
Interesting thought about the other worlds – I haven’t thought much about the idea of other (perhaps unfallen) worlds in Tolkien’s legendarium, although that idea does remind me a bit of Lewis’s space trilogy.
@6 – when I first read LOTR I was in middle school (around 6th grade) and had a tendency to speed read, and for most books that wasn’t an issue. With LOTR there was a lot I missed though (I actually went through my first read thinking Sauron and Saruman were the same person which of course was very confusing) and things like Helm’s Deep were completely confusing to me in terms of where they fit in spatially, in time, and plot relevance. I also recall speeding through most of the Council of Elrond so I missed a lot there. So for awhile I preferred The Hobbit to LOTR. In about 8th grade I decided to reread it and told myself I would ‘take my time’ and I remember being in awe of how much I had missed.
@8 The corsair thing confused the heck out of me until I saw the movies.
I don’t have nearly enough time or brainpower to make it all pretty and such, but it always struck me that WW1 is what informs the world of Middle Earth.
Prior to the war, things were “rosy”, at least to some sectors of society. The war comes, some people are “happy” (or at least not particularly saddened) that it happened. But the war was pitiless and killed millions; the heroes, the villains, everyone died. No one “won” in any kind of final sense.
And then after the war, you have “peace”. But everything has changed, and not for the better. The world is still intact, but its more fragile, people are broken too. Europe especially was hard hit; France was a shambles, the British Empire a hollow shell, Germany broken. Ripe pickings for the next war, which a guy like Tolkien would have seen coming from a mile away.
His postwar, and late in life, revisions can almost be seen as a new optimism in light of the complete Allied “victory” in WW2.
@@.-@ The problem with that line of thinking is the assumption that “daddy” doesn’t know best. Tolkien operated under the concept that there is a supernatural God who is the arbiter of good, but that this God isn’t just the arbiter of good, and actually acts in ways that are best for all creation, even if it doesn’t seem that way. Eru Ilúvatar is based on this concept.
And so in this case, anything that opposes, rejects, or otherwise modifies the actions of this God causes real harm to the world, because its every action is objectively—and supernaturally—perfect, loving, and good. That’s very different than the belief that some specific human race, gender, or political construct “knows best”—Tolkien didn’t think that way, and The Lord of the Rings certainly doesn’t embrace this.
I had read The Hobbit, and attempted to read The Lord of the Rings in middle school. I don’t think I successfully completed a full read through of the main narrative before I was in college, though. It was just too dense for me to read for leisure at that time. I also had a couple false starts on the Silmarillion, too, before I was able to power through it.
As for noblehunter @@@@@ 9, I understand your point, but a sad thing to me is that, in my opinion, the corsairs were one area where I particularly disliked Jackson’s interpretation. From the presence of the Army of the Dead (unless I’ve misread the book, and the appendices, the dead don’t fight at Pelennor, rather being used to scare the bejesus out of the raiders; the ships are subsequently crewed by Gondorians from the southern part of the nation, not ghosts) to the arrival at the Pelennor Fields (it was going to be hard for PJ to match the tone of that scene in the book – from the dread of the “good guys” and the energizing of the “bad guys” as the ships approached, to the reversal of moods as the banner is unfurled, to Eomer’s jubilant reaction on the battlefield). That sequence just didn’t do it for me in the movies.
A recent re-read of Edith Hamilton’s Mythology was instructive in showing me how much the themes discussed in this essay seem to be ideas drawn from Norse mythology. Parallels abound: Gandalf’s sentiment in the opening quote would seem to have been shared by Odin, and the Second Prophesy of Mandos certainly resembles the hopes for the aftermath of Ragnarök. I think it is a mistake to look at the cosmology of Middle-earth as simply pessimistic or proto-grimdark; Tolkein was simply drawing upon concepts that few other authors seem to have explored.
Wonderful article, and so many excellent comments. Thank you.
I always learn so much from the article AND the comments. Thanks all!
Hah. The moral complexity of LotR eluded me completely, as it does in any story involving aquatic humanoids. My thoughts went: Sauron made the Ring, the Ring made Gollum, I adored Gollum, so yay for Sauron. :-p
OK, not quite true. Gollum was actually a force of moral struggle for me, with the conflict between the glorious but wicked creature he had become and the gentle hobbit-like creature he had once been and wanted to be again.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I’ve struggled so much over the years (particularly since the movies came out) with people wildly missing the point of most of Tolkien’s works and dismissing them as simplistic black vs white morality. A truly great piece of literature.
As far as “Daddy knows best” goes, it’s worth pointing out that in Tolkien it is ONLY the unknowable, non-interventionist Eru who knows best. Contrast Lewis, where Aslan is always popping up saying and doing questionable things that mustn’t be questioned Because, and plenty of author stand-ins are there to Know Best when he’s not around. Contrast also historical Christian attitudes in our reality, where churches have taken the Daddy role to themselves. There’s no church in Middle Earth – the only mention of organised religion is when Sauron tricks people into worshipping Morgoth. Gandalf could _maybe_ be counted as a one-person priesthood, but even he is fallible.
This touches on the best things about Tolkien writing such meaningful work. Although his beliefs are apparent when you really lookt, he is never heavy-handed with it. He has no soapbox, no podium. Take what wisdom you will. And I say this as a big C.S. Lewis fan who is also perfectly happy with a talking magical lion who knows what’s what and sometimes says so.
I’m with Ian@13 here- Tolkien is filtering the Norse sagas through his Catholic lens- the world is doomed, but all persons of goodwill will fight to ward off the inevitable end for as long as possible, even knowing that loss is inevitable in this flawed universe.
Excellent article and very thoughtful comments.
Thank you for your thoughtful essay. I was glad to read it. The way LOTR is juxtaposed with so-called “grimdark” fantasy always seemed oversimplified to me, and I like how you highlight the complexity found in Tolkien.
@11: You are aware that nothing you said actually invalidates my point, right?
FWLIW, Tolkien’s concept of “eucatastrophe” is rather well expressed in Siegfried Sassoon’s poem Everyone Sang
Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on – on – and out of sight.
Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away … O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.
Explanation would be superfluous – again, FWLIW, Gerard Manley Hopkins also touched rock bottom and reached for the sky in some of his poems: I just cannot remember which ones.
Note to Makhno @18:
Ah, but you’re forgetting that Gandalf was an “angel” (Maia) and so cannot be counted as a priest (human go-between).
Lovely discussion, overall. I wish we could grant estel to all who need it.
Also, fallibility isn’t really something priests are protected from…
But at any rate, Tolkien has countered in his letters the idea that Gandalf is intended to be a Christ analogy, since he would not be quite so on the nose, nor did he want to tackle the idea of an Incarnation. (Although in some of the HOME writings – it might even have been in the Athrabeth – he does briefly play around with the idea of Eru coming into the world, etc…but ultimately he abandoned it, partially, I think, because it became too specific. Tolkien himself was deeply religious but he tried to keep the specific trappings out of his work, since Middle Earth in a sense ‘predates’ religion.)
Right. Tolkien wanted his world to be compatible with his beliefs, not the same as, and not even a direct parallel of.
Its also appears way too relevant at the moment with our current political landscape. Massive darkness just off the horizon and hope is really the only thing we have, with one or two minor victories in an exceedingly lopsided war.
Oh, to be sure. That’s why I’ve been making D&D- and Tolkien-based political memes nonstop for months now.
@13: Inspiration was definitely taken from the Norse Sagas. When I first got into reading Prose Edda and Poetic Edda, and I read about the Aesir and the Vanir, I thought of the Valar and the Maiar. There are many other lightly done bridges, such as the way that dwarves are regarded as smiths, craftsmen, masons, etc. and the creatures of Anglo-Saxon mythology, which we know has been greatly influenced by Denmark, Norway, and the other Northern Kingdoms (think of all of the raids done by Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Frisia, Frankia, etc. As a result, a lot of Germanic, Norse, and Anglo-Saxon myths are closely related and even interwoven at points. They have an interconnected history. Cnut the Great was the king of Britain and Scandinavia. Great chieftains like Ivar the Boneless, Ubba, and Halfdan Lodbrokson all had captured sections of Britain at times throughout history. So there is Norse influence in some of the old Anglo-Saxon myths that Tolkien drew upon. The beauty of it all, though, is that Tolkien took those myths and made them his own.
Another note:
Does anybody else here play LOTRO? Anyone remember the character Amdir, from the start of the Epic Storyline (and the prologue/introduction if you’re a human or a hobbit)? This made my heart skip a beat on behalf of the beautiful attention to detail that Turbine had when first developing LOTRO. Despite their blunders occasionally, they have done a wonderful job at giving me the closest possible experience to actually being in Middle Earth.
Tolkien is amazing. Anyone that says that Tolkien is fluffy and childish for making Frodo a cripple, killing Borormir – or even including Boromir’s corruption – dooming Gandalf, emphasizing Aragorn’s eventual death, corrupting Saruman, having Saruman’s henchman murder him, or having Denethor go crazy can fight me.
Incredibly insightful and well done piece, I concur on all points.
FINALLY!! A Tolkien article that contains substance that’s more than the movies! I really enjoyed this, and it reminds me of The Tolkien Professor podcast as well as Mythmoot of Signum University:
https://mythgard.org/events/mythmoot-iv/
Check it out if you want to hear more about Tolkien’s works in serious depth!
Hello Elise,
Thanks for the excellent essay! It helps me know well how I haven’t plumbed the depths of Tolkien, and where to look if I want to go further. At this point it is enough to deal with and to open the true story of Earth to the people of Earth whose imaginations are in captivity to the marvelous tales of Babylon spun by artists in the thrall of our own actual dark lord.
It is a wonder of sorts to me that so few labor to shine their light on that Story beneath all stories—and our places in it—although it is probably because if one does not live it mere imagination is not enough to carry the telling into the hearts of men and women.
Yet the dust had not settled on our generation’s visionary literary output. Likely a true story will not go over well in Babylon, where the arts serve to lull, and where to be woken is to offend. Still, the dust has not settled.
This is a fascinating discussion of Tolkien . I’ve been thinking or reading TLOTR again, and this discussion means I start today.
Thanks Elise for a terrific essay. I got the same sense of moving away from the divine too.
It’s much like Larry Niven’s”The Magic Goes Away” where there is a finite amount of mana (used to power magic) in the world, and once it’s gone, it’s gone. Which is why there are no mythical creatures left today, though creatures that were partly magical, like unicorns survive as wholly mundane creatures, having lost their magical powers (& horns). These days, they’re known as horses…
@@.-@,
“Oh look, Morgoth is losing yet another battle. Again.”
Not really.
First Battle of Beleriand: win to Morgoth’s forces.
Dagor-nuin-Giliath: the Noldor win but Fëanor dies.
Dagor Aglareb: massive win to the Noldor, Siege of Angband begins.
Dagor Bragollach: Morgoth’s forces win but he gets maimed in single combat with Fingolfin (but he kills Fingolfin, so wins that fight too).
Nírnaeth Arnoediad: Massive win to Morgoth, and it wasn’t until The War of Wrath (with The Host of the Valar arriving) that Morgoth was finally defeated.
So of the six great battles in Beleriand, Morgoth won three.
@20/Kirth & @30/Torir: Apart from Eru Ilúvatar and perhaps the vague hints of what happens to Men after death, the basic structures of Eä—including the languages which play such an enormous role in the world-building—seem to be drawn almost exclusively from ideas taken from Norse/Scandanavian, Celtic, and Anglo-Saxon sources. Much analysis of Tolkein’s legendarium tends to examine the themes drawn from Catholicism and the author’s WWI experiences (quite probably because Tolkein himself mentioned these at length) but it seems to me that these angles apply much more strongly to the primary storylines and major characters than they do to the nature of Middle-earth itself. It makes for an interesting mix, leading to…
Yes, exactly this. Sometimes people seem to be disappointed to discover that some of the cool concepts they find in Tolkein (or JK Rowling, or George Lucas, or …) weren’t actually original, but I find that the ability to rework older (and sometimes disparate) ideas into something new and unique to be a type of creativity to be greatly admired. Besides, discovering the sources/inspirations for the author’s creativity not only allows for appreciation of the cool stuff already read or watched, but also points to new realms of concepts and stories to explore…
This is a wonderful essay. I mourn constantly that Tolkien took that Unknown Path before he was able to write more; I’m grateful to his son for bringing much of the unpublished material to light. I appreciate your musings about the powerful themes that appear in JRRT’s writings.