How To Read The Silmarillion
From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection
Contents






















1 Introduction
2 The Noldor Family Tree
3 First, Some History
4 A Top Heavy Book
5 Time Scale
6 Languages And Words
7 Women
8 Ainulindale: The Creation Myth of the Gods
9 Valaquenta: The Gods of Middle-Earth
10 Quenta Silmarillion: The Family Jewels
11 The Question Of Jewelry As A Motive
12 Key Elvish Relationships To Remember
13 The Front Lines: Elves and Morgoth
14 Key Battles
15 Stories Of Men and Elves: The Misery Of Greed And Fate
16 The Story Of Hurin and Turin
17 The Story Of Beren And Luthien
18 The Story Of Tuor And The Fall Of Gondolin
19 Back To Where It All Began: Earendil
20 Akallabeth: The Sinking Of Numenor
21 The Fall Of the Noldor And The Remnant
22 Conclusion
Introduction
Note: This is a text originally published under the Design Science License in the early
2000s. Donated here for free - please take this and turn it into something useful.
What is J.R.R. Tolkien's book The Silmarillion all about?
The book is known for being difficult to approach and understand. The book is a stone
soup of the most mouth-mangling names ever seen in print. A reader who swallows these
is confronted with a dense mélange of mythology, theology, language, history,
geography, and genealogy (all in a made-up world which doesn't even exist!) which the
reader is expected to master before any good stories are told. A reader who manages to
mangle the material and master enough of it to continue is then thrown into a spider's
web of plot twists which hang on the thinnest strands of subtle elvish family
relationships. The reader who ploughs ahead by sheer determination to read the actual
narrative stories is then pitched and rolled on a sea of narrative which swirls from
extremes of lush detail where even the most minor moment is belabored to an elliptical
contraction which can summarize even the most interesting plot twist or daring deed in a
few meager words. What can anyone make of all this? Those few and rare daring scholars
who attempt to study the stages of composition of this work are likely to be overcome by
the almost incomprehensible layer upon layer upon layer of elves who go through some
of the most mind-boggling name changes over the almost sixty years of The Silmarillion's
development.
Here, I attempt to write the guide I wish was available when I first picked up The
Silmarillion around 1985, when I was about thirteen years old (which was the goldcovered, pocket-sized paperback edition). I had devoured Lord of the Rings over the
previous year, and wanted more of the same to read: yet I found The Silmarillion
incomprehensible and sought refuge in the last section about the third age. In this
document, I try to provide a road map that shows how the parts fit together, and some
landmarks for the reader to steer by. I try to be brief, but it's difficult to write about The
Silmarillion with any degree of conciseness or brevity, because the book is so unusual. It
is not an epic fantasy like Lord of the Rings, and is not a novel. It's a compendium of
legends about the elves and men. Owing to the unique nature of this work, I must
sometimes take what seem to be long digressions away from the text itself. These will
(hopefully) help the understanding of the work as a whole.
I should note that I am discussing (mainly) the published book, and therefore the names,
places, and events are congruent with the book. They may not always be congruent with
para-book information in various other sources.
The Noldor Family Tree
Any good survivalist in the wilderness needs supplies. The intrepid explorer of The
Silmarillion needs to download a copy of my Noldor family tree. I suggest printing this
out and using it as a bookmark, or attaching it to the book in some way so that you are
able to constantly refer to it.
Image:Noldor.pdf
In 1993, I created this chart, which includes material from the published charts in The
Silmarillion and other data embedded in the text. It differs from the other charts in that it
tries to reproduce the complex family relationships among the different elf clans on one
page.
First, Some History
2
I do not know of any way to divorce a discussion of the book we have with the title The
Silmarillion on the cover from the almost sixty year history of its development. Even the
reader uninterested in this history needs to know how the artifact came to exist in general
terms.
In 1916-17, while J.R.R. Tolkien was serving in the trenches of the First World War (a
fact with not inconsiderable consequences for The Silmarillion, so file it away), he
imagined a man named Eriol came to the Cottage Of Lost Play, where elves whom he
met told him the legends of the elder days. Some legends were quite settled from the
moment they were written, and changed little or not at all from their initial envisioning in
1917 in their chief details. Others were to undergo seismic upheavals. Over the next sixty
years or so, until his death, Tolkien would continue to work on this masterpiece. (Those
interested in Tolkien's relationship to The Silmarillion should read the autobiographical
story "Leaf By Niggle" in The Tolkien Reader.)
J.R.R. Tolkien employed a modus operandi in his writing of working in "waves" where
he would begin with a project, progress with it to a certain point where he stopped, and
then revisit the work either by starting over or engaging in heavy revision. The
Silmarillion consists of four such waves.




The Cottage Of Lost Play: The primordial mass of legend and story was written
in longhand in notebooks. Surprisingly, many of the stories were never changed
substantially. The earliest stories are the darkest: the tragic life of Turin, the ruin
of Beleriand, the corrupting greed of those who covet the Silmarils, and other
stories all set in a dark backdrop of constant war. These stories were devised by
Tolkien as he literally served in the trenches of the Somme. All of The
Silmarillion tends to be dark and tragic. The world at that time was a dark, tragic
place. Tolkien experienced great personal tragedy at that time. The only "happy"
story is that of Beren and Luthien (and as will be seen show, it was taken directly
from Tolkien's own life). The Silmarillion's theme is one of disaster, bad
decisions, betrayal: not unlike the feeling of those who survived the disastrous
battles, bad decisions by leaders, and betrayal of the trust of soldiers by their
leaders during the war.
The Lays: As a professor of Anglo-Saxon, Tolkien's interest was in alliterative
verse, a peculiar style of poetry found in Anglo-Saxon works like Beowulf and
almost nowhere else. Tolkien turned to writing his stories as lays (long epic
poems or songs) in alliterative verse. These may be the most formidable
components of the Tolkien corpus to approach, since this style is almost unknown
to most people familiar with other forms of English poetry.
The First Silmarillion: Tolkien turned to creating a more compact and
approachable summary form of The Silmarillion, which is close to what we have
today. At the time when Lord of the Rings came to life, Tolkien used this material
as his legendarium. (Thus, when a character like Aragorn says that something he
chants is part of a longer piece, that's the literal truth.)
The Post-Lord of the Rings Second Silmarillion: After finishing his narrative
epic, Tolkien generated a tremendous burst of creative force and unleashed it on
3
his legendarium. He revised the material from the first Silmarillion version. He
also created several longer narrative pieces beyond those used in the published
book. Most of this, as was not uncommon, never reached a final state. As will be
seen, the Post-Lord of the Rings version had significant changes from the earlier
material, and the two were never fully reconciled before Tolkien's death.
We have the published book bearing the title The Silmarillion only because of the heroic
efforts of his son, Christopher, to edit the manuscript chaos into publishable order.
Christopher Tolkien, who among J.R.R. Tolkien's four children seemed the most like his
father, inherited his father's papers and became his father's literary executor. Without his
heroic efforts (and anyone who has seen manuscript pages of J.R.R. Tolkien's
handwriting will know how truly heroic these efforts were), Middle-Earth would have
remained a much smaller place. Christopher Tolkien took up the challenge of publishing
some form of the legendarium posthumously so that the readers of Tolkien's beloved
Middle-Earth books would have some form of these stories to appreciate. After The
Silmarillion, Christopher Tolkien went on to publish Unfinished Tales (an a la carte
reader of stories from all ages in Middle-Earth), and then the twelve-volume History of
Middle Earth. Tolkien's readers may have arguably everything that was written and
intelligible about Middle-Earth in fewer than twenty volumes. (The only work published
posthumously which was not edited by Christopher Tolkien that I know of is the Hobbitlike children's story Roverandom which is a piece like Farmer Giles of Ham not set in
Middle-Earth. The Annotated Hobbit does not publish any unknown manuscripts,
although it is a most important work.)
To fully appreciate the published book with the title The Silmarillion on the cover, the
reader must understand how Tolkien's creative mind approached the creation of stories.
Tolkien often wrote down a finished narrative set in a fixed tableau which never changed
substantially after his initial conception. Books such as Return of the Shadow (which
traces the early development of the opening of Lord of the Rings) contain countless
examples of scenes with fixed characters (in their roles, although names assigned to the
roles are extremely fluid) and dialog, even though the meaning of the scenes would
radically and sometimes completely change by the time the work was finished. Tolkien
rarely abandoned his initial vision of a scene, down to the exact wording of the dialog,
but would constantly change what the scene meant by changing almost everything else,
including who characters were, their motives, the sense of danger or import of the scene,
external forces, etc. If Tolkien actually wrote something down, once it was committed to
paper, it seemed inviolable, and Tolkien would go to amazing lengths not to change the
words he had written. But he would change anything and everything else to make the
words fit the story he wanted to tell.
Thus we have both the "finished" Silmarillion in the sense that much of the stories did not
change substantially after the initial conception in 1917, even after sixty years of work;
and we also have an "unfinished" work with which Tolkien was wrestling even up until
his death, as he tried to sort out philosophical and ethical questions. The Silmarillion was
finished as soon as Tolkien had the original stories appear in his mind. We have a book
4
containing the exact stories Tolkien wanted to tell, but what he wanted them to mean in
terms of their ethical and moral framework will always be ambiguous since he never
resolved these issues. The stories by themselves can be enjoyed for what they are.
This apparent paradox is not surprising to those who study Tolkien's modus operandi for
creative work. Tolkien worked backwards. His mind's eye saw a specific end of a story,
and he conjectured about how this end came to pass.
In his professional life, he studied ancient manuscripts from the Anglo-Saxon era. Often,
he would encounter a word for which the meaning was lost. He wondered what that word
meant, and tried to imagine both how the word was devised, and why its meaning was
lost. His love of words and their meaning came out in the languages he invented as a
hobby: or, more precisely, he invented not so much imagined languages, but words from
his imagined languages. He imagined the word in the language which the people used to
refer to themselves, and asked himself what it meant. What did the word actually mean,
and why was this chosen to represent identity?
As Tolkien invented stories, he used the same common mode of imagining the end: the
destruction of the Ring, or Earendil sailing through the sky, or the Fall of Gondolin. He
then worked his way backwards. When Tolkien wrote about characters rather than words,
like most survivors who fought in World War I, he exhibits a strong post-modern
sensibility in the way that he abandoned the 19th-century world of rationalism (which
ended for England on July 1, 1916) and instead tries to show the psychology of the
people in the stories. Tolkien would not have called what he wrote "psychology", and
from his perspective as a Catholic would never have identified with the discipline of
psychology created by Sigmund Freud. Yet psychology, in a real sense, is what Tolkien
is all about. In almost every story, he saw an ending, whether happy or sad, tragic or
pathetic, good or bad, and asked himself what moral decisions were made by which
characters to bring this end to pass. Thus Tolkien writes about a Medieval world, but
what he wrote is definitely not Medieval.
As an example, look at Lord of the Rings: Students who mine the draft material and notes
preserved in The History of the Lord of the Rings (which is three and a half volumes from
The History of Middle-Earth) will see that there are two main stages of composition:
when Tolkien did not see the end, and when Tolkien saw the end. The first stage consists
of false starts, vague notes, random encounters with characters Tolkien had invented
previously, and an almost pathological fixation on unimportant matters in the story (the
character Odo, Trotter's shoes, etc). This stage piddled out in Moria, and Tolkien
basically started over. We see that Tolkien finally had seen the end: the Ring must be
destroyed in Orodruin's fire. Once he had, although the earlier chapters were rewritten,
the chapters after Moria are almost a steady, direct march to the conclusion. Tolkien
firmly introduces Boromir's betrayal and regret, Galadriel's decision, Gollum's two sides,
Theoden's reawakening, Denethor's pride, Farmir's gentleness and wisdom, and all the
others whose moral decisions would shape the quest for the Ring's destruction. The drafts
have little change in them, short of time synchronization among the various story threads,
and extremely minor subplots. When working on The Silmarillion, Tolkien used the same
5
basic approach of working from the end backwards. The key difference is, the material in
Lord of the Rings had a finite end and a finite beginning, and Tolkien's task was largely
to get from point A to point B. In The Silmarillion, the ends are finite and definite, and
scarcely changed since the initial conception. But the beginnings were infinite, and
Tolkien never fully realized them.
In some sense, The Silmarillion was never finished. Tolkien was never able to create an
internally coherent world with its own wholly consistent religion, metaphysics,
epistemology, legends, stories, and characters. Any time he would get close, he would
essentially start over from the beginning. As shown earlier, the "Silmarillion"
legendarium underwent four main phases of refinement. The last phase, after the
completion of Lord of the Rings, sent shockwaves through the whole work, as Tolkien
tried to decide the nature of evil in his world.
A Top Heavy Book
The Silmarillion is a "top heavy" work. What I mean by that is the good stuff, the
chocolate cake, is at the end of the book, but you must eat a whole lot of vegetables to get
to the good stuff and truly understand it, or the good stuff will not be as good. There is no
easy way around this process. The book begins slowly with (abstruse) historical details
before eventually getting to the narrative parts (starting around chapter 19, "On Beren
and Luthien") that read more like Lord of the Rings.
The original plan Tolkien brought to his mythological compendium had just such a
roadmap: a framing sequence for each legend where a mediator (playing the role, but not
the character, of a hobbit in the later books) learns from an elf what the legend is about.
Then the legend is told. Unfortunately, in the years after this original conception, the
mediator was dropped. Tolkien himself never got to bring his work to a final form, but if
he had, I wonder if this mediation would return, if for no other reason than the demand of
the publishers who would want the book to be more approachable.
The reader is rarely given a break at any point. One of the most significant places,
Thangorodrim, is not even on the map that comes with the book, which makes the reader
wonder just what the leaguer of the sons of Feanor is beleaguing. It is located far to the
north above the place marked ANFAUGLITH (Ard-galen).
Time Scale
To set the scale of time, to the hobbits of Lord of the Rings, the legends of Gil-Galad are
the most remote history they know (and Frodo is shocked at the Council that Elrond was
actually a participant in these legends), but The Silmarillion concerns events many, many
ages before Gil-Galad flourished. Of the elves we encounter in Lord of the Rings, only
Galadriel was a significant participant in The Silmarillion, and even then her role was
marginal. (She is, incidentally, the only elf we meet personally in Lord of the Rings who
has seen the light of the trees. Elrond, Legolas, etc. are several generations removed.
6
What this means will be explained as this discussion unfolds.) The narrative of Lord of
the Rings is a densely overlapping series of scenes which do not occur in consecutive
order, but jump up and down the chronological scale. Similarly, the episodes in The
Silmarillion are not necessarily consecutive. Many events in the different episodes
(chapters) overlap each other.
Languages And Words
The Silmarillion is similar to the Bible: it is a book of books, not a single narrative from
beginning to end like a modern novel would be. Like the Bible, the material varies
greatly in nature from book to book.
The whole has three main parts: Ainulindale, Valaquenta, and Quenta Silmarillion; added
to this are sections on the second and third ages of Middle-Earth which are not directly
related to the proper "Silmarillion" but bridge the gap between the early material and
Lord of the Rings. Names like Ainulindale and Valaquenta are part of the approachability
problem. The reader feels like a World War I soldier poking his head up over the parapet,
only to be met with rapid-fire machine gun bullets of unpronounceable and long Elvish
names. Most want to duck back down to safety.
The Silmarillion grew out of two invented languages that Tolkien worked on for his
entire life, but one of the most unusual aspects of his language creation is the fact that he
approached it from a philological standpoint. As a professional, Tolkien studied words,
which is the definition of the philologist (the word is literally Greek for "lover of words",
philo- and logos), but unfortunately the discipline of "philology" under that name is
almost unknown today among the general public.
Tolkien's hobby was to create new words. But all he did was to create words, not a
complete language which other people could use. He left us with "The Etymologies" (see
The Lost Road and Other Writings), which trace the derivation of various words in both
languages back to imaginary root languages, as well as densely technical philological
speculation on word origins (see War of the Jewels), but he never created anything that
would help someone learn and speak elvish. Tolkien never set down a grammar for either
language (so we could learn how to conjugate regular and irregular verbs, decline nouns,
etc), and did not create a substantial vocabulary. You can learn individual words in
Elvish, but most of the known vocabulary words have to do with geography or
astronomy. So it's difficult or impossible to learn how to say the normal things you would
learn in the first few lessons about a foreign language. While the conventional wisdom
that Tolkien created the legends to give his invented languages a backdrop, it would be
more precise to say the legends were created to explain the words.
Tolkien invented two separate languages: Quenya and Sindarin. Quenya is "elf Latin", a
higher and more complex language. Sindarin is the "vulgar" elf language (the lingua
franca of Middle-Earth), used in a day-to-day speech. Much of Tolkien's made-up
philological work is tracing how words in one language came to the other and what
changes in meaning and nuance the words underwent.
7
The reader is given little help in keeping track of these languages. Fortunately, there is a
glossary in the back of the book, and other books like Robert Foster's can help.
Women
A frequently cited flaw in Lord of the Rings is the lack of female characters. While this is
clearly an issue of heavy debate, this unfair perception seems permanently embedded in
the mind of Tolkien's critics.
Incidentally, I would say that in Lord of the Rings, there are few major characters period
who undergo any significant character development. In a book which is dominated by the
telling of a major war, in which most major characters are military leaders, the fact that
Eowyn (one of the few characters at all who undergoes significant personal change),
Galadriel, and Arwen (and others like Goldberry, Rose, etc.) show up at all gives women
a moderately high profile. If Tolkien has a weakness, it isn't so much the women aren't
there, but that the nature of the epic means that a lot of time is spent introducing and
keeping track of characters who don't undergo any significant development. But that's
going to happen in an epic, where characters are introduced to play a role or give depth to
the panoramic world and who are not intended to undergo character development. Since
the predominant thrust of the epic is the war on Sauron at both the micro and macro level,
more incidental characters tend to be men. When Tolkien switches from what is
essentially a fictional war story to the more diverse legendarium of The Silmarillion,
many more women emerge in different roles.
Tolkien wanted The Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings to be published together as a
whole. Had this come to pass, the debate about women would never have arisen. Tolkien
simply put most of the women in The Silmarillion.
If you like strong women characters, then The Silmarillion will be a welcome addition to
the Tolkien canon. Unlike Arwen, Luthien is a powerful force who takes on Sauron
directly instead of staying home sewing. Elwing is a dynamic and brave person.
The Silmarillion is older, legendary material. Most real-life legends from far back in
human history have strong women characters. The Britomarts (Spenser), Bradamants
(Ariosto), Hervors (from the Saga), etc of ancient days were strong, forceful women. As
time passed, these characters diminished. By the later Arthurian legends (Mallory,
Tennyson), the dominant force was male knights with swooning females in the
background. In much the same way, Tolkien's Luthien, who fought with Sauron to rescue
Beren, later became Arwen, who stayed at home sewing while Aragorn went to war.
Ainulindale: The Creation Myth of the Gods
The creation myth is the cornerstone of each culture's legend and myth. Most readers who
come to Tolkien will be familiar with the book of Genesis and its creation account in
some capacity, either as part of the Jewish Torah, the Christian Holy Scriptures, or as
8
literature and pure mythology. Some readers will be familiar with The Epic of Gilgamesh
and its own account of the great flood. Gilgamesh has spawned a huge number of popular
translations (and seems to be a favorite of college courses), and scholarly books such as
Ancient Near-Eastern Texts collect it and other, similar texts. Some readers with
exposure to Classical works, either in translation or in the original language, will be
familiar with Hesiod's Greek creation myth Theogony. (Not to be confused with the
classical poet Theognis.) But I imagine most have never heard of the Kalevala, a Finnish
epic which Tolkien discovered and used as inspiration for many parts of The Silmarillion,
including the creation myth. Unfortunately, the Kalevala is obscure, so much so that even
through a good popular translation in the Oxford World's Classics series exists (and is
affordable), no one knows it is connected to Tolkien and as a result I have never seen it in
a bookstore, either in the Tolkien or in the mythology section.
Any sort of full comparative study of creation myths could be expanded to an extremely
large book by itself, and is beyond the scope of this guide. Yet Tolkien's creation myth
needs to be placed into a context, so I will present some creation myths, and how they
relate to one another, but this is by no means exhaustive. In this comparison, I focus on
the relationship of mortals to the gods. Most creation myths have some sort of similar
basis in creation of the world ex nihilo from a darkness or void, and the emergence of the
gods and forces of nature. Tolkien's unique approach to creation ex nihilo makes
comparisons difficult.




The Epic of Creation, a Babylonian (or, Akkadian; the first refers to geographical
location, the second to language) epic with some creation content in common with
The Epic of Gilgamesh, has the unique perspective that mortal men were created
as slaves in order to do the manual labor of the gods. (See the beginning of tablet
6.) This is a particularly low opinion of the worth of human life, which is not
unusual in the ancient world.
Hesiod's creation story, Theogony, does not mention mortals much at all. The
concern is with how the gods were created. Characteristic of Greek mythology,
there is a lot of sex and violence. (Tempering the lack of emphasis on mankind is
the fact that we do not, of course, know if the preserved manuscript is even the
complete story, or why it was written. Perhaps there was a sequel that has been
lost to Theogony, which literally means the generation or creation of the gods,
which discusses the creation of mankind.)
Other Greek creation myths exist. Robert Graves' book The Greek Myths
summarizes these (and is an excellent resource for someone who doesn't have
access to an extensive classical library, since Graves cites many obscure sources
not available easily at bookstores in English translation; even for those who do,
Graves has done a tremendous amount of research in organizing far-flung source
material). In these, man has a particularly low place, and human life is not of any
particular value. (See "The Five Stages Of Man", section 5 in Graves, in which
the only mortals of worth were sired by the gods.) None of these myths elevates
mankind.
From these early myths, Latin writers such as Ovid were able to pick and choose.
In fact, Ovid is influenced by the Babylonian Gilgamesh (see Metamorphoses,
9



book 1; the flood is recounted circa line 262). Ovid's Metamorphoses was a
synthesis of existing mythology, and an attempt (much like Graves') to collect, if
not harmonize, the mythological corpus in one book; it was not an attempt to
break new ground.
The Poetic Edda contains a creation myth which must have been well-known to
Tolkien. In Voluspa, the Seeress' Prophecy, mankind is created in paragraphs 17
and 18. Ash (sometimes "Ask") and Embla are similar to the Biblical Adam and
Eve, the first of mankind, given breath by Odin. The significant difference
between this account of Ash and Embla (who are said to be pieces of driftwood)
and the Biblical creation story is that the physical, material world is not sanctified
by Odin the way the dirt from which Adam is made was by God. While the Poetic
Edda has a more elevated view of mankind than other creation myths, the spirit of
mankind has been elevated, but the material from which man was created has not
been. Along with this, note that the creation of mankind is not, as it is in other
creation epics, a one-time event: the Norse believed time was an endless cycle of
Ragnarok (the total destruction of everything in a battle of the gods) and
recreation. Tolkien does not use this idea of cyclical time in his mythology. (Also,
readers may want to contrast the creation of mankind from driftwood with the
way the dwarves are created in The Silmarillion.)
The Kalevala's creation story begins with a bard singing a song about creation.
Tolkien must have seized upon this and made the leap to having the gods
themselves sing creation into being.
The Bible's creation story has a singular difference from the others: while the
others look at what is, and attempt to explain creation based entirely on the
current state of human life, the Bible explains what should have been and how the
current state came to be. This difference is critical because Tolkien absorbed it
into his own creation myth.
Other "Northern" creation myths, and the creation myths of other cultures, are beyond the
scope of this article. Of the myths listed here, Tolkien was most familiar with and
influenced by the Biblical account, the Kalevala, and the Poetic Edda. He would have
some familiarity with Ovid and Hesiod (if nothing else from the Classical part of his
education), but the Classics were not his area of expertise. I do not believe we know if he
had any familiarity with Babylonian myths, which were not available in mass-market
paperbacks as they were today: they were the province of scholars when Tolkien
flourished, and far outside his realm of study.
The elves have a creation epic called the Ainulindale. This myth is like and unlike any
other creation myth.
The parallels between the Biblical creation account and Tolkien's are important. In the
Bible, God spoke, and creation occurred. In Tolkien's account, Eru sang and the creation
happened. Tolkien then has the gods which Eru created singing their own parts, and uses
musical harmony as an analogy of all creation being in harmony with God. Melkor, who
is analogous with Lucifer, tries to elevate himself in this musical harmony, yet can't
transcend the music that Eru created. Beyond the gods, the created beings (first elves, and
10
then men) also have speech as their defining characteristic. Elves call themselves
"quendi", which essentially means those who can speak. In the published Silmarillion, the
most important passage is found in chapter 3, "Of the Coming of the Elves": the elves
"began to make speech and to give names to all things that they perceived. Themselves
they named the Quendi, signifying those that speak with voices". Eru created both the
gods and mortals.
Note 1: Tolkien was either slow to finish this idea of identification by speech, or he
considered it so obvious that he did not need to write it down. This idea of the elves
naming themselves after their speech is not present in The Book of Lost Tales, where the
origin of elves is not discussed, nor is it present in the "Etymologies" (found in The Lost
Road and other Writings, the fifth volume of the History of Middle-Earth). The
"Etymologies" are simply notes Tolkien made for himself, and were never intended for
publication, and they are extremely difficult. The entries are not a lexicon of elvish.
There are no entries under the initial letter Q. "Quendi" is found s.v. "KWEN(ED)-", a
word stem that became the Quenya word "quendi". This entry merely suggests the word
means "elf" without elaboration. Even in the later essay, "Quendi and Eldar" (found in
War of the Jewels, volume 11), Tolkien quite curiously does not press the etymology of
the word *KWENE (the asterisk is a philological notation for a word which is not
recorded, but speculated to have existed) to speech. Other than the brief passage in
chapter 3, Tolkien never elaborated on the aspect of speech.
Note 2: The fact that elves are both mortal (they can die) and immortal (they do not die
from the ageing process) presents a challenge in the discussion of "mortals" in their
relationship to the gods. In fact, Tolkien was haunted until the end of his life with a need
to reconcile these two aspects of elves, and he was never able to. He had introduced the
concept that elves could be reincarnated (not in the sense of eastern philosophy, but
literally: their spirits could be given mortal bodies again), but was never able to fully
work out how this system worked. (Perhaps it is worth a note that "reincarnate" is one of
the precious few Latin terms Tolkien brought into his mythology, when he was
particularly careful to use modern English words of Anglo-Saxon origin; and it is one of
the few concepts he was not able to full integrate into is vision of Middle-Earth.)
The Biblical account of the creation of mortals also involves speech. Genesis 2:7 says:
"the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." (NIV) A literal translation
of the Jewish Chumash (the first five books of Moses), in the first book called Bereshit
(i.e. Genesis), says: "God breathed into the nostrils of man, and man became another
speaking spirit." This translation highlights exactly what Tolkien expresses in his own
creation myth. Speech, the ability to use language to express oneself, is what sets apart
mortals from other forms of life like animals and plants. Speech is what makes us like
God (in the Bible), or like the gods (in Tolkien's version). Genesis 2:19 says: "Now the
LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the
air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man
called each living creature, that was its name." God was not giving Adam busy work, but
showing him how to think abstractly, a gift given to the man (created in the image of
11
God), and not any other living creature could. By giving names to objects, Adam learned
how to create abstract symbols (words) that stood for concrete objects, and how to reason
abstractly.
Note: al-Qur'an (the Koran) says God "taught Adam the names of all things" (Dawood's
translation, see circa Surah 2:30), which does not say the same thing. Here Adam is a
"Deputy" of Allah, which harkens back to the Babylonian creation stories in which
mankind was the slave of the gods.
From the survey of other creation myths, the Biblical creation story stands out because
mortals are created for a higher purpose by a creator who loves them. Tolkien uses his
poetic license to cast the creation in music, making it even more beautiful and lush.
Tolkien saw in mankind not an animal which had evolved some clever technique of
speech, but a higher kind of life which was endowed by the creator with the ability to
think abstractly, and to create words which were precise symbols that represented ideas.
The word is the key to storing information inside the mind in symbolic form.
Pictographic writing systems topple under their own weight: One picture per idea is not
compact enough for the human mind to absorb; certainly, it is an abstraction, but one
which is not efficient. The human mind works better with layers of complexity. A person
who internalizes an alphabet which represents sounds, and then arranges those sounds
into words, creates a much more efficient and compact way to represent abstract
information. Tolkien as a philologist would appreciate this.
To understand The Silmarillion, the reader must first understand the basis of Tolkien's
creation myth and the fall of created beings. When Melkor added disharmony into the
world, something went wrong, and a flaw was entered into creation. Thus the creation has
flaws, and as The Silmarillion shows, these flaws and the work of Melkor who becomes
Morgoth have horrific implications for the mortals of Middle-Earth. Yet: Consistent with
the Christian doctrine of salvation, the disharmony is shown to be part of Eru's greater
plan, and something he anticipated and prepared for from before the music began. Thus
the disharmony can be brought back into harmony.
NB: What our English Bibles translate as "salvation", which has come to mean "salvation
from death and judgment which leads to eternal life", is the Greek word soteria, which
has a much larger meaning in its scope than the English term which has become a
theological jargon word over the centuries. Soteria has the connotation of being whole
and complete, in every aspect of one's life. This Greek word is used in the Septuagint (the
Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Old Testament) to represent the
Hebrew word shalom, which defies translation. It is translated peace, prosperity,
wholeness, and many other terms. Shalom is true salvation, and often defined as "nothing
missing, nothing broken". This definition of salvation is important to remember when
tracing the theme of salvation in Tolkien's work, since he does not have a clearly
formulated "life after death" belief in the Middle-Earth subcreation. When Tolkien deals
with the theme of salvation he is dealing with wholeness and completeness. (Cf. the
12
characters of Frodo and Eowyn in Lord of the Rings. Neither is "saved" in the theological
sense, but both are eventually made whole.)
Tolkien has a Catholic world view in the matter of a flawed and fallen world. He
presupposes this world view in every word he writes, from the most harmless children's
story to his most epic mythology. The world has largely adopted a positivistic belief, that
people are basically good and if they only can eliminate some of the old beliefs which
hold them back, they can achieve utopia on earth. While this is expressed in countless
philosophies, from evolutionary rationalism to New Age eastern philosophies, and even
some pseudo-Christian beliefs, the history of mankind defies and flouts it. Mankind is
fallen, and the only way to believe to the contrary is to throw out all of human history.
Tolkien's work, although set in a fantasy world, seems real because he takes the world for
what it is instead of trying to make it what it is not. Tolkien believed the Biblical world
view, which explains how the world should be, and also how it is now.
Valaquenta: The Gods of Middle-Earth
Valaquenta: This short section is a resume of the gods. This is such a short, succinct
summary that little needs to be said about it, other than that it is a good reference for later
in the book when gods tend to pop up out of nowhere.
Of note in regards to Lord of the Rings is a brief mention of Olorin. When Frodo and Sam
talk with Faramir (in book 4, chapter 5, "The Window on the West"), they learn that
Faramir has met Gandalf on the wizard's trips to Gondor's archives (trips which Gandalf
mentions at the Council of Elrond). Faramir remembered many names of Gandalf,
including both Mithrandir (a Sindarin name used in the current days in Middle-Earth) and
Olorin (a Quenya name). (Note also that the text says the name Gandalf itself was used
"in the North", perhaps as an acknowledgement that the name is not from Middle-Earth at
all, but from the Norse Eddic legends.)
Why would Gandalf tell Faramir (of all people!) his Quenya name, when to Faramir
Sindarin elvish would be unusual, and Quenya all but unknown? The Numenoreans
originally took Quenya names, but their rebellion was marked (characteristically of
Tolkien) by the adoption of names in their own language. When Numenor was drowned,
men who did not participate in the evil such as Elendil escaped to Middle-Earth where
they took Sindarin names. They mixed with the remnants of the Noldor from Beleriand
who still lived in Middle-Earth, such as Gil-Galad. These refugees from Beleriand spoke
Sindarin, largely, and rarely used their ancient mother tongue of Quenya. (We must
remember here that Gandalf is perhaps the wisest living being on Middle-Earth, and he
does not let things slip, no matter how absent-minded he might want people to think he is
on occasion. Gandalf knew the character of Faramir, and his love of learning and lore. He
had to know Faramir would remember such a curious list of names. If this list were
merely incidental and unimportant, why would it contain two elvish names?)
Most of the refugees from Numenor, who became the rules of Arnor and Gondor, tended
to take Sindarin names. One major exception to this is the name "Aragorn", which is a
13
caution, because Tolkien someplace explicitly denies that the name is made up of "ar-"
royal and "-gorn" tree, even though Aragorn's destiny is to find the sapling of the White
Tree and replant it in Minas Tirith. Tolkien has created quite realistic languages which
have exceptions, cognates of inexact meaning (as any English speaker who studies
Romance language learns), and the like. We have insufficient evidence for speculation in
any number of cases. (I believe this passage about Aragorn is in a letter, but I can't
remember.) Faramir would likely be in the same situation as a reader of Lord of the
Rings, having great difficulty telling apart Quenya and Sindarin names.
We are never told the exact meaning of Olorin, but it seems to be related to Lorien, where
Olorin is said to have lived. (That is, the Lorien in Valar in The Silmarillion, not
Galadriel's realm.) See "Etymologies" s.v. LOS-, where the Quenya word olor is
referenced.
What has this abstruse discussion of names and languages to do with Gandalf? First of
all, these sorts of points were what Tolkien loved. That any readable fiction came from
him at all is amazing, because these sorts of tangents and preoccupations absorbed him.
Much of the unpublished writing in The History Of Middle-Earth is of this nature: dense
philological jargon about the meaning and origin of words, how they shifted in different
languages, and who spoke what language when. (Those who do not similarly love not
only words, but made-up words in an invented language, will find these passages dull and
incomprehensible.) This was Tolkien's lifeblood and obsession. What he wrote that
actually was published in his lifetime seems somewhat secondary to this.
Second of all, as tempting as it is to say: Gandalf (Lord of the Rings) = Olorin
(The Silmarillion), we can't. In one late, unfinished scrap of paper (discussed in
Unfinished Tales), Tolkien makes this equation, but it is not a finished writing and can't
be taken as the final word. Tolkien himself seemed to spend a lot of time trying to figure
out who the Istari were, after the publication of Lord of the Rings, and what he wrote is
incomplete and sometimes contradictory. Quite simply, Gandalf and the other wizards
had appeared in Tolkien's writing first, and he spent the rest of his life trying to explain
them. Tolkien himself never fully knew who the Istari were. Yet the clues he left behind
can't be ignored. These sorts of puzzles, which have pieces that can almost but not quite
be made to fit, are what The Silmarillion is made of.
Quenta Silmarillion: The Family Jewels
The Kalevala contains something called a Sampo, which is never fully explained. It is
stolen. It is lost. From this, Tolkien created the idea of a Silmaril, a jewel. Three of these
were forged by the crafty smith Feanor, and contained the light of the Two Trees
(precursors of the Sun and Moon). When the trees are defiled, and the Silmarils stolen by
Morgoth (the embodiment of evil), these jewels are so valuable that centuries of warfare
and destruction follow.
The history of the Silmarils, the family jewels of Feanor and his sons, make up what is
properly "The Silmarillion" or Quenta Silmarillion. This legendarium contains the stories
14
of the elves concerning the deeds undertaken by those who would recapture the jewels
from Morgoth. The events concern the sons of Feanor and their oath, as well as those
caught up in the vast web this war weaves over the entirety of Middle-Earth. Unlike the
One Ring of Lord of the Rings, the Silmarils are not in themselves objects of power. They
are simply pretty baubles that bring out the worst flaws of character.
And Quenta Silmarillion can be difficult to approach, because it seems like a whole lot of
nothing happens before the first real narrative story begins in chapter 19, "On Beren and
Luthien". I am reminded of an education in mathematics: students must learn algebra
before they can go on to higher math such as calculus which has real-world applications,
but at the time algebra seems pointless and good for nothing but busy work. A reader of
The Silmarillion must digest the story up to chapter 19 for the book to make much sense.
The narrative stories themselves can be read independent of this background, but they
lose most of their impact on both the micro and macro levels. For example, in "On Beren
and Luthien", the reader must understand elvish history to appreciate the story at both the
micro-level (such as the exchange between Beren and Curufin and Celegorm) and the
macro-level (why the outcome of a grey elf like Thingol possessing a Silmaril is
generally a bad idea). Yet when the reader begins "Of Beleriand And Its Realms", the
point of this history lesson seems remote, at best. As the reader progresses through the
material in these early chapters, facts must be remembered, even though the reader has no
way to know in advance which facts are going to be important and which are not. The
sheer bulk of detail can make retention of everything difficult. The only solution is
multiple readings. The reader may wish to skim the early material before chapter 19, then
read the stories, and then go back and read the introductory material, and then re-read the
narrative stories.
These legends and stories have as a given the war of the jewels. Certainly, almost all of
the major characters caught up in the war, other than Earendil and Elwing, come to no
good end. The war of the jewels destroys the elvish kingdoms of Middle-Earth one by
one until the elves are driven towards the sea and about to be utterly destroyed. Yet what
point is Tolkien trying to make by showing this war? Possibly, the point is as simple as
the fact that mortals go to war first and find reasons later: Tolkien certainly lived through
this in 1914, when a world war began that at the time (and even now through the lens of
history) had no real reason other than people liked to fight.
Feanor and his Silmarils are a struggle to understand: if Feanor hated Melkor/Morgoth
(who plays the role of the Biblical Lucifer, or Satan, in the story) and was not influenced
by him in the forging of the jewels, and if Melkor was the source of the evil taint in
Valinor and Middle-Earth, then from whence came the taint on the lives of Feanor and
his sons, and the curse upon the jewels? How did the fall of Feanor that led to the
kinslaying come to pass? Is Feanor evil, and if so, how did he become that way? The
original music of creation had disharmony in it courtesy of Melkor, and those mortals
which were created must, themselves, have an innate and latent thread of discord in them.
Feanor already had the makings of the fall in himself. The fall did not come from Melkor.
Melkor's own intervention to steal the jewels and define the trees simply brought out the
taint more quickly. Feanor, and each elf in turn, made a decision to participate in the
15
kinslaying and give in to their fallen nature. Even the elves who did not made a decision
to be kinslayers but who decided to leave Valinor also bring about their own fall. Thus, in
the same way the decision to taste the forbidden fruit led to expulsion from the garden,
did the elves' decision to abandon Valinor to chase after Melkor cause their own fall. By
chasing after greed in the darkness, the elves fell from the light. And, their taint spread as
they came into contact with other elves, and men, and drew them into the widening web
of war. (Men do not come into these stories much at all. Their own fall, and death, are not
well understood by the elves through whose eyes these stories are filtered. Morgoth finds
them easy to corrupt, but we do not know why. We also do not know why some men are
noble.)
The Question Of Jewelry As A Motive
The central theme of The Silmarillion concerns Morgoth stealing Feanor's family jewels
and the quest by his sons to get them back. Thousands upon thousands of years of tragedy
are spent over jewelry.
Some people are drawn to possessing jewelry. These people understand mind's grip on
the possession of jewelry, as well as the desire for the recovery of valuables at all cost.
Others, such as myself, have no interest in jewelry (I've never owned any in my life), and
think it is a silly motive. Why would anyone spill blood over some rocks? I would be
unable to tell the difference between Silmarils and zirconium fakes.
The reader must, in order to suspend disbelief and allow the story to unfold within its
own parameters, allow that thousands of elves over thousands of years would spill their
blood to get jewelry back. Even those who understand this burning desire must, at some
point, eventually wonder when the elves should call the whole thing off and let Morgoth
keep the jewelry. After all, if the function of the tainted Silmarils is to make life
miserable for those who want to possess them, why wouldn't the elves simply leave them
with Morgoth, who is already corrupt?
The One Ring of Lord of the Rings is an object of intrinsic power, although there is room
for debate concerning just what the nature of that power is. (Since, after all, we never see
the One Ring used in any serious way during the story for world domination, and Sauron
loses everything both when he has the One Ring and without it.) With the Silmarils, there
is no doubt at all: the jewels themselves have no intrinsic power. They are not the source
of Morgoth's power, and he doesn't gain power by possessing them.
The jewels are merely objects which bring out what is already in the heart of the Maiar,
elf, dwarf, human, or anyone else who lusts after them. The Silmarils are a symbol of that
quality which is inside fallen mankind which produces greed, selfishness, selfdestruction, bad decisions, and plain evil. In themselves, they are not important. But what
they stand for is a universal quality of the human experience. Frank Herbert, in Dune,
used his addictive spice as a symbol, and explicitly equated it to oil in our modern world.
He also used water as a symbol on the desert planet itself (cf. Jakarutu and the water
16
stealers in one of the sequels). In our world, we have such mirrors, although they aren't
legendary and are not pretty: Oil. Gold. Money. Land. Tolkien, in elevating and
beautifying that which is lusted over, creates a more extreme contrast with the darkness
in the soul. Tolkien may have been writing fantasy, but his works speak to us because
they show us what lurks in the human heart.
Even those uninterested in the family jewels are sucked into the downfall of MiddleEarth. J.R.R. Tolkien, as much as (or moreso) than any theologian, had a deeply
internalized understanding of the true Biblical Christian moral philosophy. His ability to
embed the truth of his understanding into his fiction may very well be his greatest genius.
Tolkien doesn't preach, he merely tells a story. Within the story, every component of the
Christian faith appears, without allegory, preaching, or overt moralizing. People will read
Tolkien and absorb this moral philosophy who would never take the "Christian faith"
seriously. Tolkien simply takes as given the basic Christian premise of a fallen world, and
shows how this morality plays out in the lives of his characters. He does not moralize. He
does not show that good things happen to good characters, and bad things happen to bad
characters (who don't follow the rules). In fact, "the rules" do not exist: there is no
codified "law and prophets" in Tolkien's subcreation. He shows fallen man, grace, and
redemption without legalism of any sort. Much Christian "theology" is inane and
simplistic, and therefore is unappealing to people who are in touch with the realities of
the world. Starting with Job (who encountered catastrophe in a fallen world, and was
"comforted" by simple moralistic philosophies by his peers), and the oversimplification
of life continues to this present day. The basic message of the moralist is: If you obey the
rules, good things happen to you; if you disobey the rules, bad things happen. Moralists
turn this around to pass judgment: if bad things happen to you, you disobeyed the rules
and need to repent before God; if good things happen to you, you kept the rules and God
loves you. This is a pattern seen in a wide swath of pseudo-Christian teaching. What "the
rules" are in any given context depends on the philosophy: it can be anything from oldfashioned Southern Baptist legalism (don't play cards, women can't wear pants) to
modern health-and-wealth television preachers (if you're sick, you need to repent). Job
could identify with almost any of them, and the same basic easy answers for the hard
questions of life have been circulating since Job's time. Tolkien does not seem to believe
this, and doesn't let this infect his fiction. Indeed, Tolkien's "fiction" seems more real than
many other real-world messages simply because it is so true to reality and is not
simplistic. He always avoids easy or facile answers.
Tolkien realistically shows that even "good" characters are not exempt from the
consequences from a fallen world. The entire world is fallen, and even morally good
people are caught up in this fallen nature and things don't work out, and the intervention
of Providence is needed at certain points. (Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings during the
Second World War: the Christian world, "Christendom", as we know it may have ceased
to exist but for the weather on D-Day which helped the invasion of France. Was this
simply chance?)
Key Elvish Relationships To Remember
17
Elvish relationships between families and branches of families make up a huge part of the
stories. There are two main distinctions between elves to remember: First is that some
elves went west and saw the light of the trees, and some didn't. Second is that some of the
ones who went west participated in the kinslaying and some did not. Besides these two
major fault lines of elvish identity, most other distinctions are minor in comparison. Time
in early elf history is marked by two epochs: the light of the two trees, and the sun and
the moon. Light originally came from two trees, which were defiled by Morgoth when he
stole the Silmarils. After that, the gods of the story created the sun and the moon. The
elves who went to live with the gods, and who saw the light of the two trees, are the high
elves. Those who did not are the grey elves who stayed in Middle-Earth and never
crossed to see the trees.
The Silmarils were forged by Feanor, and then stolen by Morgoth. Feanor then began a
pursuit of Morgoth. The pivotal plot point at the beginning of "Quenta Silmarillion" is the
kinslaying, when Feanor and his sons decide to slaughter the Teleri elves and steal their
ships to go to Middle-Earth. This creates a rift among elves which never heals. Those
who participated in the kinslaying (the clan of Feanor) are forever estranged, to an extent,
from the other Noldor.
Those who did not participate with Feanor, the houses of Fingolfin (Turgon, Fingon, etc)
and Finarfin (Finrod, Galadriel, etc) did not cross to Middle-Earth in ships, but traveled
over a northern land-bridge. The losses suffered along this harsh journey helped fuel the
estrangement.
In Middle-Earth, the distinction is between the grey elves (the Sindarin) natives and the
Noldor who arrived from Valinor. The reader must constantly remember who belongs to
which group. The primary grey elves of note are Thingol and his folk in Doriath.
At all times, the reader must remember which elves are Noldor, and which among the
Noldor participated in the kinslaying, and which are grey elves. Most of the purely elvish
parts of the stories hinge on some conflict between these three camps. Also note that the
Noldor are "high" elves who speak Quenya. The grey elves speak Sindarin. The Noldor
learn and use Sindarin as well.
The Front Lines: Elves and Morgoth
After their pursuit of Morgoth, the Noldor settled in Middle-Earth. The war for the family
jewels takes on a strong similarity to World War I, the very setting in which Tolkien first
imagined the story. For vast stretches of time, the two sides are at an uneasy stalemate
with the sons of Feanor facing Morgoth across a no-man's land. Into the stalemate comes
several central pitched battles. (Although the temptation is great to draw parallels with
Tolkien's battles and his World War I experience, the very nature of warfare in World
War I has strong parallels to Medieval siege warfare. Tolkien, by setting his work in a
low-technology environment may simply have inherited conditions similar to World War
I without consciously trying to.)
18
The Noldor were not strong enough to defeat Morgoth. But Morgoth was not powerful
enough in Middle-Earth to defeat the league of the Noldor surrounding him. Stalemate.
Add gunpowder, and the situation would have been the Western Front. As it was, Tolkien
added a no-man's land around both Mordor (in Lord of the Rings) and Angbad (in The
Silmarillion), and in both stories, during the main narrative action, there is largely a
deadlock between the two main military powers which checks their main forces. Only
towards the end of both stories is the full might of either side unleashed. In both The
Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings, the emphasis is on psychology (what goes on inside
individual's minds) instead of deeds. This makes the works distinctive products of the
twentieth century. In Lord of the Rings, the trench line is drawn between Gondor and
Mordor, and the might of both forces is locked in a stalemate. The decisions of Theoden,
Saruman, Denethor, Aragorn, and Frodo determine the outcome, and those decisions are
largely made before pitched battle is joined. Similarly, in The Silmarillion, few pitched
battles are fought. Decisions, greed, fate, and other matters conspire to cause rotting and
corruption within the various strongholds of the elves. The opposing forces of "evil"
mostly sit back and wait while Tolkien paints moral studies of fallen people.
Tolkien brings a complex concept of good and evil to The Silmarillion. His stories mainly
study motives: how do situations that present themselves cause fallen people to make
decisions? Why is Thingol undone by a Silmaril, but Elwing heroic with one? Is Turgon
truly a noble and heroic figure, who largely escapes the taint of greed and misfortune
which infects the elves, because he has committed himself to inaction and does almost
nothing? Characters are almost always a study in how different personalities react in a
fallen world, from the twisted and poisoned hearts of Caranthir and Curufin to the noble
and pure heart of Earendil. Tragic characters, in the true sense of the word, have a
character flaw which leads to their undoing. All who come to tragic ends in The
Silmarillion typically have a flaw. Some have sworn a rash oath, some are greedy, and
some are just unwise.
Yet, The Silmarillion (much more so than Lord of the Rings) introduces fate. Why is
Hurin hapless and pathetic? Not to mention Turin. Can we say these men brought tragedy
on themselves through their own actions? No: Tolkien seems to suggest that in many
cases tragedy is merely the price paid for living in a fallen world, and is not the direct
result of individual decisions.
Key Battles
Time in The Silmarillion is not measured as much by a calendar as it is in connection
with epoch-marking battles. These are usually referred to by their long elvish names,
which makes keeping them straight a challenge when the names pop up at random as part
of a narrative.

The unnamed first battle of Beleriand. After Morgoth fled Valinor, but before
the arrival of the Noldor, the Sindarin elves led a peaceful and scattered existence.
Morgoth's orcs swarmed down from Thangorodrim and caught the unprepared
19





Sindarin elves by surprise. The elves fought off the orcs, but with great loss of
life. This led to the fastness of the Girdle of Melian, for protection.
The Second Battle: Dagor-nuin-Giliath: Battle-Under-Stars. When the Noldor
arrived in Middle-Earth, Morgoth launched a blitzkrieg against the Noldor before
they could establish themselves. Caught by surprise, the Noldor fought valiantly
and routed Morgoth's army. (The name of this battle comes from the fact that it
occurred after the Two Trees died, and before the Sun and Moon arose, hence the
only light was that of the stars.) Feanor died after this battle, and his sons swore
their oath.
The Third Battle: Dagor Aglareb: the Glorious Battle. The Noldor push
Morgoth back to the stronghold of Thangorodrim, at Angbad, to establish the
trench-like stalemate that would obtain for the rest of the time until the Great
Battle. Both sides were checked: the Noldor couldn't crack Thangorodrim, and
Morgoth was not strong enough yet to break the league which encircled him.
The Fourth Battle: Dagor Bragollach: the Battle Of Sudden Flame. The
leaguer of Noldor around Angband was broken by dragons and balrogs (suggested
by flame-throwers and tanks?). The elves were put on the defensive and retreated
to their strongholds: the siege became reversed, but still neither side could prevail.
The Fifth Battle: Nirnaeth Arnoediad, the Battle Of Unnumbered Tears.
Perhaps best described as the Battle of the Somme for the elves: the might of the
elves broke upon Morgoth's host, and was itself broken. Maedhros son of Feanor
(whose character flaw seems to be hot-headed revenge more than greed) figured
that if Beren could slip in and steal a Silmaril out from under Morgoth, then
Morgoth must have exploitable weaknesses in his defenses. Few would join him,
but with the help of the Dwarves, Maedhros launched an attack, which was to be
complemented by a flanking maneuver by Fingon from the west once Morgoth's
army was engaged with Maedhros. Morgoth saw this and launched a pre-emptive
strike to the west, and also engaged Maedhros. Even with the reinforcements of
Turgon, who brought an army out of Gondolin, the tide of Morgoth's assault could
not be turned. The battle proved to be a disaster. Turgon retreated, leaving the rest
of the Noldor to face their defeat, but Hurin was captured: a man who knew the
location of Gondolin.
The Sixth Battle: The Great Battle. At the point when Morgoth looked to be
transcendent, and the last holdouts among the Noldorin refugees from their former
strongholds in danger of perishing, Earendil and Elwing did what anyone in a true
legend would do: pulled a deux ex machina. The Great Battle involved the host of
Valinor coming to put an end to Morgoth, and was such an event that the
continent of Beleriand was destroyed. (The Blue Mountains on Lord of the Rings's
map at the very western edge of the continent are the same Blue Mountains, Ered
Luin, at the easternmost edge of The Silmarillion's map.)
What the battles have in common is that they result in an almost constant stalemate until
the very end when the elves are put on the defensive. As the elves win or lose, it is
always at a great cost. Morgoth's position is interesting, since he rarely attacks, but
creates strong defenses for himself. Morgoth is similar to the Germans in World War I,
who were content to make heavy defenses and sit behind them as their enemies made the
20
attacks. At first, Morgoth is spread too thin: he simply doesn't have enough chattel to
consolidate his gains and wipe out the elves, and he is personally powerful but not
omnipresent: he can't chase elves around the continent. So he digs in and arms himself.
The analogy with the First World War can be pressed: only at the fourth battle, Morgoth's
Verdun, did Morgoth begin a true all-out war of attrition, sending his own forces against
the elves regardless of the cost. In the other battles, Morgoth is content to be defensive
unless he clearly has the upper hand. Eventually, the elves simply lose the war of
attrition. The centuries of warfare, treachery, internecine elvish fighting, and the
incredibly slow birth rate among elves takes its toll while Morgoth patiently waits.
Stories Of Men and Elves: The Misery Of Greed And
Fate
The conceptual basis underlying The Silmarillion is the age-old idea of mortals being
caught up into the land of Fairie. Tolkien's original three stories were those of Turin,
Beren, and Tuor. These formed the cornerstone of his legendarium. These three men had
their fates locked up with the elves, and are caught up in the vast canvas of the larger War
of the Jewels. Each of the three mortal stories are discussed in separate sections to follow.
In these sections, I am not trying to create a synopsis of the stories (each of which is short
in its version included in The Silmarillion), but to set them in the larger picture of what
Tolkien tried to achieve by them. They have in common a peculiar theme which blends
corruption and fate. Tolkien uses the three stories to reveal something about human
nature. He does so in the context of elves and a fantasy world, but these props are used to
bring out aspects of human nature that can equally well be brought out in the "real"
world.
The Anglo-Saxon idea of a weird or wyrd (a noun meaning someone's fate) is also a
theme of the stories: each person has a doom, a fate, a destiny (in the original definition
of the word). No matter what a person such as Turin does, he will fulfill his fate. (I could
easily write an entire chapter on this, and it may warrant that level of detail.)
NB: The word fate is preferred to destiny, because the latter word has changed its
meaning: originally, one's destiny was inevitable succession of events in someone's life
dictated by a supernatural power, and was synonymous with fate; however, pop
psychology has taken over the word and changed its meaning to the path along which one
directs oneself to achieve one's personal goals in life.
The Story Of Hurin and Turin
The stories of Hurin and his son Turin are both studies of lives which are out of control:
they unravel in an unstoppable progression to total disaster without any way to stop what
is happening. Both, on the balance, make "good" decisions, in the sense that they seem to
be making the best decisions they can at certain critical points of their lives. They are not
perfect, but attempt to be honorable. They are not tragic characters: they seem to possess
no innate character flaws which cause their own tragic ends. Instead, they are pathetic:
21
they are both victims of circumstances beyond their control. No matter what they do,
their decisions simply hasten their doom.
Hurin has strong parallels with Frodo from Lord of the Rings in the sense that his life is a
study of how the influence of enemy can be subtle and slow to develop, and how even a
character with pure motives can be ruined by the influence of evil. Frodo and Hurin never
are quite broken, in the sense that they quit on their resolution to be good, but both suffer
psychological and physical damage. Unlike Frodo, who is sent to the West after his
encounter with the enemy, Hurin must continue to live his life in Middle-Earth. While he
is trying to put his life back together, he unwittingly leads to the destruction of two
kingdoms (Gondolin and Doriath).
Tolkien uses Hurin to raise questions rather than answer them: Can anyone truly be
innocent and above evil and not be affected by it? Is rehabilitation possible? Can
someone who has been in war and reduced to the level of subsistence in mud and
inhuman conditions for years ever truly integrate back into society? Can someone who is
good be used for evil without even conscious knowledge? These questions are at the core
of what it means to be human, and framing them in a fantasy world merely gives them a
fresh angle.
Many of Tolkien's characters are anti-religious, in the sense that they repudiate the
simplistic religious notion that all people who are good have good things happen to them,
and all bad people who act in bad ways have bad things happen to them. This teaching is
not something that modern televangelists invented. It has been around as long as there
has been religious thought (cf. the Judeao-Christian book of Job, or ancient far eastern
philosophy in general). Tolkien, if nothing else, appreciated the true depth of the
Christian message of innate depravity and a world under the dominion of evil. Tolkien
takes great pains to build Hurin up slowly as a human of exceptional worth, before
showing his eventual end. (Note especially that Tolkien was Roman Catholic in his
religious affiliation, but his writings display a strong dislike for institutionalized religion
and dogma. Tolkien seems more drawn to mystical Catholicism. The full implications of
this fact will be saved for a future article.)
The true genius of Tolkien's writing is that he refused to see the world as black and white.
The driving force of Lord of the Rings, after all, is Gandalf the Grey, who wends the path
between the extremes of black (pure selfishness, embodied in Sauron) and white (pure
pragmatism, embodied in Saruman). Tolkien was Gandalf in that sense: someone who
refused to settle for easy, pat answers and who always dove deeper. Tolkien's personality
led him to be a brilliant philologist for the same reason: he was never comfortable taking
the easy way out in the speculation of the meaning of unknown words. He always looked
for something deeper.
Through many of his characters, Tolkien also repudiates the non-religious positivistic,
and simplistic, message of the "self-help" and popular psychology world. This message
has always been around, even if Tolkien did not know it in the same form that we know it
today with its slickly packaged infomercials. The self-help people say that anyone can do
22
anything if they just try harder and do more. While this sounds good, and sells a lot of
product, the reverse implication of the message is stark: Any failure is your own fault
because you weren't good enough. (Again, this self-help message, while not being
religious per se still comes almost directly out of the far eastern philosophical tradition
that has given us the idea of karma.) Perhaps Turin is the classic example to the contrary
of self-help: he did everything right, and his life still fell apart into tragedy.
Turin's name is a byword for sorrow in The Silmarillion and in all of Tolkien's writings.
(The treatment of Turin in The Silmarillion is augmented by a longer piece in Unfinshed
Tales, which warrants inclusion in that book by being unfinished. Tolkien later in life
returned to some of the philosophical questions raised by the story he had devised, but
never completely resolved them.)
Remember that Turin's story is set in the dark time after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears,
in which small, isolated kingdoms tried to hold out in the face of relentless pressure from
the enemy. Travel was difficult, open stretches of land were lawless, and roving bands of
quasi-military fighters showed wildly varying degrees of motives in their dealings with
others. Turin had a turbulent youth, having left his family to be raised in the court of
Thingol. He got in trouble early, which happens to many people, but with the help of his
friend Beleg, turned his life around and began to be a champion of good. His misfortune
came when he helped to defend Nargothrond, which was finally sacked. He fell under the
dragon-curse, and one disaster happened after another until he finally killed himself.
Perhaps in Turin's story, more than any other, Tolkien drew directly from the Kalevala.
The influence comes from Kullervo, Kalervo's son, who in a chapter entitled "Brother
and Sister", finds a woman, attempts to seduce her, is rejected, and rapes the woman.
Only then does Kullervo find out that the woman is a daughter of Kalervo, and that he
has raped his own sister. The woman then kills herself. Kullervo then has a short
soliloquy in which he laments he would be better off had he not been born. He then
confesses to his mother, who suggests he goes into hiding. Thus Kullervo does, saying "I
will go before doom's face".
Tolkien took the germ of a story and elevated it. Turin is not a brutal rapist, but an
honorable man. While he becomes an outlaw, it is only for a youthful mistake (easily
forgiven), not the result of a reprobate character. Again, Tolkien is being a psychologist,
studying how decisions shape destiny. What if? What if? What if? These stories read as if
Tolkien was pounding himself with that question. Which were the bad decisions? How
could characters have known what they were doing would affect their lives?
The evil sword Anglachel is similar to the Ring, or at least one of the tainted minor rings.
It offers great power, but at a great price. This concept was inspired by The Saga of
Hervor and King Heidrek the Wise in which Hervor goes into a barrow to get the sword
Tyrfing from a dead viking's shade, and the sword turns out to be cursed. In Peter
Tundsall's translation, the shade says: "...this blade Tyrfing (you'd better believe) will,
girl, your offspring all destroy." A descendant of Hervor kills his brother with the cursed
sword.
23
There's an old country song that sums up the life of Turin: "If I had no bad luck, I'd have
no luck at all." But is what happened to Turin simply luck? Fate? Doom? Could his life,
and by extension, could any life, be different? How do we know, without the perfect
vision of hindsight, which decisions will be of momentous, life-changing importance, and
which will not? Anyone looking back after reading the story of Turin knows exactly what
went wrong, but as the character Turin lived out his life, how could he have ever known?
The Story Of Beren And Luthien
"I met the Luthien Tinuviel of my own personal 'romance' with her long dark hair, fair
face and starry eyes, and beautiful voice." (Tolkien writing to his son Michael, from
Letters, 332.) "... for she was (and knew she was) my Luthien ... I never called Edith
Luthien - but she was the source of the story .... In those days her hair was raven, her skin
clear, her eyes brighter than you have seen them, and she could sing - and dance."
(Tolkien writing to his son Christopher, from Letters, 340.)
Most familiar of all the legends is that of Beren and Luthien, for it echoes strongly in the
pages of Lord of the Rings. For J.R.R. Tolkien, this was the central story of his life, and
his mythological and philological dabblings are diminished when set beside it.
In short, and the tale is better and most fittingly told in Carpenter's Biography (and all
other accounts I have seen in any other book are adapted from this telling): Tolkien met
Edith Bratt while a teenager, and fell in love. His guardian at the time forbade any contact
with her until Tolkien came of age. So Tolkien waited several years. At the very stroke of
midnight when he came of age, Tolkien mailed Edith a letter asking her to marry him.
They had a short time together before Tolkien entered the First World War, where death
was an ever-present reality, leaving Edith behind. In this longing, consumation,
separation, and reunion came the spark of the mythology Tolkien built.
The story is Tolkien, all of his heart and soul, and because the tale was so sacred, it
changed not at all. Over sixty years, Tolkien reshaped and molded his subcreation, but
largely left this story alone. And, unsurprisingly, this most intimate and personal story
was one Tolkien never seemed able to finish or publish, and it was finally published only
after Tolkien's death. If the reader wants to know J.R.R. Tolkien as a person and not a
philologist, the story of Beren and Luthien sums up everything that we can know about
the man.
The theme of the story is simple: Thingol (Tolkien's guardian) asked Beren (Tolkien) to
do the impossible and get a Silmaril off of Morgoth's crown (a feat slightly less difficult
than asking a young man to break off all contact with the girl he loves for three years) to
win the hand of Luthien (Edith). Eventually, Beren dies, and Luthien chooses to die with
him. (In a minor detail, Edith died several years before Tolkien.) They are resurrected
together (Tolkien insisted that Edith convert to Catholicism, a point which almost ended
their relationship, but eventually she relented, so they both share today in the same
afterlife).
24
In this one instance, above all, I do not believe that the meaning of this story could be
separated from Tolkien's own life. This is Tolkien's own story. By reading it, we are
glimpsing his innermost soul.
Note: The plant "umbrels" plays a key role in the first meeting of Beren and Luthien.
Biographer John Garth says that Tolkien used this obscure name for the plant commonly
known in America as Queen Anne's Lace.
The Story Of Tuor And The Fall Of Gondolin
Characteristic of The Silmarillion, the earliest stories are often the least fully told. One of
the earliest glimpses Tolkien ever had of Middle-Earth was the fall of Gondolin, the
hidden city of the elves, and this epic story was the one he could never tell in full.
Tolkien always called this story the "Fall of Gondolin", but the story he wanted to tell
was too massive for him to ever complete in the degree of narrative detail promised by
the piece retitled "Of Tuor And His Coming To Gondolin" in Unfinished Tales. The story
was one Tolkien could have written, since (in accord with his style of storytelling) he saw
the end, the fall of Gondolin, first. He worked backwards to discover why Gondolin fell,
but in so doing created a story that was simply too big for him to complete in full
narrative form.
The stage is set for the fall by carefully building up the events in Middle-Earth to the
point of the story. The Sons of Feanor have been scattered. Nargothrond is a ruin. Doriath
has been ravaged by war, and then destroyed. Only the isolated, hidden kingdom of
Gondolin preserves any of the strength or glory of the greatly diminished Noldor. The
enemy is strong, and prepares to unleash all its might on this last remaining stronghold of
the Noldor. Yet Gondolin falls as much from within as from without, and the story from
the inside has two major aspects. The first major aspect is Turgon himself. Is he a great
and noble king? Or is he merely a paranoid king who will not commit himself to any
course of action? (We do not know, directly, because Tolkien never told the story on the
level of detail that would be required to glean a true character portrait of Turgon.)
Turgon, of course, has the favor of the water-god Ulmo and the kingdom remains hidden.
Compared to the other realms of Beleriand, and their rulers, Gondolin has fared well
under Turgon's rule: Turgon did not make any gods angry; is not under any overt curse;
he has been only on the extreme periphery of the greed and bad decisions of those who
wanted the Silmarils; his commitments to battle (in which the Sons of Feanor are
involved) have come only in the times of the most dire need; he has a really cute
daughter; and he has offered sanctuary to those who are trying to escape Morgoth's evil.
On the balance, Turgon is one of the most noble and respectable rulers of the elves. Yet
even the mighty Turgon could not escape the web of fate surrounding the jewels. The
unanswered question, of course, is why he can't escape.
Turgon has the simple strategy that the best offense is a good defense. This defensive
strategy works, but he accomplishes little as a king. Turgon's conservative leadership
becomes his downfall: His decision to retreat from the major battle in which he had left
Gondolin to fight led to the capture of a top general, Hurin, who later betrayed Gondolin's
25
location. Turgon does not deal with problems quickly: His kingdom rots from within, as
the poison of evil slowly seeps into the cracks of Gondolin as Turgon gives aid and
comfort to the one who will betray him. As perhaps the least aggressive elf leader in
Middle-Earth, Turgon shows a tendency to delay handling obvious problems. (There may
be some parallels between Turgon and the Biblical David, in the sense that both stand tall
in the pages of the books as great leaders, but under a microscope show a tendency to let
small problems get out of control. Cf. David's handling of Absalom. If David had acted
more quickly and forcefully to stem Absalom's rebellion and plotting, he could have been
spared much pain.)
In the "Fall of Gondolin" story, once more, a large component of what happens is
determined by subtle elvish relationships. The reader must read chapter 16, "On
Maeglin", and remember that Aredhel is Turgon's sister, and the black sheep of
Fingolfin's family who had hung out with the sons of Feanor back in Valinor. What sorts
of trouble these elf-kids got into back then is left to the reader's imagination, but one can
picture Fingolfin as a father telling his rebellious daughter that he doesn't like her friends,
and the typical reaction that would cause in a rebellious young person. Later, Aredhel's
relationship with Turgon is strained (does he remind her of her father? as usual, we don't
know, since the story is not told on a sufficiently detailed level to glean character's
motives), and she decides to leave Gondolin. On her way to find the sons of Feanor,
Aredhel falls in with a Dark Elf named Eol. She is apparently attracted to that type (since
it is hard to imagine her time with the sons of Feanor was spent singing hymns to
Elbereth). The reader who diligently follows the threads will remember Eol as the one
who forged the cursed sword Anglachel, and someone who is thick with the dwarves at a
time when dwarves were bad news for the elves. "It is not said that Aredhel was wholly
unwilling," is Tolkien's masterfully understated and indirect hint that Aredhel was
enjoying sowing her wild oats. She has a son, which the reader must remember is
Turgon's nephew.
The Silmarillion does not say exactly what a "Dark Elf" is. Technically, any elf that did
not see the light of the trees is considered one, but there seems to be a more subtle
distinction. Some elves seem darker than others (wild, roguish, untamed), but the exact
details are left unsaid. The hint is made, when one of the sons of Feanor calls Thingol a
dark elf, that a deadly insult has been given. Yet we do not know if Eol is a dark elf
because of some personal choice, or if he is merely being who he is: Is he intent upon
evil, or merely someone wrenched out of his role in life and asked to be someone he
could not be? Is Eol a "dark" elf because he has been excluded from "high elf" society? Is
Eol social commentary on the elites of society (similar to the commentary in C.S. Lewis'
That Hideous Strength)? Or was Eol a grey elf who was drawn to evil? As usual, the
story itself doesn't go into enough detail to know.
Thus Maeglin is born, Turgon's nephew. He is a study in contradictions: you can take the
elf out of the darkness, but you can't take the darkness out of the elf. No matter how
much the elf wants this to happen: Maeglin is painted as a character who honestly wants
to walk in the light, and does not want to be evil. He absorbs the stories of the Noldor. He
wants to be part of that world. But no matter what he tries, he can't escape his past. He
26
and his mother flee to Gondolin, only to be perused by Eol. Turgon mercilessly kills Eol,
the Dark Elf, in a summary judgment, with Maeglin witnessing the execution. (Turgon
stays consistent to his mission of defense, but the price he pays is great.) This plants a
seed of bitterness in Maeglin. Then, Maeglin becomes the opposite of Beren: He loves
one so far above himself that the love is hopeless, and when he is utterly rejected it warps
his mind. The second major aspect is Idril. She is another of Tolkien's female characters
who is never fully real. She is a symbol, a Platonic form, of beauty. She reminds the
reader of Helen of Troy, someone so lofty that you can't imagine her eating dinner or
having a favorite song, but only as some remote paragon of beauty. (Yet, bear in mind
that we do not know Idril because her character was never sketched in any real detail on
the level that would be required to make up our minds about her.) In a sense, Tolkien's
critics are correct that his female characters aren't fully real, but in another sense they're
not supposed to be. They are foils which expose the hearts of mankind.
The pieces are now in place for the Fall. Maeglin wants Idril (his cousin) in a bad way.
"Idril loved Maeglin not at all," Tolkien tells us. The Noldor do not approve of cousins
marrying. Idril falls in love with a newcomer to Gondolin, a handsome young man named
Tuor. (The reader will be forgiven if some of these details slip the mind: Tuor is the son
of Huor, who is the brother of Hurin, who perished in the disaster of the Battle of
Unnumbered Tears. Ulmo the water-god has preserved Tuor's life and sent him to
Gondolin, where Turgon takes him in because of his debt to the house of Hador and its
long association with the elves.) Maeglin could not have been happy when Turgon
welcomed a wild human man into Gondolin while killing Eol without clemency. Turgon
has played a defensive strategy in the war of the jewels. All around him, one by one,
kingdoms fell. Now, Turgon's kingdom is the target of an all-out assault by Morgoth,
who at this point must have been feeling like he was winning the war. Many of the sons
of Feanor were dead, Doriath was ruined, Norgothrond was ruined, and most of the elves
were in disarray. Morgoth had played a hunch, releasing Hurin from captivity, and it had
led him to Turgon's kingdom. With few other enemies to contend with, Morgoth had no
real reason not to come down hard on Turgon.
Thus fell Gondolin, and thus were dashed the last hopes of the Noldor.
Of all the stories of Middle-Earth, the Fall of Gondolin is perhaps the most perplexing.
What has been written is not narrative: the story in The Silmarillion is a summary of a
book which would have been (if it had been completed) every bit as long as Lord of the
Rings, and perhaps longer. Tolkien describes what happens, but does not moralize or
even elaborate. The reader must come to a conclusion about what this story signifies
based on inconclusive evidence.
The fall is no one person's fault, in particular, and occurs because of the accretion of
consequences from small acts of corruption. Aredhel's dissipation, Turgon's
unwillingness to act, Eol simply being a "Dark Elf" (whatever that is), Maeglin's
internalization of his personal issues, Hurin's devotion to duty, and many other small
pebbles start an avalanche that is totally out of control by the end. These almost random
eddies of the flowing current of Middle-Earth somehow culminate in the fall of a great
27
civilization. But would Gondolin have fallen anyway? Are there any set of circumstances
that would have prevented the fall? In a fallen world, is it possible for anyone to be
completely isolated from evil? The story mainly serves to ask questions, not answer
them. Nowhere else does Tolkien tell the story of mankind's longing for the fairy realm
with more acute insight. Tuor is the ultimate symbol of the mortal hero who is favored by
the gods, who travels to the fairy realm, who marries the fairy-princess, and who lives in
the blissful realm. But it all comes crashing down around him. Such a land is one of the
primal longings of mankind, a longing for the completeness of the fully realized Platonic
forms, but it is always snatched away.
Back To Where It All Began: Earendil
The average reader who has read nothing but The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings will be
understandably baffled by Aragorn's remark about Bilbo having the cheek to make up
verses about Earendil in the house of Elrond, and the remark (a passing sentence in a
wordy epic) will likely not even register. Perhaps someone who digs into the appendices
will piece together the story of Earendil and his relationship to Elrond, but only in The
Silmarillion is the legend fully expounded. Although the story ends the proper
"Silmarillion", it is the first story Tolkien ever imagined, and Earendil sailing among the
stars may have been his first glimpse into Middle-Earth. The idea of Earendil emerged
when Tolkien read the Old English poem Crist, which is part of the Exeter Book (a
collection of many diverse Old English writings). Unfortunately, there is no general
translation of the entire Exeter Book available in modern English, and no anthologies of
Anglo-Saxon (at least none that I've ever seen) contain the poem Crist. The most
important two lines are circa line 105 of the original:
Eala <font color=red>Earendel</font> / engla beorhtast Ofer middangeard
/ monnum sended
The translation is: "Hail Earendel brightest of angels, over Middle Earth sent to men",
although the original word "Earendil" is the most important aspect of this excerpt.
Tolkien found the unexplained word, "Earendel", and wondered just what it could mean.
Obviously, whoever wrote these lines knew who (or what) Earendel was, and included
his name, but that information has been lost. Tolkien imagined Earnedel was a mariner,
who sailed among the stars. Eventually, this motif fit into The Silmarillion as Earnedil the
mariner who takes the Silmaril of Elwing and appeals to the gods to save the peoples of
Middle-Earth; and the gods do. Earendil is allowed into Valinor, but spends his time
sailing among the stars.
Earendil (the son of Tuor and Idril of Gondolin) and Elwing (granddaughter of Beren and
Luthien) happen to be two of the most level-headed and honorable characters in the entire
Silmarillion. They realize the dire situation of the elves after the final defeat of Gondolin,
the last elf stronghold, and realize that the complete end of the elves is near. They make a
decision to put the Silmaril that Elwing has inherited from Dior (son of Beren and
Luthien) to good use, by attempting to use it to contact the gods of Valinor and ask for
28
help. This is one of the most important moral decisions made in the book: for the gods
listen, and intervene. In the end, mortals could not solve their own problems through their
own effort and cleverness. Tolkien repudiates humanism. To the humanist studying the
text, the ending must be hollow and unsatisfying: an author plodding through hundreds of
pages of sheer dense plot that goes nowhere, only to run out of ideas and employ the
ancient technique of deus ex machina to end the story. To the Catholic, and Christians in
general, the end is a satisfying confirmation of the sad fact of the fall of mortals and the
need for divine grace where none is deserved. If any people deserves to be wiped out, it
the prideful elves. Yet the gods save them in the end, with unmerited favor.
Yet we are haunted: Why didn't the gods simply take the jewels back, and then kick
Morgoth out of Valinor? The same question haunts the Christian: the "right now / not
yet" paradox of salvation and life in a fallen world. Much like the law had to be given so
that mankind would understand the meaning of grace, the elves had to live through the
war of the jewels to understand the grace of the gods.
Note also that Elwing changing into a gull is taken from the Kalevala.
Akallabeth: The Sinking Of Numenor
Tacked on to the proper "Silmarillion" legendarium concerned with the flourishing of the
elves on Middle-Earth are the Akallabeth and a small section about the Third Age. The
latter is so short and needs no real explanation, so I ignore it. Akallabeth concerns the
mysterious Second Age, about which little comes into the stories of either the First Age
or Third Age.
(As an aside, the circumflex, also called a "top hat", over the final e in Akallabeth
indicates an unaccented long vowel, which is how the circumflex is used in some
orthographical systems. I remark on this, because I was taught that the "top hat" was a
short vowel marker when I was in American public school. In contrast, a vertical bar
indicated a long vowel. I have no idea whether current "spelling" classes still use
textbooks where this situation obtains or not. This made my pronunciation of Tolkien's
tongue-twisting names even farther from what was intended. Rules for where accents
naturally fall in elvish are discussed in the various appendices, but from listening to
Tolkien's recorded elvish recitations, the language has a singsong quality which is
notably different from the cadence of English or any Romance languages I have heard
spoken. Tolkien uses the acute accent, which slants upwards from right to left, to mark
where accents fall unnaturally in words. The name Luthien, for example, has the accent
on the first syllable, which is not natural in elvish. I can recall no place where Tolkien
used the other accent, the grave accent which slants down from right to left, in his
orthography where he transliterated elvish into the English alphabet. Of course, Tolkien
was never fully consistent with his transliteration, so it's not always the same in all books.
Issues like this are the sorts of pedantry one trips over when studying Tolkien!)
C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien agreed one day that they were going to write a spacetravel and time-travel story, respectively. Yet only Lewis' space-travel story ever got into
29
print. (Also note that Lewis began his own time-travel story (see "The Dark Tower" in
The Dark Tower And Other Stories, but never finished the story.) In one sense, Tolkien
never finished his time-travel story. Parts of the inchoate story can be found in the
volume Sauron Defeated, part of the History of Middle-Earth. As might be expected, the
story has such quantities of philological speculation on made-up languages that it would
likely have never been widely read. In fact, a large part of the reason why this story was
never completed was because Tolkien took a detour with it.
In another sense, the detour that was taken became the essential bridge between the elvish
stories of The Silmarillion and the later "mannish" events in Lord of the Rings. The timetravel story was never told, but its essence became the story of Numenor. Without this
bridge, the link between the older stories and the later ones would have been much
thinner and would have had much less impact. Without the depth of the rise and fall of
Numenor, men and elves in Middle-Earth would have little or no reason to interact with
one another, making the first two books of Lord of the Rings, which depend heavily on
elves helping men, awkward.
In Lord of the Rings, the story of what happened in Numenor is not fully told, although
many hints and oblique mentions of it can be found. Only the appendices, in a highly
abbreviated form, tell much about the island. The Silmarillion contains a sort of appendix
on what happened in Numenor, under the strange name Akallabeth. Virtuous men who
helped fight in the Great Battle on the side of the gods of Valinor were given an island,
Numenor, between Middle-Earth and the Blessed Lands. The only string attached was
that they could not come to the Blessed Lands. Akallabeth is the story of how corruption
seeped into what should have been paradise, and how men decided they were entitled to
live in bliss with the elves, and the disaster which ensued. Sauron, who is seen in Lord of
the Rings only as a distant eye, is shown as a personality who interacts with mankind. Out
of the ruin of Numenor came the kings of Gondor and Arnor. The language of the
Numenorians, which was never fleshed out as fully as either of the two elvish languages,
is perhaps even harder on the eyes and on the mouth than elvish. Even those who try to
pronounce elvish will be forgiven if they walk away from Numenorian.
The story of Numenor was inspired by the myth of Atlantis, the island (or continent)
which sank. This is an ancient folk legend. (Which still, to this day, has never been
proven nor disproven.) Again, this is an example of Tolkien, in his element as a
storyteller, working backwards: He took the fact that a legend of Atlantis sinking existed,
and wondered how that came to pass, and worked backwards to show how corruption
entered into paradise (a favorite theme).
Note: The Penguin Classic translation of Plato's Timaeus and Critias (trans. Desmond
Lee) has a long appendix on Platonic Atlantis which would be of interest to the general
reader who wants a summary of the background issues.
The Fall Of the Noldor And The Remnant
30
What begins in The Silmarillion casts long shadows across the pages of Lord of the
Rings.
Galadriel may very well be the oldest elf left in Middle-Earth during the events of Lord of
the Rings's primary narrative. She is the daughter of Finarfin, and a high elf of the purest
pedigree. She was not a kinslayer.
Galadriel's husband Celeborn is a grey elf. Galadriel lived long with Melian, and perhaps
developed a taste for grey elves as a result. We are not told, but perhaps Celeborn stays in
Middle-Earth when his wife departs because of his roots as a grey elf. He is called "the
wise", but has no role in the story. He seems diminished beside Galadriel.
(Please note that readers of the History of Middle-Earth, as well as Unfinished Tales, will
discover that Tolkien underwent a process of trying to discover just who Galadriel and
Celeborn were. They are a couple where the "canonical" published information is the tip
of an iceberg.)
Similarly, Thranduil and his son Legolas are grey elves. They are not the same elves as
Celeborn's ilk. A minor distinction exists among the grey elves, between those who went
west across Ered Luin to Beleriand and participated in the Noldorin actions, and those
who stayed in the western parts of Middle-Earth.
Although Celebrimbor is not in the actual story itself, he casts a long shadow as the
maker of the Three Rings of the elves. He is the son of Curufin's son, and the grandson of
Feanor. He seems to have inherited the family's gift at craftiness, as well as their
temperament.
Gil-Galad (whose real name is Ereinion) was a contemporary of Celebrimbor, and also
does not appear directly, but is mentioned frequently. He, also, is a high elf of the house
of Fingon. His family did not participate in the kinslaying. Elrond is an elf of the highest
pedigree, but much younger than most of the other elves. He was a lieutenant of GilGalad in the Last Battle. He descends from Beren and Luthien on the distaff side, and
Tuor and Idril on the paternal side. (The half-elves of Lord of the Rings, which include
Elrond, Arwen, Elladan, and Elrohir, are actually doubly half-elves, because their family
descends from both unions of elves and men.) Cirdan is a grey elf who became connected
with the sea and shipbuilding, hence he is always known as "the Shipwright" (which is
the meaning of his name). He apparently never went to Valinor in the first place, so his
status as a ring-bearer must have been the reason for him passing over the sea in his last
ship.
(Cirdan is an example of a complex relationship: he is a Teleri, a sea-elf, but not one of
the Teleri who went to Valinor.)
The elf named Glorfindel in Rivendel is a peculiar case. The original Glorfindel died
during the sack of Gondolin, while protecting the escape of Earendil. Tolkien originally
recycled the name, but after completing Lord of the Rings, the duplication of the name
31
caused much introspection on whether this elf was reincarnated after death the same way
Luthien was. (Curious readers can read Tolkien's essay on Glorfindel in the last volume
of the History of Middle Earth.) The attempt to reconcile the use of the name was part of
a series of subcreation-shattering questions (such as the origin of orcs) which rocked
Tolkien's mythological framework off of its foundation, and he did not live long enough
to rebuild it.
(Also note that some names are simply duplicated from The Silmarillion to Lord of the
Rings. As an example, the minor character Finduilas almost had her un-euphonious name
recycled as Arwen's appellation, but was later shifted to another minor character. The
recycling of a name does not ipso facto imply a connection.)
Conclusion
If J.R.R. Tolkien had seen The Silmarillion through to its final form, perhaps it would
have been significantly easier to approach. Perhaps he would have returned to the
framing sequences of his original conception. Perhaps he would have found someone to
write an introduction which would summarize the work in a way he could not. But we
will never know. Tolkien was a leaf-painter, not a tree-painter, and the only way he ever
painted a tree was one leaf at a time, and The Silmarillion simply had too many trees in
too many forests for him to paint each leaf. He began his stories by writing epic
adventures of elves and men in a far-off place, and ended wrestling with the same moral
issues of good and evil we are confronted with today.
Maybe The Silmarillion should be an unfinished work, which is open-ended for each new
person who finds it, and reflects on it, to paint their own leaves. Some day the final tree
will be finished: if not by us, then by the Alpha and Omega who will finish all things.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_To_Read_The_Silmarillion"
32