Tolkien, J.R.R.: Silmarillion, The

I started re-reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion on January 3, Tolkien’s birthday, on the theory that hobbits give presents to others on their birthdays and his books are the best presents he could give (if he were still with us, of course). I’m a couple re-reads past the point where I started understanding and enjoying the book; like a lot of people, I tried reading it too young (or soon) and bounced hard off it. Before this re-read, I appreciated it as mythology, with many wonderful stories sketched in a remote and stylized manner. This time, I discovered a number of new reactions, a few years after the last re-read.

[ There will be spoilers below, vaguely phrased but present nonetheless. ]

First, I don’t recall it raising the hairs on the back of my neck before. I did most of my re-reading in exceedingly mundane environments—my office, a car dealership while my car’s oil was changed—and even there, things like the Doom of the Noldor, or the host of Fingolfin blowing their silver trumpets at the first rising of the Moon, send actual chills up my spine. The early parts seemed much more likely to do this than the later, and also stick with me more between reads. (Even the first two portions stick with me, about the creation of the world and the Valar and Maiar, but I’m weird and used to re-read them to relax and go to sleep. I did, however, skip the geography chapter with no feelings of guilt whatsoever.) It’s possible that the sheer density might have come into play: I’m more able to infer emotion from this style now than when I first read this book, but I may have gotten tired of doing so by the end. I think it’s more likely that a problem with the content of the later stuff, though, of which more below.

Second, speaking of Fingolfin, something I’d known but had forgotten the extent: I read by word recognition, rather than phonetics, and as a result the names are very difficult. For instance, so many people have names of the form F—— that I had a little slip of paper marking the first of the family trees, the House of Finwë, and referred to it nearly every time an F—— name appeared. Keep this in mind when creating your own languages, writers.

Third, I either hadn’t registered or hadn’t remembered the underlying ethical or moral decisions that structure all the history. That’s a very cumbersome way of putting it, so let me give examples. I spent a bit of time trying to classify the two major falls of the work, Melkor’s and Feanor’s (and much of the Noldor with him). There must be dozens of papers exploring this in much more depth than my lunchtime musing—all the same, they seem to both be ambition thwarted and thereby twisted into selfishness and coveting. And while they didn’t have to react in those ways to being thwarted, I can’t help but having a little bit of sympathy for their ambition—the summons of the Valar never seemed that wise to me, and if I were told that “hey, you think you’re doing your own thing, but it’s all My Ineffable Plan after all,” well, I’d get a bit cranky too.

Free will is a very problematic thing in The Silmarillion, it seems to me. Textually, no-one but Men (sic) have it, and it’s a gift inextricably tied with their mortality. Which sounds all well and good, until one sees how the deck is very carefully stacked against Men in every possible way to make them lesser. I could go on at length, but the opening pages of the chapter “Of Men” will suffice: “The Valar sat now behind their mountains at peace, and having given light to Middle-earth they left it for long untended, and the lordship of Morgoth was uncontested save by the valour of the Noldor. . . . To Hildórien there came no Vala to guide Men, or to summon them to dwell in Valinor; and Men have feared the Valar, rather than loved them, and have not understood the purposes of the Powers, being at variance with them, and at strife with the world.”

Apparently Men get free will, but don’t get the information they need to exercise it wisely. (There should probably be a reference to Freedom and Necessity in here somewhere, but this entry has languished unfinished long enough.) Really, I finished the book feeling small and unenlightened and dirt-grubbing and just unworthy; and very cross thereby, because that is not at all my normal state. I want to ask Tolkien, “Did you intend to create an elaborate mythology just to explain why humans suck?”

No wonder there are so many Elf fangirls.

Ahem. Anyway. Last time I re-read The Lord of the Rings, I didn’t have this reaction, and I think I probably won’t next time, because the time scale is smaller and it ends on a more optimistic note. I’m rather sorry to have discovered that The Silmarillion makes me cross, as it has much that I love. Maybe I’ll just re-read the Appendices to LotR next time I need my fix.