Blind Read Through: J.R.R. Tolkien; The Book of Lost Tales, part 1, The Darkening of Valinor
“Now Melko having despoiled the Noldoli and brought sorrow and confusion into the realm of Valinor through less of that hoard than aforetime, having now conceived a darker and deeper plan of aggrandisement; therefore seeing the lust of Ungwë’s eyes he offers her all that hoard, saving only the three Silmarils, if she will abet him in his new design (pg 152).”
Welcome back to another Blind Read! This week we’re going to dive into the philosophy of Tolkien’s world through the events of The Darkening of Valinor.
We’ve discussed it before, but Tolkien relied heavily on his Christian background while creating this mythology. He wanted something new and unique for England, and as we know, mythologies are all origin stories.
The people of Middle-earth (Elves, Men, Dwarves, etc.) are all iterations of our evolution, and it shows from the beginning of The Book of Lost Tales that Tolkien intended for Middle-earth to be a precursor to Earth (he even calls it Eä in the Silmarillion).
Because this is mythology, Tolkien brings his version of the afterlife and the angels he introduces to the world. Melkor, who is Tolkien’s version of Satan, is ostracized for stealing the Eldar gems and Silmarils. Cast out of Heaven as it were:
“Now these great advocates moved the council with their words, so that in the end it is Manwë’s doom that word he sent back to Melko rejecting him and his words and outlawing him and all his followers from Valinor for ever (pg 148).”
But it was still during this period that Melkor was mischievous, but he had not transitioned to evil yet, even after being cast out of Valinor. So instead, he spent his time trying to create chaos using his subversive words:
“In sooth it is a matter for great wonder, the subtle cunning of Melko – for in those wild words who shall say that there lurked not a sting of the minutest truth, nor fail to marvel seeing the very words of Melko pouring from Fëanor his foe, who knew not nor remembered whence was the fountain of these thoughts; yet perchance the [?outmost] origin of these sad things was before Melko himself, and such things must be – and the mystery of the jealousy of Elves and Men is an unsolved riddle, one of the sorrows at the world’s dim roots (pg 151).”
The great deceiver has been created out of jealousy and anger for these beings of Middle-earth, believing that they were given more than their fair share and his own acts were ruined from the beginning of the Music of the Ainur.
But what did the Elves do? Was there anything they received that made anything Melkor did excusable?
“And at the same hour riders were sent to Kôr and to Sirnúmen summoning the Elves, for it was guessed that this matter touched them near (pg 147).”
It was nothing that they did, but the fact that the Valar treated them as equals to the Valar and Melkor’s slights against them weren’t considered pranks he felt they were, so his anger grew.
They were also allowed to be near their loved ones even after death. Elves were given the gift of immortality but can still be killed by disease or blade. But where do their spirits go when they die? Remember that this is a Christian-centric mythology, so Tolkien built an afterlife.
Called Vê after the Valar who created it, the afterlife on Middle-earth is contained within and around Valinor. This early conception (nearly cut entirely from The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings) was that Vê was a separate area of Valinor, slightly above and below it but still present, almost like a spirit world that contained the consciousness of the dead.
This region was all about, and the Eldar cannot commune with their deceased, but they continue to live close to them, and their spirit remains in Valinor.
“Silpion is gleaming in that hour, and ere it wanes the first lament for the dead that was heard in Valinor rises from that rocky vale, for Fëanor laments the death of Bruithwir; and many Gnomes beside find that the spirits of their dead have winged their way to Vê (pg 146).”
Melkor is jealous that the Elves can be so close to their dead ancestors, but he also doesn’t fully comprehend what being dead means because he is a Valar and eternal. He sees these beings going off to a different portion of Valinor and is upset because he thought he found a way to create distress amongst them by killing one of them. He doesn’t realize that he made a fire in the Eldar that would never wane.
“‘Yea, but who shall give us back the joyous heart without which works of lovliness and magic cannot be? – and Bruithwir is dead, and my heart also (pg 149).'”
Melkor schemed and stewed in his frustration and anger, feeling that even with his theft and his killing of Fëanor’s father, the first death of an Eldar (whom Tolkien was still calling Gnomes in this early version), there was nothing he could do to prove his worth, so his worth turned to evil. His music was dissonant and didn’t follow the themes of the other Valar, and he was looked down upon for that and cast aside. He pulled pranks that caused the other Valar to imprison him. All the while, his anger, and distrust grew until he did the ultimate act, which caused his to turn to true evil: He partnered with Ungoliant (the giant spider queen and mother of Shelob) and killed Silpion and Laurelin, the Trees which gave light to Valinor.
“Thus was it that unmarked Melko and the Spider of Night reached the roots of Laurelin, and Melko summoning his godlike might thrust a sword into its beauteous stock, and the firey radiance that spouted forth assuredly had consumed him even as it did his sword, had not Gloomweaver (Ungoliant) cast herself down and lapped it thirstily, plying even her lips to the wound in the tree’s bark and sucking away it’s life and strength (pg 153).”
Melkor had finally become evil. He had turned against the Valar and what brought the world light and gave that power to evil creatures.
The Valar and Eldar cried out against Melkor for being cruel, but the tragedy of Melkor’s story was that he never had a choice.
Early in the mythology of this world, Tolkien tells us that Ilúvatar had a theme and a story for eternity, which the Valar were not privy to. Instead, they thought their music and their acts were meant to create only beauty and love.
Ilúvatar, however, knew that to have true meaning, there must be pain, conflict, and evil. Otherwise, all the world’s good would disappear and become mundane. So Ilúvatar created Melkor, knowing what he was going to become. He made Melkor evil in the world.
Melkor was born to suffer. Melkor was born never to know love. Melkor was created to become a creature that others could be tricked into feeling sorry for, and thus trade the light of the Valar for the Darkness of the Dark Lord.
Join me next week as we cover “The Flight off the Noldoli!”
Blind Read Through: J.R.R. Tolkien; The Book of Lost Tales, part 1, The Theft of Melko
“Listen then, O Eriol, if thou wouldst [know] how it came that the loveliness of Valinor was abated, or the Elves might ever be constrained to leave the shores of Eldamar. It may well be that you know already that Melko dwelt in Valmar as a servant in the house of Tulkas in those days of the joy of the Eldalië; there did he nurse his hatred of the Gods, and his consuming jealousy of the Eldar, but it was his lust for the beauty of the gems for all his feigned indifference that in the end overbore his patience and caused him to design deep and evilly (pg 140).”
Welcome back to another Blind Read! This week we kick off the events which changed the face of Eä and how those events changed from the original writings to the publication of The Silmarillion.
This chapter, more than anything before, indeed shows how Tolkien’s ideas shifted over time. The designs of Melkor and Sauron are so interwoven in this early work that the distinction between them when he finally got to writing about the later ages must have been muddled.
There are many instances in this chapter where Melkor is subversive, getting the Elves to believe in him and forsake the Valar. Melkor did some of this later in The Silmarillion, but most of his actions were facilitated out of anger and jealousy. Melkor is Tolkien’s iteration of Lucifer, the fallen angel who once desired to do positive things, whereas Sauron is evil when his visage hits the page.
In the beginning, Melkor was one of the Valar. He was around before the world was created, and indeed, it was through the music of the Valar (called Ainur) that the world was created. Melkor was disparaged early on because his music was discordant and didn’t match up with the music of the other Valar. His anger grew like a young child playing off-key in a band. The other Valar were upset with him because their music had themes, and with Melkor creating the music the way he was, the themes had strange off notes, making unintended things.
You may have heard the phrase: “There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world.” These “fouler things” were created from this discordant music as the world was being made. Thus, they are deep within the world, almost Cthulhu-godlike creatures born into the depths of the world, undescribed but horrible to behold.
Because of this mistake, The Valar treated Melkor differently. Then when the Eldar awoke, he perceived them as being favored over himself, so he folded in on his own conscious and acted out of hate and jealousy.
Sauron, on the other hand, was Melkor’s servant (Maiar), and it is possible that Sauron saw what was happening to Melkor and decided to fight against the world because of the treatment his master and Dark Lord received. However, he wasn’t written that way. Instead, Sauron wanted to rule the world from the moment he was created and was very subversive in his tactics.
In this chapter, Tolkien blends the two different personalities. First, Melkor tries to get into Fëanor’s head and turn him against the Valar and the other Noldor; however, in The Silmarillion, Fëanor is too clever, and Melkor attempts to corrupt Fëanor causes the Eldar to hate The Dark Lord eternally. In The Book of Lost Tales, Melkor ends up with different motivations entirely:
“At length so great became his care that he took counsel with Fëanor, and even with Inwë and Ellu Melemno (who then led the Solosimpi), and took their rede that Manwë himself be told the dark ways of Melko (pg 141).”
Melkor assists Fëanor in creating the Silmarils, much like Sauron helped Celebrimbor create the Rings of Power.
Tolkien doesn’t specifically call this out as a motivation for stealing the gems back; in fact, they seem to be an afterthought:
“With his own hand indeed he slew Bruithwir father of Fëanor, and bursting into that rocky house that he defended laid hands upon those most glorious gems, even the Silmarils, shut in a casket of ivory (pg 145).”
Melkor was after the gems because he wanted to take the Eldar’s possessions and knew they considered their jewels highly valuable.
The Silmarils themselves were still of high quality because they came from the starlight of Aulë’s forge, but in the writing of this chapter, it feels as though they were an afterthought for Tolkien.
Christopher (Tolkien’s son and editor) contends that Melkor is only there to steal the gems, and it wasn’t until later iterations of the story that the Silmarils became more critical.
Thinking like a writer, Tolkien always intended to have the Silmarils be necessary, but not because an Elf made them (or Gnome in this early version). I think his intent in the Book of Lost Tales was to have the Silmarils be so crucial because of the influence of the Valar. Still, as he progressed in history, he realized that it was the Eldar’s story, not the Valar’s, so he adjusted it to have Fëanor be of an original heritage (he became Finwë’s son instead of the unknown Bruithwir) and make the world-breaking Silmarils.
Later, when he had beings of a short life (Men and Hobbits), and everyday events played a much more critical role in their life, he adjusted the story to have Sauron be involved in creating the Rings of Power. It is a different story, and there are other stakes, not to mention that Sauron is a Maiar, not a Valar; thus, his power level isn’t as complete. The gods might not come down from the heavens to take care of someone lesser than them, where Melkor was one of their own and thus their responsibility.
While reading this book, you must remember that it was never meant to be published. Christopher Tolkien compiled the Book of Lost Tales from notebooks and scraps of paper. It was the Silmarillion that Tolkien himself meant to publish. Christopher published The Book of Lost Tales for the same reason I’m writing a blog about it; people who love Lord of the Rings might want to know the evolution of the story to what it eventually became.
Join me next week as we take a break from the Book of Lost Tales! I will give an update on current and future projects and cover some very exciting things to come!
Blind Read Through: J.R.R. Tolkien; The Book of Lost Tales part 1, The Making of Kôr
“Now therefore do the God bid the Elves build a dwelling, and Aulëaided them in that, but Ulmo fares back to the Lonely Island, and lo! it stands now upon a pillar of rock upon the seas’ floor, and Ossë fares about it in a foam of business anchoring all the scattered islands of his domain fast to the ocean-bed (pg 121).”
Welcome back to another Blind Read! This week we get a more significant image of who the Elves, and each clan of Elves, were.
The first thing we have to cover is the making of Kôr:
“Behold there is a low place in that ring of mountains that guards Valinor, and there the shining of the Trees steals through from the plain beyond and guilds the dark waters of the bay of Arvalin, but a great beach of finest sand, golden in the blaze of Laurelin, white in the light of Silpion, runs inland there, where in the trouble of the ancient seas a shadowy arm of water had groped in toward Valinor, but now there is only a slender water fringed with white.At the head of this long creek there stands a lonely hill which gazes at the loftier mountains…Here was the place that those fair Elves bethought them to dwell, and the Gods named that hill Kôr by reason of its roundness and it’s smoothness (pg 122).”
This soft hill became the home of the Noldori Elves and the Teleri Elves. But, unfortunately, the only group that wanted to live in a new space were the Solosimpi Elves, the favorite of Ulmo the sea Valar. So the Solosimpi stayed out on Tol Eressëa, a place that “is held neither of the Outer lands or of the Great Lands where Men after roamed (pg 125).”
The Solosimpi became the favorite of Ulmo because they decided to stay away from Valinor. He taught them music and sea lore and lived in general harmony. They lived in the caves by the sea in connection with all other living creatures of the land. Valinor, at the time, had very few creatures (primarily sprites and fae), so the Solosimpi were better equipped to deal with strife because they could see the circle of life in motion. They could see creatures being hunted and killed so that others could live. They had worldly wisdom.
They also came to love birds for their beauty, simplicity, and grace. Ossë (Ulmo’s fellow water Valar, who in The Silmarillion became a Maiar), wanted to stoke this love, but he also didn’t like the Solosimpi to be estranged from their kin; “For lo! there Teleri and Noldoli complain much to Manwë of the separation of the Solosimpi, and the Gods desire them to be drawn to Valinor; but Ulmo cannot yet think of any device save by help of Ossë and the Oarni, and will not be humbled to this (pg 124).”
Yet again, we see Ulmo’s jealousy. The reason for the change in character between this book and The Silmarillion must be the change from the lesser Valar being siblings and children of the Valar to becoming a Maiar. This Sea-change of the power dynamics was twofold; 1. to make it a more straightforward narrative and include fewer names (which anyone who read The Silmarillion would attest to), and 2. To make the motivations of the Valar more clear. Melkor is the one who is supposed to be jealous and to take out that jealousy on the Eldar, not the other Valar. If they held these same jealousies, then both the Valar would be diminished, and Melkor wouldn’t be as much of a “Dark Lord” because others with his power level feel the same way.
Still, it is interesting to see that the transition, and the reality, of the concept of anger and jealousy in The Book of Lost Tales is much more feasible than in The Silmarillion. Somehow the events in this book make the Valar, just that much more relatable.
Going back to the quote above, Ulmo was not to be outdone by any other Valar, so he facilitated “the first hewing of trees that was done in the world outside of Valinor (pg 124).”
He partnered with Aulë, and together they “sawn wood of pine and oak make great vessels like to the bodies of swans, and these he covers with the bark of silver birches, or…with gathered feathers of the oily plumage of Ossë’s birds. (pg 124)”
Remember that the Solosimpi were in the later versions of the Teleri Elves, so this is the first iteration of the Lothlórien “Swan Shaped Barge,” which we also briefly glimpse Galadriel on in The Lord of the Rings.
The Noldor seemed to be flourishing on their island, and with the assistance of the Valar, each tribe seemed to specialize in different practices. Unfortunately, this eventually ended the Golden Age of the Eldar in Tol Eressëa (Kôr).
“Then arose Fëanor of the Noldoli and fared to the Solosimpi and begged a great pearl, and he got moreover an urn full of the most luminous phosphor-light gathered of foam in dark places, and with these he came home, and he took all the other gems and did gather their glint by the light of white lamps and silver candles, and he took the sheen of pearls and the faint half-colours of opals, and he [bathed?] them in phosphorescence and the radient dew of Silpion, and but a single tiny drop of the light of Laurelin did he let fall therein, and giving all those magic lights a body to dwell in of such perfect glass as he alone could make nor even Aulë compass, so great was the slender dexterity of the fingers of Fëanor, he made a jewel… Then he made two more…he those jewels he called Silmarilli (pg 128).”
Fëanor, in this early iteration, is just an unnamed Noldor, not Finwë’s direct lineage, but he still creates the Silmarils, which starts all the events of the First Age in motion.
There is very little said about Fëanor in this version. In the Silmarillion, he is prideful and firey (in fact, that is what his name implies in the language of the Eldar). Still, here it is just one of a race who is excellent at crafting and can infuse the light of the Trees of Valinor (Think the first magic contained in the land. Early and Old magic, potentially stronger than anything that comes after) into these pearls.
Join me next week as we see if there are differences in how Morgoth tries to steal these Silmarils in “The Theft of Melko!”
Blind Read Through: J.R.R. Tolkien; The Book of Lost Tales, part 1, The Coming of the Elves
“There was a stir among the distant trees and words were spoken suddenly, and feet went to and fro. Then did I say what is this deed that Palúrien my mother has wrought in secret, and I sought her out and questioned her, and she answered: ‘This is no work of mine, but the hand of one far greater did this. Ilúvatar hath awakened his children at the last – ride home to Valinor and tell the Gods that the Eldar have come indeed (pg 114)!'”
Welcome back to another Blind Read! This week we mark the entrance of the Eldar into Beleriand and Valinor, which also signifies a dramatic shift in the lives of the Valar.
The introduction of the Elves in these early works is a bit of a departure from The Silmarillion. Tolkien wrote this chapter with Valar filled with enthusiasm with their newfound “children.” They ran about Valinor cheering and crying out in joy. Oromë even interrupts Varda creating the Seven Stars from Aulë”s forge as he “shouts aloud so that all the ears in Valmar may hear him: ‘Tulielto! Tulielto! They have come – they have come (pg 114)!'”
This sounding call is echoed by many of the other Valar until they work themselves into a frenzy and end up doing something foolish. “Great joy blindeth even the forewisdom of the Gods (pg 114).”
Tolkien is referring to Manwë releasing Melkor from Angaino “before the full time of his doom (pg 114),” though he still kept Tilkal (his fetters or manacles) on his wrists and ankles. In fact, in this telling, the Tilkal stayed on him forever as a reminder of the ages he spent in bondage because of the trickery of the Valar. Manwë releases him because it’s such and event, and such a celebration that even Melkor should be involved. If this seems impetuous and over the top, it absolutely is.
Tolkien understood this and downplayed this excitement in The Silmarillion, though part still exists. The strange twist is that the only Valar who is not excited about the Eldar’s arrival in The Book of Lost Tales is Ulmo. It took me a little introspection to see what Tolkien was trying to sublimate, and it goes back to one of the quotes above. The Valar were blinded by their excitement, making them ignore their “forewisdom” in more than one sense.
In The Silmarillion, Ulmo was the Valar who was said to love the Eldar more than any other, and it was strange to me that he went against the will of those Valar to have the Eldar come to Valinor.
But why were the Eldar so happy that the Eldar had come? “and it was not until that hour that the Gods knew that their joy had contained a flaw, or that they had waited in hunger for it’s completion, but now they knew that the world had been an empty place beset with loneliness having no children for her own (pg 114).”
It wasn’t until the world was populated that the Valar realized the point of their existence. It was about creating a world for these other beings to exist. But unfortunately, they were so hung up on how their projects were progressing and angered at Morgoth for (Melkor) interrupting or ruining those projects that they didn’t realize that the world they had created didn’t have a soul. The coming of the Eldar made that soul in the world.
So why did Ulmo act against them? Because he understood this fundamental tenant because he helped create them. The Eldar were Ilúvatar’s children, but they were born next to “Koivië-néni or the Waters of Awakening (pg 115).” Remember that Ulmo is the Vala of the seas and water, and, in The Fellowship of the Ring, when the horses form in the river that wipe out the Dark Riders following the Hobbits and Aragorn, they were a creation of Ulmo and an indication of his interfering in the lives of the people of Middle-earth. Glorfindel says a prayer to Ulmo in that scene (which was changed to Arwen in the movie), and Ulmo helps them to Rivendell.
Ulmo immediately connects with the Eldar because of his association with them through the Koivië-néni (or Cuiviénen in The Silmarillion). Ulmo knows that exposing the Eldar directly to the immense knowledge of the Valar is a mistake that could, and does, end up having far-reaching issues later on in history. Ulmo believes the Eldar should live in the world and have their own life experiences rather than be involved with gods (or angels).
But Ulmo is outvoted, and three Eldar come in a procession to Valinor, one from each tribe, and we get this loaded paragraph:
“Great was the stir and wonder now about the waters of Koivië, and its end was that three of the Eldar came forward daraing to go with Nornorë, and these he bore now back to Valinor, and their names as the Elves of Kôr have handed them on were Isil Inwë, and Finwë Nólemë who was Turondo’s father, and Tinwë Lintö father of Tinúviel – but the Noldoli call them Inwithiel, Golfinweg, and Tinwelint. Afterward they became very great among the Eldar, and the Teleri were those who followed Isil, but his kindred and descendants are that royal folk of the Inwir of whose blood I am. Nolemë was lord of the Noldoli, and of his son Turondo (or Turgon as they called him) are great tales told, but Tinwë abode not long with his people, and yet ’tis said lives still lord of the scattered Elves of Hisilómë, dancing in its twilight places with Wendelin his spouse, a sprite come long long ago from the quiet gardens of Lórien; yet greatest of all the Elves did Isil Inwë become, and folk reverence his mighty name to this day (pgs 115-116).”
I’m sure you don’t recognize many of those names because Tolkien changed them around (and I suspect they changed which tribe would be which in their ultimate storyline). Isil Inwë later became Ingwë, the lord of the Vanyar, Finwë stayed Finwë lord of the Noldor, but Turgon moved from son to grandson (with the notorious Fëanor, creator of the Silmarils, in the middle). Tinwë Linto became Thingol, and Wendelin moved from a Sprite to the Maiar Melian.
The Eldar who went to Valinor were Ingwë, Finwë, and Elwë (Thingol), as spokespeople for the Eldar. They were met with great fanfare, but the omen of great strife began on that first visit to Valinor. Where Melkor “often did he lie to the Noldoli afterwards when he would stir their restlessness, adding beside all truth that he alone had withstood the general voice and spoken for the freedom of the Elves (pg 177).”
Join me next week as we see where the Elves go next with “The Making of Kôr.”
Blind Read Through: J.R.R. Tolkien; The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1, The Building of Valinor
“There, said Aulë, would be a place well suited to great building and to a fashioning of realms of delight; wherefore the Valar and all their folk first gathered the most mighty rocks and stones from Arvalin and reared therewith huge mountains between it and that plain which now they name Valinor, or the land of the Gods (pg 70).”
Welcome back to another Blind Read! This week we continue our journey through the coming of the Valar as we delve into the Building of Valinor.
Last week we left off discovering who the Valar were, and this week we get into the details of the building of Valinor from the perspective of the Valar and Tolkien himself.
From our readings of The Valaquenta in The Silmarillion, we know that The Valar went to different parts of the world but wanted a place to call home. Valinor was that place. But even with the creation of Valinor, the Valar still had their various areas which they controlled. Ulmo ruled the deep seas, Manwë ruled the air and winds, etc. As these concepts formed in Tolkien’s mind (all early stages of developing the world), he envisioned this world as floating through the ethereal nature of space and time.
Remember that the original idea was that all of Middle-earth would eventually lead up to our historical timeline, acting as a sort of mythological foundation which he felt was lacking in the English tradition. He also based much of his work on Norse Mythological writings and practices, so what better format than having the entire Eä (read that as Earth) floating through the cosmic tapestry than on a Norse ship? Everything from Palisor to Valinor would live on this ship sailing through space.
Though he later dropped this idea for a globe world, it was evident that he loved the concept of the boat sailing through the cosmos and eventually re-used it. Enter Eärendil, arguably one of the essential characters in Middle-earth history. He and his wife Elwing stood up to Morgoth, and Eärendil sailed to Valinor with a Silmaril to protect it and make the Vala understand what they were up against. A mortal sailing to Valinor was prohibited, but instead of outright killing him (mainly because of his courage and selflessness in sailing there to save the world), they made him part of the cosmos, sailing his ship Vingilot “even to the starless voids.”
Tolkien never gave up on his ship idea, but he also never gave up on the concept of creating something from nothingness.
Moving back in time, as soon as the Vala created Valinor, it was still a dark place to be. “These were the days of Gloaming (Lomendánar), for light, there was, silver and golden, but it was not gathered together but flowed and quivered in uneven streams about the airs, or at times fell gently to earth in glittering rain and ran like water on the ground, and at that time Varda in her playing had set but a few stars within the sky (pg 69).”
The world was dark, and the only light came from the stars, yet the Vala wanted to build a complete world, so they came up with a rudimentary idea.
“Aulë suaded Melko to build two towers to the North and South, for he purposed to set upon them mighty lamps one upon each (pg 69).”
This passage differs from the Silmarillion because Melkor was a lousy actor. He created the world’s darkness and envied the other Valar and the Noldor, but more on that next week.
So they built these two lamps to light the world. “They sprang up through the lower air even to Ilwëand the stars, and Melko said they were of an imperishable substance of great strength that he devised; and he lied, for he knew that they were of ice (pg 69).”
Manwë and Varda gathered light from the stars and brought them down to fill these mighty lamps. Still, Melkor had tricked them because “it so happened that the blaze of those lights had melted the treacherous ice of the pillars of Melko, Ringil and Helkar, and great floods of water had poured from them into the Shadowy Seas (pgs 69-70).”
It is never outright stated why Melkor did this treacherous act. It is possible that Melkor was the Angel of Darkness, so he desired to keep the world in the Gloaming, but this is an early iteration of the mythos of Middle-earth, and Tolkien needed a Big Bad to push the story forward. So in the Book of Lost Tales, Melkor is just wrong from the start; there isn’t much in the text to brighten his character, much like Sauron.
But what Melkor didn’t realize is that Ilúvatar set the theme of the world’s construction, so when the globes holding the light of the stars fell to the Earth, they buried themselves. “Then came Palúrien, even Kémi the Earth-lady, wife of Aulë, mother of the lord of forests, and she wove spells about those two places, deep enchantments of life and growth and putting forth of leaf, blossoming and yeilding of fruit – but she mingled no word of fading in her song (pg 71).”
Trees began to grow from those lights buried in the Earth, one they named Laurelin and the other Silpion. These trees ended the Gloaming and produced light from their leaves and blossoms until the coming of the Sun and the Moon. Later Tolkien renamed the second tree, changing it from Silpion to Telperion, but this is the earlier iteration of the creation of the Trees of Valinor.
I prefer this iteration to the published version with Yavanna signing the Trees into existence because it ties much more to the legendarium. First, the trees came from the stars and set into the ship that sails the cosmos. Then later, once the first age was coming to a close, we have Eärendil voyaging through the cosmos for all eternity on his ship. There is something poetic about closing the loop to me, which is also what I appreciate about being able to read the earlier stages of Tolkien’s work.
Join me next week as we complete “The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor!”
Blind Read Through: J.R.R. Tolkien; The Two Towers, Re-read
“‘All right!’ he said, ‘Say no more! You have taken no harm, There is no lie in your eyes, as I had feared. But he did not speak long with you. A fool, but an honest fool, you remain, Peregrin Took. Wiser ones might have done worse in such a pass. But mark this! You have been saved, and all your friends too, mainly by good fortune, as it is called. You cannot count on it a second time. If he had questioned you, then and there, almost certainly you would have told all that you know, to the ruin of us all. But he was too eager. But come! I forgive you. Be comforted! Things have not turned out as evilly as they might.'”
Welcome back to another Blind Read! This week we’re back with a bit of a lie, this isn’t quite a Blind Read, but it’s been so long since I’ve read these books it might as well have been!
Before we discuss the books, I want to start by saying how amazed I am at how close the Movies were to the books. After reading them more critically, it is obvious how much the producers revered the core material. The ability to create a new medium that was inclusive of all who did not read the books but to be honest enough to the core material that hardcore fans love is a masterstroke in adaptation.
The only significant difference the movies had was in Fellowship because they took out the entire Tom Bombadil sequence (rightly so). Still, even then, I’ve seen deleted scenes where the hobbits get swallowed up by Old Willow. We’ll cover the differences in The Two Towers below, but we also dive more into the world’s lore.
The first thing I’d like to mention is Treebeard and the Ents. The movie played up his slowness and mistrust, and where many lines are taken directly from the text, Treebeard was not very slow to action speaking of page count. Yes, he does suspect Merry and Pippin of being Orcs at first, but he quickly decides they aren’t. He then calls the council of Ents, and within a few pages, they choose to mount an attack on Orthanc. Again, the movie drew it out for drama, but the book had these events happening quickly.
However, the biggest oddity I noticed in the book was a seeming discrepancy between The Silmarillion and The Two Towers. When speaking of his race, Treebeard (also known as Fangorn) says the Elves created Ents. However, later in the book Gandalf (also known as Mithrandir, but more on that later) tells the remaining Fellowship that Fangorn is the oldest living creature on Middle-earth (remember that Elves, Vala, Maiar, and even Dwarves were created on Valinor). Tom Bombadil verifies this statement in The Fellowship of the Ring. I stopped and thought about this before I could move on because I know that Tolkien re-wrote much of the history and was still in his re-writes while writing The Lord of the Rings, but was there a discrepancy this bold?
I decided to go back and do some digging to figure it out.
Returning to The Silmarillion, I verified that Yavanna (the Vala who was the “lover of all things that grew in the earth”) created Ents as part of her music theme. Part of her reason for doing so was because of other creations, such as the Dwarves (who were created but kept at rest for many years). Yavanna feared the trees themselves would not have a means of protecting themselves against the push of other creatures’ industrial nature (something that echoes Tolkien himself), so she made the Ents to be shepherds and protectors of the trees and forests. Tolkien even had an early iteration where he called them Tree Ents because the word Ent was derived from the Old English word Eoten, meaning Giant, so they were Tree Giants meant to protect. Tolkien seeds this in The Fellowship of the Ring when Samwise relays a story from his cousin Hal, who saw a “treelike giant” north of the shire. This anecdote was Tolkien’s way of seeding their entrance into the books.
So we know that Yavanna created the Ents – why then does Treebeard say that they were a creation of the Elves? Looking back at the text, one can see where I went wrong. The Ents and Entwives were creatures of the earth, and where they were sentient, they couldn’t communicate with other animals. They were meant solely to be of and for nature, so Treebeard says that the Elves taught them to speak Elvish and opened their minds to interact with other sentient creatures. The Elves brought the Ents to life; they didn’t create them.
I could go on and on about Ents and make it their own essay, but since this is about a re-read of The Two Towers, I want to dig into a few other short items.
The first is Gandalf. In The Fellowship of the Ring, he is of the gray order of the Istari (Maiar wizards), but because of his fall against the Balrog in that first book, he came back as an Istari of the White order, which is one of the most powerful, second only to the Black Order. This book teaches that the Istari are immortal like their masters, the Valar. Gandalf returned as a white-order Istari because of the power vacuum of Saruman, who abandoned his order for power. Saurman did not specifically side with Sauron (which we learn in The Silmarillion). Still, the Palantir corrupted him enough that he thought he could become the most powerful being in Middle-earth.
It isn’t until Gandalf returns that the party nearly ceases calling him by his common “gray” name, Gandalf. Instead, once he takes up the white mantle, most characters call him Mithrandir for the remainder of the series.
Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up what confused me the most when I read through the books before reading The Silmarillion—the Dúnedain and Aragorn’s lineage.
Throughout this book, there are constant references to Elendil and Eärendil, but I didn’t know who those people were other than they were Aragorn’s ancestors. Having that foreknowledge made the events and exposition of the story that much more lush and meaningful. It adds weight to Aragorn’s decisions and makes him a more dynamic character. Upon the first read, much of his character felt very one note and much more severe than was necessary. Still, after getting the history behind his lineage, one can genuinely feel the dynamics at play and the choices he must make as he forges his way to coming back to be King of the world of Men.
Come back next week as we continue “The Music of the Ainur” in the Book of Lost Tales!
Blind Read Through: J.R.R. Tolkien; The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1, The Music of the Ainur part 2
“Through him has pain and misery been made in the clash of overwhelming musics; and with confusion of sound and have cruelty, and ravening, and darkness, loathly mire and all putrescence of thought or thing, foul mists and violent flame, cold without mercy, been born, and death without hope. Yet is this through him and not by him; and he shall see, and ye all likewise, and even shall those beings, who must now dwell among his evil and endure through Melko misery and sorry, terror and wickedness, declare in the end that it redoundeth only to my great glory, and doth but make the theme more worth the hearing, Life more worth the living, and the World so much the more wonderful and marvellous, that of all the deeds of Ilùvatar it shall be called his mightiest and his loveliest (pg 55).”
Welcome back to another Blind Read! This week we delve into the philosophy of Tolkien as we review “The Music of the Ainur,” the second chapter of The Book of Lost Tales.
Tolkien himself was a deeply religious and highly intellectual man. He surrounded himself with others of all opinions (see his writing group The Inklings, which included C.S. Lewis), and at the forefront of his mind was an anthropologic focus on the world. This curiosity of how the world works is what created the fantasy world we all respect so much.
This chapter, in particular, is about how Ilùvatar (God in this iteration) created the world through his Angels, which he named Valar.
Rúmil tells the story to Eriol and begins his tale by saying, “Before all things he sang into being the Ainur first, the greatest is thier power and glory of all his creatures within the world and without (pg 52).”
This passage marks Ilúvatar as a great creator. There is nothing closer to authentic Christianity than this first chapter, as it shows Ilúvatar’s great power and ability of forethought and humility.
Rúmil goes on, “Upon a time Ilúvatar propounded a mighty design of his heart to the Ainur, unfolding a history whose vastness and majesty had never been equalled by aught that he had related before, and the glory of it’s beginning and the splendour of its end amazed the Ainur, so that they bowed before Ilúvatar and were speechless (pg 53).”
Thus enters the theme of Predestination. Ilúvatar creates a concept that has a beginning and an end. But for such a grand creator, that is not satisfactory because there is no surprise in the world, no joy in watching the events of his grand scheme unfold. To counter this problem, Ilúvatar tells his Angels (they are interchangeably called Ainur and Valar), “It is my desire now that ye make a great and glorious music and a signing of this theme; and (seeing that I have taught you much and set brightly the Secret Fire within you) that ye exercise your minds and powers in adorning the theme to your own thoughts and devising (pg 53).”
Ilúvatar allows the Vala to create the middle of his great tale with their own “secret fire.” We learned in The Silmarillion (and to a lesser extent here) that the Vala all have their own minds, and they all have their passions. This is what the secret fire is, a passion for seeing something created, which is mirrored in Tolkien himself as he created the world of Middle-earth. That is not to say that Tolkien thought himself a god, or even to the level of the Valar, but he saw it as his duty to show that there was great beauty in the world. He wanted to elicit this emotion from people because of his experiences in the Great War. Let me explain:
“Yet sat Ilúvatar and hearkened till the music reached a depth of gloom and ugliness unimaginable; then did he smile sadly and raised his left hand, and immediatly, thoguh none clearly knew how, a new theme began among the clash, like and yet unlike the first, and it gathered power and sweetness (pg 54).”
This passage shows both the power and the weakness of the Valar, which in turn displays just how human they were. Which makes sense because we, as people, are the antecedents of the Angels. Humans are called Ilúvatar’s second children (after the Elves). The Valar wanted to create something with the same power as Ilúvatar, but they became despondent when things turned dark, and their grand theme became black with peril.
Indeed it was Melkor, later called the Dark Lord and master of Sauron, who saw this darkness and believed it was the only way to the end of the story.
“Mighty are the Ainur, and glorious, and among them is Melko the most powerful in knowledge (pg 54).”
Tolkien believed there was a balance to the world, making Predestination possible. Each Valar had their power or strength; Ulmo had control over water, Manwë had power over the air (The great eagles which bore Gandalf away from Orthanc and Frodo and Sam away from Mount Doom were agents of Manwë), and Aulë had control of the earth. But it was Melkor who had the greatest knowledge, and what Tolkien learned in World War I was that one could have a perception of darkness or a general concept of pain, but until you have the experience, you never really have knowledge of it.
Knowledge equals pain, which is a prime theme in Tolkien’s work. That may seem particularly depressing, but you cannot appreciate the most glorious mornings until you see the darkest of nights (this echoes in Sam’s speech at the end of The Two Towers. “They were holding on to something…”). Ilúvatar created Melkor to have the knowledge and sing about that knowledge which fostered despair in the world, but he could do nothing to change it. He became the Dark Lord because once the Children of Ilúvatar were created, they received gifts to experience the world’s joys and perils, whereas Melkor could only see troubles and darkness.
The Eldar were given long life and foresight that they would live to see the end of all time, which made them happier than humans. But to humans, Ilúvatar gave the gift of death.
Doesn’t it seem like much of a gift? Well, it harkens back to the question of knowledge. If you knew your time was short, you would live a more extraordinary life, a life filled with great pain and great joy, rather than being stuck in the middle and being “emotionless” as the Elves were.
This ability to have great highs and lows was specifically why Ilúvatar sang Melkor (also known as Morgoth) into existence. He knew what the Valar would do, but also knew it was necessary for a full experience of the world.
Come back next week for a recap and reread of “The Two Towers!”
Blind Read Through: J.R.R. Tolkien; The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1, Chapter 2: The Music of the Ainur
“Then slept Eriol, and through his dreams there came a music thinner and more pure than any he heard before, and it was full of longing. Indeed it was as if pipes of silver or flutes of shape most slender-delicate uttered crystal notes and threadlike harmonies beneath the upon upon the lawns; and Eriol longed in his sleep for he knew not what (pg 46).”
Welcome back to another Blind Read! This week we head back to The Book of Lost Tales and tackle Chapter Two’s opening, “The Music of the Ainur.” Christopher added something new to this chapter from the notes of this father and the result sheds light on the meaning of the chapter. When he began writing Eriol’s story, Tolkien created a transitional piece between the beginning of the story of the Ainur and The Cottage of Lost Play. We’ll be covering that transitional piece this week because there is so much in it that warrants discussion before we move on!
Before we get too far into it, I want to delve a little deeper into the difference between Gnomes and Elves, which has been a strange adjustment because I wasn’t sure if Tolkien was calling all Elves (otherwise known as Eldar) Gnomes or if it was only Noldor (also known as Noldori) Elves. Part of the confusion comes in because of all the different names involved.
Tolkien wanted the world to be lush and complete, but because of who he was and his background, Worldbuilding to Tolkien didn’t mean delving into culture, landscape, or image. Instead, to Tolkien, what made people unique was how they communicated, meaning language. Thus, the language and the beings who utilized this language changed through his world’s creation.
For example, the Teleri later become the Vanyar, The Noldoli (Gnomes) later become the Noldor, and the Solosimpi later become the Teleri. Why did he make all of these changes? Because of language.
The perfect example of this is what we began with: Gnomes. The word Gnomes brings to mind that small bearded garden variety with red pointy hats. I’m sure at some point in the writing of this epic; an editor approached Tolkien who mentioned that that word did not elicit that “They were a race high and beautiful… They were tall, fair of skin and grey-eyed, though their locks were dark, save in the golden house of Finrod (pg 44).” (just to be clear we are explicitly talking about the Gnomes or Noldor Elves. Christopher goes out of his way to make sure that is clear: “Thus these words describing characters of face and hair were written of the Noldor only, and not of all the Eldar… (Pg 44)“
So why did Tolkien call them Gnomes? Yep, you guessed it. Language! “I have sometimes used ‘Gnomes’ for Noldor and ‘Gnomish’ for Noldorin. This I did, for whatever Paracelsus may have thought (if indeed he invented the name) to some ‘Gnome’ will still suggest knowledge.”
In Greek, gnome meant thought or intelligence. Which then translated into words such as gnomic or gnostic. When Tolkien mentions Paracelsus, he refers to the 16th-century writer who used gnome as a synonym for pygmaeus, which means “earth-dweller.”
Tolkien was trying to establish that the Noldor were intelligent creatures who understood how the world worked. But he was also trying to create a distinction between the Noldor and the Valar. The two types of beings were almost interchangeable because they were both created by Ilúvatar.
At the beginning of this interlude, Eriol asks for clarification (Tolkien’s way of trying to clarify it himself): “Still there are many things that remain dark to me. Indeed I would fain to know who be these Valar; are they the Gods?” to which Lindo responds “So they be (pg 45).” And yet later, when describing gnomes, “nor might one say if he were fifty of ten thousand (pg 46).”
So he creates differences through the use of language. Both from the meaning of their names and the languages they speak. These themes also carry over into The Lord of the Rings because everyone has their distinct dialect, from Rohan to Gondor, from The High Elves of Rivendell to the woodland elves in Lothlórien. Here on Tol Eressëa, “there is that tongue to which the Noldoli cling yet – and aforetime the Teleri, the Solosimpi, and the Inwir had all their differences (pg 48).”
Language was a big theme in this introduction to make sure the reader understands what they are getting themselves into, but there are two other themes Tolkien stamps down, which carry over into all of his other writing; dreams and music.
All of these things are interconnected, and I chose the quote to open up this essay because it holds the essential themes Tolkien has brought into this tale.
If we remember from the first chapter (or go back and read it here), Eriol is a human of modern times. He travels and finds his way to Tol Eressëa, and he is a means to an end to tell the story of the beginning of time and the first age. What I find particularly interesting is that Tolkien intended there to be a “dream bridge” between Tol Eressëa and the rest of the world. So that outsiders could not find it while awake, and their knowledge of the isle would fade upon waking as dreams do; but dreams also leave us with subconscious memory, and feeling that stick with us, though we don’t remember details.
This intermittent chapter begins with Eriol heading to a room and falling asleep, and in that sleep, “came a music thinner and more pure than any he had heard before (pg 46).”
The Music of the Ainur, which we will get more into next week, is how the Valar (also known as Ainur) created the world. Their music brought into being plants, animals, and earth, as well as emotion and consciousness. This “pure music” is what Eriol hears in his mind as he sleeps. It is not the sound as it was when it created the world, but Tol Eressëa is so close to the center of everything that it echoes what came before. He hears the music of creation, and he doesn’t consciously recognize it, but he subconsciously melds into it.
I also find it interesting that he falls asleep and delves into dreams directly before being told the tale. Could it be that the entirety of The Book of Lost Tales is told through the Music of the Ainur while Eriol is sleeping?
Let’s see if we find out next week as we begin the Music of the Ainur!
Blind Read Through; The Fellowship of the Ring, revisited
“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken
The crownless again shall be king.”
Welcome back to another Blind Read! This week we take a nostalgic step backward and revisit an old classic, “The Fellowship of the Ring!” Though this is not quite a Blind Read, but it has been years since I’ve read these books. Years ago I remember reading them in preparation for watching the movies as they came out in the theater, so “some things that should not be forgotten, were lost” as it were.
I want to start this week by saying how much I missed when reading the books. They are jam-packed with history and I’m amazed at how well the novels were accepted at the time of publication because there is so much more you gain by reading the Silmarillion, which was published years after the original books were, and posthumously to boot. This time around the world seems so much more alive and complete than the first time because there is so much context present, just not explained. The world of Middle-earth is considerably more complex than the simple Hero’s Journey I had understood when I first read through it. But we’ll get into this in a minute.
In this essay, we’re only going to cover “The Fellowship of the Ring” as I’m going back through and re-reading the Lord of the Rings to gain a renewed experience after reading through the Silmarillion. Tolkien (according to his son and editor, Christopher) initially wanted to publish The Silmarillion in conjunction with The Lord of the Rings, and I can now understand why.
I remember reading the books some twenty years ago and being confused and turned off by the constant name-dropping and song, which didn’t make sense to me. I had no context to understand who Beren was, what Gondolin was, or why I should care about Eärendel. What I was missing was how full these details made the world of Middle-earth. There was a lush history beneath the surface, and I just hadn’t been privy to it to understand how that history created the world in which the characters lived. It truly makes all the difference.
The beginning of the novel has much the same charm as The Hobbit. It is evident that Tolkien had a much larger story in mind, but early on, the prose is more attuned to the “Children’s story” that was The Hobbit. It’s not until Tom Bombadil that that theme begins to change.
I remember hating Tom when I first read the books because, by his nature, he was always happy and highly overpowered. He and his wife dance around and make merry while some grave tidings are happening in the world, which is a significant call back to how Tolkien wrote The Hobbit. But the brilliance of this section of the book marks a change in the tone. Tom represents the last time in these books that the Hobbits needed rescuing when they don’t try to save themselves. In every other conflict in these books, after this point, the hobbits fight. Of course, they are outmatched at times as they need assistance, but against the Barrow Wight, they only wait for a savior instead of trying to do something about it.
Tom saves them and sends them on their way, and it’s at that point the merry-making and song end. Yes, there are many songs in the book beyond Tom’s section, but their tone is somber, and if you understand the history, they call back to the previous record and why the world has become what it has become. It even covers characters’ motivations, Like Aragorn, when he recites the Lay of Beren and Lúthien.
Later, when they get to the Council of Elrond, Tom Bombadil comes up again. They talk about potentially giving him the One Ring to protect it because he is so old and powerful. It seemed ridiculous when I originally read it, but after reading about the Valar and how they stayed out of the affairs of the Children (Men and Elves) it makes much more sense that they would try to get one of those powerful beings to protect it.
I was hoping to get more of a history of Bombadil in The Silmarillion, but how the Council spoke of him leads me to believe that he truly may be one of the Valar because of how he is described as too old and too powerful to care about the One Ring. If it was left in his care, he might forget about it or lose it. Gandalf, Saruman, and Sauron are all Maiar, so even beings of that power are indebted to, and scared of, the Ring’s strength. So Bombadil has to be one of the Valar who decided to stay on Middle-earth.
I look forward to reading his book (“The Adventures of Tom Bombadil”) when I get to it in the histories.
Bombadil doesn’t appear in the rest of the books, which leads me to believe that this was a transitional period in the novels. Tolkien wanted to keep his readership from the Hobbit, but he wanted to transition into something more meaningful and bold.
It isn’t until we reach Gandalf dying in Moria that the books finally feel much more realistic. The tone of the books shifts; the lays they recite are more lamentations than happy-go-lucky ditties that Tom Bombadil recites. The book shifts from a fun “children’s story” to a natural history of Middle-earth.
Elements of the Silmarillion are spread throughout the ending, but the stories they tell are direr and more immediate than what comes at the beginning. Tolkien does a masterful shift in the narrative from “Concerning Hobbits” to the “Breaking of the Fellowship,” We are left with desperation and an overwhelming desire to find out what happens to our friends in the next book.
As I mentioned above, when I read these books the first time I thought the whole point was to have a Hero’s journey, much like Joseph Cambell describes (though that is probably a whole series of essays to do at a later time). What we actually get is a wholly formed world. A World that is almost a character in and of itself. The characters are adding to that world and that history, but the book is not solely about them. It’s more about how their actions form the history of the world and not the other way around. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that has such a deep and realized history before, and I have to say I’m enjoying Tolkien like I never had previously.
Join me next week as we jump back into the Book of Lost Tales, part 1, and review “The Music of the Ainur.”
Blind Read Through: J.R.R. Tolkien; The Book of Lost Tales Part 1, The Cottage of Lost Play Commentary
“I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of it’s own (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality I sought, and found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands. There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish (which greatly affected me); but nothing English, save impoverished chap-book stuff (pg 22).“
Welcome back to another Blind Read! This week we delve into the commentary of Christopher and hear from Tolkien himself about the meaning behind the tale and why he told it.
Last week we touched on Tolkien’s feelings about the mythology of his native England. The quote above is from a letter he sent to his friend Milton Waldman, where he states he felt that there were no real fairy tales originating out of England. So “the primary intention of his work was to satisfy his desire for a specifically and recognizably English literature of ‘faerie’ (pg 22).”
The idea of an old world filled with creatures great and small that was a precursor to our modern world swirled in his mind. In the beginning, “The story of Eriol, the mariner, was central to my father’s (Tolkien) original conception of the mythology (pg 22).“
The concept was to have Eriol find his way to a land of Faerie and learn some lost or archaic knowledge, which he would then report to the reader. This form is still in this “Book of Lost Tales.”
Tolkien started his (metaphoric) journey into Middle-earth with the basis in one of the oldest stories ever told – Beowulf.
This may seem strange because Beowulf has more history related to the Danes, but the first known translation of Beowulf is in Old English. Tolkien came to love the story because he was a linguist and one of his projects was to translate the tale from Old English. He took particular notice of the character Hengest, a sailor, traveler, and hero to the Thanes. Though Hengest only had a small appearance in Beowulf, Tolkien took notice. Again it was the language that garnered his interest, and we know this because Hengest and his brother Horsa’s names roughly translate to Stallion and Horse, respectively.
When Tolkien began to write his tales, not just translate those of others, he created Eriol; however, his original name was Ottor, and he used an old English name that meant wanderer. His father was Eoh which meant horse (of which he took from Hengest), and he had a very Cain and Abel relationship with his brother, Beorn. That name may sound familiar to those who read The Hobbit, as Beorn was the shapechanger.
Tolkien uses some Germanic, Finnish, Danish, and Ole English names to evolve his language, which eventually became Elvish (though at the time of writing these “Lost Tales,” he called it Gnomish). The evolution of the tale coincided with the development of the language.
Christopher spells it out in the commentary, and it makes perfect sense. “But in the earliest conception he was not an Englishman of England: England in the sense of the land of the English did not yet exist; for the cardinal fact of this conception is that the Elvish isle to which Eriol came was England – that is to say, Tol Eressëa would become England, the land of the English, at the end of the story. Koromas or Kortirion, the town in the centre of Tol Eressëa to which Eriol comes in The Cottage of Lost Play, would become in after days Warwick [and in elements Kor- and War- were etymologically connected] (pg 24-25).“
So it could be possible that in Tolkien’s mind, Eriol was a Dane of the line of Hengest who went traveling for adventure and happened upon a strange land that would eventually be called England but was then called Tol Eressëa. He came upon it with surprise because it hadn’t been there previously, because Ulmo, the Valar who most loved Man (read that as humans), moved the island of Tol Eressëa from the bottom of the ocean. It’s possible Ulmo did this because of his love of Man, enabling Eriol to discover it so he could propagate the Lost Tales.
The difficulty with that is Tol Eressëa was an island just off the coast of Valinor, so how could Eriol travel to Tol Eressëa and not see or experience Valinor?
Because Tolkien created a unique device that has become a staple in most modern Fantasy, from Robert Jordan to Terry Goodkind. The Dream World.
Tolkien called it Olórë Mallë, otherwise known as the Path of Dreams. “After the description of the Hiding of Valinor, it is told that at the bidding of Manwë (who looked on the event in sorrow) the Valar Oromë and Lórien’s devising was Olórë Mallë, the Path of Dreams; by this road, when ‘Men were yet but new-wakened on the earth’, ‘the children of the fathers of the fathers of Men’ came to Valinor in their sleep (pg 27).”
Men could gain access to Valinor at the bidding of the Valar by dreaming, so why couldn’t Eriol get the stories from the Valar instead of The Cottage? I see two different reasons. One is the nature of dreams; when we dream, we tend to forget details when we wake, and the second is The Valar wanted to remain hidden. Also, if they could have everyone coming to Valinor through the dream journey, it would upset the balance of the Music of the Ainur.
It is the Children on Tol Eressëa who use Olórë Mallë the most often. When Eriol comes to the Cottage, they are all sleeping, and it takes a gong to wake them. I’d propose they are communing with the Valar and gaining power, morals, and purpose, which gets syamped into their being, though they forget about the communion upon waking.
Remember that Eriol’s father was one of these children at one point, so it would stand to reason why he felt called towards Tol Eressëa and the Cottage in the first place.
Though most of this is conjecture (much of which on my part), it makes sense, especially because “The ‘Eriol-story’ is among the knottiest and most obscure matters in the history of Middle-earth and Aman.“
Christopher goes on to say, “Those ideas can indeed be discerned from his notes; but the notes were for the most part pencilled at furious speed, the writing now rubbed and faint and in places after long study scarcely decipherable…(pg 23).”
Join me next week as well take a step back and review “The Fellowship of the Rings” and unveil and few surprises!
Blind Read Through: J.R.R. Tolkien; The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1, The Cottage of Lost Play
“Then said Lindo: ‘Of what shall the tales be tonight? Shall they be of the Great Lands, and of the dwellings of Men; of the Valar and Valinor; of the West and its mysteries, of the East and its glory, of the South and its untrodden wilds, of the North and its power and strength; or of this island and its folk; or of the old days of Kôr where our folk once dwelt? For that this night we entertain a guest, a man of great and excellent travel, a son meseems of Eärendel, shall it be of voyaging, of beating about in a boat, of winds and the sea (pg 18).”
Welcome back to another Blind Read! This week we begin The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1, with the first chapter, “The Cottage of Lost Play.”
This week we begin to see the history of Middle-earth through a story-telling lens. The book begins with a traveler, “a man of great curiosity, was by desire of strange lands and the ways and dwellings of unaccustomed folk brought in a ship as far west even as the Lonely Island, Tol Eressëa in the fairy speech, but in which the Gnomes call Dor Faidwen, the Land of Release, and a great tale hangs thereto (pg 13).“
This “man of great curiosity” is a man from England named Eriol, and he is the basis for all that comes after in this precursor to The Silmarillion.
Tolkien intended for the history of Middle-earth to intersect with our age, and this first section seems to be proof of that. Beyond the fact that the way Tolkien describes Eriol, it does seem as though he is representing himself. After all, Eriol learns the history of Middle-earth, and it would stand to reason that if Middle-earth was our world, Tolkien was only passing on the oral history of what he had “learned.”
That may not make sense right off the bat, so let’s break things down a little.
This chapter is about Eriol traveling from England to Tol Eressëa, an island off the coast of Valinor where the Teleri Elves lived. When Eriol gets to the island, he finds a small cottage in a field owned by a couple named Lindo and Vairë.
“Small is the dwelling, but smaller still are they that dwell here – for all who enter must be very small indeed, or of their own good wish to become as very little folk even as they stand upon the threshold (pg 14).“
Knowing that Eriol is an Englishman (despite that he seems to be from the Middle Ages), we see that Middle-earth is connected with our world, and the histories held within are our histories.
Indeed Tolkien even calls Eriol “a son of Eärendel (pg 13).” If you remember your Silmarillion history, Eärendil was the son of Tuor, a man and cousin of Turin Turambar and Idril of the Noldor of Gondolin. He eventually wed Elwing, who gave birth to Elros, who chose to be a man and became the ancestor of the Númenoreans. She also gave birth to Elrond, who we all know.
Tolkien isn’t calling Eriol Eärendel’s direct son but a descendant of him, proving that both our world and the world of Middle-earth are the same.
Lindo and Vairë, however, seem to be descendants of the shire folk, with their kindness and manners. They also are descendants of the Valar, as “He was of Aulë’s kindred (pg 16).“
They invite Eriol into their house, and soon there is a sound of a gong; “That is the voice of Tombo, the Gong of the Children (pg 15.).” The Gong calls the Children in from playing to come and listen to “the telling of tales (pg 15).”
Soon the tiny Cottage was regaled with the tales, and this is how we learn the history of Middle-earth – as it’s portrayed to Eriol.
But why did Eriol happen upon this Cottage? It was not a mistake:
“It had long, said he, been a tradition in our kindred that one of our father’s fathers would speak of a fair house and magic gardens, of a wonderous town, and of a music full of all beauty and longing (pg 20).“
The children who sat around at night would listen to these tales and eventually leave the island and the Cottage. These were the children of the Noldori and the Teleri (at this point, Tolkien was calling Gnomes. I’m not sure when he switched to Elves.), but they were descendants of Eärendel, which is who spawned the human race as we know it now.
Tolkien was a historian and linguist who was fascinated with how different cultures had similar roots. The origin of this Book of lost Tales was to explore these roots. The Lord of the Rings hadn’t blossomed in his mind (made apparent by his usage of Gnomes in this early iteration), and he wrote this chapter to explain this origin.
The Children who gathered around to hear these tales at Tol Eressëa became the people who started the different cultures which would eventually become our world. Tolkien even stamps that theory in the second to last paragraph, spoken by Eriol:
“Now these are tidings sad and yet good to hear, and I remember me or certain words that my father spake in my early boyhood. It had long, said he, been a tradition in our kindred that one of our father’s fathers would speak of a fair house and magic gardens, or a wonderous town, and of a music full of all beauty and longing – and these things he said he had seen and heard as a child, though how and where was not told (pg 20).“
Eriol’s father had left the island of Tol Eressëa. He remembered the stories, customs, and language, but he could remember nothing of the island itself. The Valar had hidden the island, and all that left it were doomed to forget about it.
They created an oral tradition formed into the Germanic languages and tales of North Western Europe. This also explains how the majority of the Hobbit and the beginning of The Lord of the Rings had so many songs and poems. Tolkien was trying to show how real the world was by including an oral tradition in story.
Tolkien’s purpose for telling these tales, even The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, was to explain why these traditions existed. Not only the language, which everyone assumes is why he created the history, but of the practices and mythologies of the region.
Join me next week as we delve deeper into “The Cottage of Lost Play” with Christopher’s Commentary!
Blind Read Through: J.R.R. Tolkien; The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1, Introduction
“As has now been fully recorded, my father greatly desired to publish ‘The Silmarillion’ together with The Lord of the Rings. I say nothing of it’s practicability at the time, nor do I make any guesses at the subsequent fate of such a much longer combined work, quadrilogy or tetralogy, or at the different courses that my father might then have taken – for the further development of ‘The Silmarillion’ itself, the history of the Elder Days, would have been arrested (pg 5).“
Welcome back to another Blind Read! We shift gears a little this week now that the Silmarillion is finished and jump into The Book of Lost Tales.
This week I wanted to review the Introduction, but in doing so, I wanted to check Christopher Tolkien’s words (John’s son and the editor of all of Tolkien’s estate since the publication of The Lord of the Rings). So this week will be a combination of analysis and opinion, even more so than any previous essay I have posted.
I’m going to cover two distinct points Christopher covers in the Introduction (there is more there, but for the purposes and desires of this blog, this is the focus). First, the difficulty of ‘The Silmarillion’ and John’s earlier works, and the novelistic approach versus the historical method through the evolution of ‘The Silmarillion’ from its earlier iterations versus Christopher’s edited publication. This last point is the tread that will bring us through the rest of the book and beyond.
“The Silmarillion is commonly said to be a ‘difficult’ book, needing explaination and guidance on how to ‘approach’ it; and in this it is contrasted to The Lord of the Rings (pg 1).“
In this quote, Christopher is saying what everyone else is already thinking; this is why I chose to do a Blind Read with these books because they are notoriously tricky. The Silmarillion begins with a story similar to the Book of Genesis, which was difficult to swallow after concluding one of the most popular stories in generations. “This produced a sense of outrage – in one case formulated to me in the words ‘It’s like the Old Testament’ (pg 2)!”
Which this book is – at the beginning. Once Tolkien moves beyond the archaic origins of the beings and the world of Ëa, the language softens a bit because it becomes more attuned to exposition instead of an elegiac homily.
I contend that it’s Christopher who makes the language so difficult. He is the son of a language professor and is part of the English academic elite. His language is not the same as the language of the masses, which made the book (even when “stories are being told” like Beren and Luthien) considerably more difficult, as opposed to Tolkien’s The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings.
That being said, we get an introduction to the original vision of the history of Middle-earth in “The Book of Lost Tales.”
“The letter of 1963 quoted above shows my father pondering the mode in which the legends of the Elder Days might be presented. The original mode, that of The Book of Lost Tales, in which a Man, Eriol, comes after a great voyage over the ocean to the island where the Elves dwell and learns their history from their own lips, had (by degrees) fallen away (pg 5).”
Tolkien wanted to tell his history, but he knew the difficulty of writing it as a historical book instead of a novelistic approach. But it was the novelistic approach with which he started. Tolkien began writing his histories before anything else (and the myth that the language developed and the book written to display that language is a misnomer. In the development of The Book of Lost Tales, we see the evolution of that language as he develops it over time.) in 1917. Tolkien wrote the history as if it were an oral tradition, which would alleviate some of the dry and dull exposition needed. It would stop the feeling of it reading “like the Old Testament (pg 2).“
So instead of a dry history, we get the Human, Eriol, traveling to the Cottage of Lost Play and meeting Elves (they were Gnomes in 1917, though still called Noldor) who gather around a fire, much like you would expect Hobbits to do and regale Eriol with their story.
That makes The Book of Lost Tales interesting, even though it is a rehashing of The Silmarillion. We get to see the evolution of the design and approach of the work and how Christopher decided to edit it and publish it after his father’s death.
Christopher mentions that his father wanted this story told. The fact that we have so much material that calls back to The Lord of the Rings proves that Tolkien wrote to make the world whole. To be more than what Christopher calls “the mise-en-scéne of the story (pg 7),” Tolkien wanted people to know that there was history and agency behind the action in the book. That history led the characters to where they are when we pick up the events in The Fellowship of the Ring.
But does Christopher take it too far? On the contrary, it looks to me as though he uses his father’s platform to carve out a space for himself: “There are explorations to be conducted in this world with perfect right quite irrespective of literary-critical considerations; and it is proper to attempt to comprehend its structure in its largest extent, from the myth of its Creation.“
I agree with what Christopher is saying here. If he didn’t take the mantle over, there wouldn’t be The Silmarillion, and the world of Middle-earth would have stopped at The Lord of the Rings. However, what he did by taking things over was indelibly stamp his prejudice on the material.
Would The Silmarillion have been better as a story as it is in The Book of Lost Tales? Would that have garnered a more significant audience if it were a more accessible tale?
These are all questions I hope to get a better answer for through the next couple of books. Both The Book of Lost Tales, part 1 and The Book of Lost Tales, part 2, are the earlier iterations of The Silmarillion through the storytelling perspective. So these Blind Reads will be much more analytical than previous Blogs as we follow the creative process of Tolkien as both he and Christopher work to uncover the definitive history of Middle Earth.
Blind Read Through: J.R.R. Tolkien; The Silmarillion, of The Rings of Power and the Third Age, Conclusion
“In all the days of the Third Age, after the fall of Gil-Galad, Master Elrond abode in Imladris, and he gathered there many Elves, and other folk of wisdom and power from among all the kindreds of Middle-earth, and he preserved through many lives of Men the memory of all that had been fair; and the house of Elrond was a refuge for the weary and oppressed, and a treasury of good councel and wise lore. In that house were harboured the Heirs of Isildur, in childhood and old age, because of the kinship of their blood with Elrond himself, and because he knew in his wisdom that one should come of their line to whom a great part was appointed in the last deeds of that Age. And until that time came the shards of Elendil’s sword were given into the keeping of Elrond, when the days of the Dúnedain darkened and they became a wandering people (pg 296).”
Welcome back to another Blind read! This week we conclude the Silmarillion as Tolkien brings us up to date with the events of “The Lord of the Rings.”
We left off last week finding out how Minas Morgul came into being, and it was there, in the tower of sorcery, the last King of Gondor was held prisoner. He rode to the gates of Minas Morgul and challenged the Morgul lord to single combat but was betrayed and taken captive and never seen again.
From that time forward, the horse lords of Gondor formed the Rohirrim, and the Stewards took over Gondor. These events led to the quote which opens this essay. Tolkien goes on to tell us that of the three Elven Rings of Power, Elrond took the Ring of Sapphire, Galadriel took the Ring of Adamant, and the Red Ring remained hidden, “and none save Elrond and Galadriel and Círdan knew to whom it had been committed (pg 297).”
What the Elves understood was that if someone found the Ruling Ring (otherwise known as the One Ring), then “the powers of the Three must then fail and all things maintained by them must fade, and so the Elves should pass into the twilight and the Dominion of Men begin (pg 297).“
The Elves passing into the twilight is what happens at the end of The Return of the King. The age of Elves had passed, and the ring’s power was gone. Many things didn’t change in the world, but Elves did leave once the One Ring was destroyed.
The only way that could come to pass is if Sauron found the Ring, or if someone else found it and destroyed it. Once Sauron woke and sought the Ring, a war against the Dark Lord was inevitable. But Elves, dwarves, and Men were not alone in their fight against Sauron: “Even as the first shadows were felt in Mirkwood there appeared in the west of Middle-earth the Istari, whom Men called Wizards (pg 298).“
These Wizards were Maiar, second only to the Valar, who sent them to Middle-earth from Valinor to assist in the fight against Sauron. “Chief among them were those whom the Elves called Mithrandir and Curunír, but Men in the North named Gandalf and Saruman (pg 298).“
Radagast was another Istari whom you might remember from The Hobbit movies, who came to Middle-earth at this time. “Radagast was friend of all beasts and birds, but Curunír went most among Men, and he was subtle in speech and skilled in all the devices of smithcraft. Mithrandir was closest in council with Elrond and the Elves (pg 298).“
The shadow continued to grow in Mirkwood, where Sauron returned to Middle-earth from Númenor. Mithrandir (Gandalf) was suspicious and went to Mirkwood and saw the signs, so he called the first White Council, “and therein were Elrond and Galadriel and Círdan, and other lords of the Eldar, and with them were Mithrandir and Curunír (pg 298).“
It was here that Curunír became chief of the council, and he “began to study the lore of the Rings of Power, their making and their history (pg 299).” It is here where Saruman began his fall from grace. The knowledge of the rings, and the study of them, corrupted him.
Gandalf went to Elrond and told him: “This is not one of the Ûliari, as many have long supposed. It is Sauron himself who has taken shape again and now grows apace (pg 299).”
Gandalf called for action against the Dark Lord. He asked that they move against him and try to capture or destroy him before he found the One Ring, “but Curunír spoke agianst him, and councelled them to wait yet and to watch (pg 299).“
They took his council, but they “were troubled, but none as yet percieved that Curunír had turned to dark thoughts and was already a traitor in heart: hor he desired that he and no other should find the Great Ring, so that he might wield it himself and order all the world to his will (pg 299-300).“
Saruman retreated to Isengard, and Elrond predicted to Gandalf that the Ring would be found again, which it was; “by a chance more strange than even Mithrandir had forseen. For it had been taken from Anduin long ere they sought it, being found by one of the small fisher-folk that dwelt by the River, ere the Kings failed in Gondor; and by its finder it was brought beyond search into dark hiding under the roots of the mountains (pg 301).“
Gollum had found the Ring. Tolkien spends the following few paragraphs describing the events of “The Lord of the Rings.”
The book ends with the revelation that Mithrandir “had long guarded the Red Ring of Fire (pg 302).” The third and final Ring of Power, entrusted to the Elves, was eventually given to Gandalf to assist in both hiding it and defeating Sauron.
It was also “in that time the last of the Noldor set sail from the Havens and left Middle-earth for ever. And the latest of all the Keepers of the Three Rings rode to the Sea, and Master Elrond took there the ship that Círdan had made ready. In the twilight of Autumn it sailed out of Mithlond, until the seas of the Bent World fell away beneath it, and the winds of the round sky troubled it no more, and borne upon the high airs above the mists of the world it passed into the Ancient West, and an end was come for the Eldar of story and of song (pg 303).“
It is a beautiful and lyrical ending to a beautiful and lyrical book. There are no better words than Tolkien’s to close out the book.
Join me next week as we jump into “The Book of Lost Tales Volume 1!”
Blind Watch: The Rings of Power; Episode 8, Alloyed
“I leapt from that ship because I believed in my heart that I was not yet worthy of it. I knew that somehow, my task here was not yet complete. And when I surfaced all I could do was swim and pray I had chosen wisely. I did not cross that bitter Ocean, onyl to drown now. And nor will I let you.”
Welcome back to another Blind Watch! This week we conclude The Rings of Power and close up all the messy and misused storylines.
There will be heavy spoilers in this essay, so if you have not watched the episode or show yet, please stop now and head back to Amazon and watch it!
This episode finally reveals who Sauron is as well as one other major character in the mythology.
The show begins by having “the stranger” walking through the woods. He has been exiled from the wandering Hobbits (though they are not called that yet), and the mysterious and dangerous wanderers dressed in all white appear before him and all but tell him he is Sauron. Then, they use out-of-place magic to fool him, but the entire exchange doesn’t make sense.
First, let’s follow along with the show’s storyline and assume that this tall Stranger is, in fact, Sauron (he’s not, and we find out later who he is). It doesn’t make sense that Sauron wouldn’t know who he is at this point in history. He was already in Middle-earth from the end of the First age. The only time in Middle-earth’s history that it would make sense that Sauron might not know who he was (that never happened in any Tolkien I have read) was after the Drowning of Númenor, when he was cast down into the abyss, shed his mortal form and retreated to Barad-dûr. The fact that he shed his human form is the only factor in thinking he might not know who he was, so instantly, we see this Stranger is not Sauron.
What bothers me about this interaction is how lazy the writers were. Why would Sauron’s servants not know who he was? Especially servants who were this powerful in magic? Notwithstanding that there never were any magic users mentioned in Sauron’s entourage, these characters are just a means to an end to show the power of the Stranger and to show who he is, which is an Istari, otherwise known as a Wizard. Namely, this Stranger is who I thought he was all along: Gandalf the Gray.
It is Halbrand who turns out to be Sauron in disguise. I’m a little discouraged that I didn’t catch this sooner, but the writers changed the history so wholly to make it challenging to understand who he was, so I’ll give myself a little grace. Afterall, the whole point of this first season wasn’t to tell a wonderful story about Middle-earth, they wrote it to hide who Sauron was and to make a dramatic reveal.
To met he problem isn’t that Sauron turned out to be Halbrand. Sauron did, after all, disguise himself to influence the making of the Rings of Power. In the Silmarillion, he disguises himself as Annatar, the Lord of Gifts, to control the Noldor Elves and influence them create the rings in the first place.
Elrond and Gil-Galad suspected Annatar was not who he said he was, so he left Lindon and went to Eregion, where they crafted the Rings. But, unfortunately, while they were making all the Rings of Power (not just the three for the Elves), Sauron retreated to Mount Doom and created the One Ring to rule them.
So the fact that the showrunners decided to change Sauron’s disguise from Annatar to Halbrand is acceptable. My problem comes in with how they introduced and framed him. Sauron is a master of deception, so much so, that he destroyed two different empires with influence alone (meaning that he didn’t raise an army against them).
But why was Sauron stranded on a raft? Do the showrunners want us to believe that he foresaw Galadriel jumping off her boat and swimming to a broken-down ship in the middle of the sea? And even if that was the case, there are far easier ways for him to ingratiate himself within the Elven culture.
Having Halbrand come up with such a soft cover as “King of the Southlands,” which was so easy to figure out “bloodline was broken,” is unlike Sauron. It makes him seem weak and lazy, which he is not.
Not to mention that there never was a human king in Middle-earth before Númenor. They were all traveling bands who were subjects of the Elven Kings.
The whole point of the entire show wasn’t to make an incredible Lord of the Rings show, but to hide the information about who Sauron was so they could have that reveal in the last episode. All the character’s motivations were to hide who he was, all the action was to hide who he was, and all the plot was to conceal Sauron’s true identity. I don’t mind that the showrunners wanted to change history, however, it doesn’t thrill me. The fact that they very obviously sat around a writing room and said they wanted the final reveal to be who Gandalf is and who Sauron is, then framed the rest of the show around that is just lazy.
This is why people don’t like the show. It’s not necessarily how they changed history because, without a doubt, this story is different from Tolkien’s. It’s not the show’s visuals because the special effects are spectacular. It’s how the writers decided that one event was enough to drive eight episodes. It’s how they took away the agency of every character to fit in with some big reveal (which was pretty lackluster).
I’m not sure if I’ll be watching the second season, if and when it comes out, but it’s no longer a Tolkien show, so there will not be another Blind Watch covering the events if there does turn out to be a second season.
Thank you all for reading, and join me next week as we complete The Silmarillion!
Blind Read Through: J.R.R. Tolkien; The Silmarillion, Of The Rings of Power and the Third Age, Part 3
“Thus the Exiles of Númenor established their realms in Arnor and in Gondor; but ere many years had passed it became manifest that their enemy, Sauron, had also returned. He came in secret, as has been told, to his ancient kingdom of Mordor beyond Ephel Dúath, the Mountains of Shadow, and that country marched with Gondor upon the east. There above the valley of Gorgoroth was built his fortress vast and strong, Barad-dûr, the Dark Tower; and there was a fiery mountain in that land that the Elves named Orodruin. Indeed for that reason Sauron had not set there his dwelling long before, for he used the fire that welled there from the heart of the earth in his sorceries and in his forging; and in the midst of the Land of Mordor he had fashioned the Ruling Ring (pg 290-291).“
Welcome back to another Blind Read! This week we learn about the rise of Sauron and the beginnings of the downfall of the Númenórean lineage.
We left off last time learning how Isildur and Anárion built some of the most significant structures of Middle-earth, and we pick up this time realizing that “the malice of the Eye of Sauron few even of the great among Elves and Men could endure. (pg 291)“
We learn from the opening quote that Sauron took up residence in Mordor. He gathered great strength, recruited and bred servants, and expanded his empire beyond the firey mountain Orodruin; “and perceiving that Sauron had returned, the Númenóreans named that mountain anew Amon Amarth, which is Mount Doom. (pg 291)“
Sauron then used that great force to attack and sack Minas Ithil, “and he destroyed the White Tree of Isiluder that grew there (pg291).”
Isildur fled with a seedling of that great tree for a second time in his life and sought his father. Meanwhile, his brother held Osgiliath and drove Sauron back into the mountains, but “Anárion knew that unless help should come his kingdom would not long stand (pg 291).”
Elendil and Gil-Galad met with each other to come up with a strategy against this new Dark Lord. They decided that the only chance the people of Middle-earth had against his tyranny was to unite and make a stand. “Therefore they made that League which is called the Last Alliance (pg 292).“
Tolkien gives us two short paragraphs describing the events of this battle that rent the world. Every race had members on both sides, except the Elves, making it a struggle of kith and kin.
Gil-galad and Elendil fought valiantly and pushed Sauron back into Mordor, laying siege to his stronghold for seven long years. During these seven years in the fields of Gorgoroth, Anárion, Elendil’s son and Isildur’s brother died in battle. But it wasn’t until the last siege that Sauron himself came out to fight against his enemy, and “he wrestled with Gil-Galad and Elendil, and they both were slain, and the sword of Elendil broke under him as he fell. But Sauron also was thrown down, and with the hilt-shard of Narsil Isildur cut the Ruling Ring from the hand of Sauron and took it for his own (pg 292).“
Sauron, defeated, returned to shade form because he had put so much of his essence into the Ruling Ring. However, it was years before he took “visible shape (pg 292)” again. This victory marked the end of the Second Age of Middle Earth. The destruction of two great Kings and their powerful enemy ushered in a new age.
Isildur took the Ruling Ring for himself, and there was peace and prosperity for many years. Sauron’s minions were not wholly destroyed but reduced to a number Isildur was not worried about.
Isildur was not his father, though. “Never again was such a host assembled, nor was there any such league of Elves and Men; for after Elendil’s day the two kindreds became estranged (pg 293).“
Part of that estrangement came because Isildur refused to destroy the Ruling Ring, even upon the council of Elrond and Círdan. Instead, he took it as a token of success in dealing with the killing blow to Sauron and as recompense for the deaths of his father and brother.
Isildur went north to stake his claim to the throne in Eriador, his father’s seat, “and he forsook the South Kingdom (pg 293).” He set Meneldil, Anárion’s son, to rule Gondor in the south in his absence. To rule and to guard against the inevitable return of Sauron.
On Isildur’s trip north, he “was overwhelmed by a host of Orcs that lay in wait in the Misty Mountains (pg 293).” Unfortunately, Isildur was lazy because he deemed that he had won the war, so he didn’t set a guard when his caravan slept. As a result, the roving Orcs killed everyone except for three servants and Isildur, who escaped by slipping the ring on his finger and going invisible to his pursuers.
He jumped into the river, but “there the Ring betrayed him and avenged its maker, for it slipped from his finger as he swam, and it was lost in the water (pg 294).” With the ring off his finger, the Orcs could see him, and they filled him with arrows.
The surviving servants brought Narsil, Elendil’s broken sword, back to Imladris. But the sword was not reforged, “and Master Elrond foretold that this would not be done until the Ruling Ring should be found again and Sauron should return. pg 294)“
Over the beginning years of the Third Age, through war and isolationism, “the Men of Westernesse, the Dúnedain of the North, became divided into petty realms and lordships, and their foes devoured them one by one (pg 294).”
In the Southlands, the line of Númenor flourished for years under the leadership of Meneldil. They built immense structures and created the Gondor armor we are so used to seeing, but “the blood of the Númenóreans became much mingled with that of other men, and their power and wisdom was diminished, and their life-span was shortened, and the watch upon Mordor slumbered (pg 295).”
Eventually, a plague landed on them and killed the King’s lineage. They abandoned the border of Mordor and allowed evil to creep out of the boundaries. The evil took the shape of dark shadows. “It is said that these were indeed the Ulairi, whom Sauron called the Nazgûl, the Nine Ringwraiths that had long remained hidden, but returned now to prepare the ways of their Master, for he had begun to grow again (pg 295).”
They took Minas Ithil, Isildur’s former seat, and made it a place of dread and horror. “Thereafter it was called Minas Morgul, the Tower of Sorcery (pg 295).“
“But Minas Arnor endured, and it was named anew Minas Tirith, the Tower of Guard; for there the kings caused to be built in the citadel a white tower, very tall and fair, and it’s eye was upon many lands (pg 295).“
The stage is set, and the hallmarks of the Third Age are being revealed. Join us on the next Blind Read to see the resolution of “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age.”
Blind Read Through: J.R.R. Tolkien; The Silmarillion, Of The Rings of Power and the Third Age, part 1
“But Sauron gathered into his hands all the remaining Rings of Power; and he dealt them out to the other peoples of Middle-earth, hoping thus to bring under his sway all those that desired secret power beyond the measure of their kind. Seven rings he gave to the Dwarves; but to Men he gave nine, for Men proved in this matter as in others the readiest to his will.“
Welcome back to another Blind Read! This week we start the last chapter of The Silmarillion and learn how the events of The Lord of the Rings came to be.
Tolkien begins this chapter by describing Sauron himself. Sauron was a Maia, one of the servants of the Valar, and just a half step down in power from them. Melkor seduced Sauron with his power and led him to serve the Dark Lord, but when Melkor was defeated, he begged forgiveness. Then, when it was clear that no quarter would come, he “hid himself in Middle-earth; and he fell back into evil, for the bonds that Morgoth had laid upon him were very strong.”
I contend that Sauron is much more evil than Morgoth (Melkor) because Melkor’s goal wasn’t ultimate power; instead, his story falls much more in line with Lucifer Lightbringer, who was an angel but pride made him feel slighted, which created his fall. Sauron chose evil from the beginning. There was never anything in him that tried to be or do good; his entire existence was about deception and power.
This whole chapter is basically about Sauron and his influence on how he corrupted the Rings of Power to gain control over the people of Middle-earth and what those people did to fight against him.
Tolkien tells us the land beneath Ossiriand on the eastern side of what was once Beleriand was re-formed by the surging of rivers and shifting of the ground. The region is now called Lindon, where many Elves settled to live.
Those that didn’t live there posted up in a region to the west of Khazad-dûm named Eregion. “In Eregion the craftsmen of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, the People of the Jewel-smiths, surpassed in cunning all that have ever wrought, save only Fëanor himself; and indeed greatest in skill among them was Celebrimbor, son of Curufin, who was estranged from his father and remained in Nargothrond when Celegorm and Curufin were driven forth, as is told in the Quenta Silmarillion.“
Meanwhile, Sauron was growing in power and steering clear of Lindon. In fact, “elsewhere the Elves received him gladly, and few among them hearkened to the messengers from Lindon bidding them beware; for Sauron took himself a name of Annatar, the Lord of Gifts, and they had much profit from his friendship.”
Much like the Númenóreans, these Noldor of Eregion had their pride get in the way. They let Annatar give them advice on how to create, how to live, and how to rule. They even “refused to return into the West, and they desired to stay in Middle-earth.”
“In those days the smiths of Ost-in-Edhil surpassed all that they had contrived before; and they took thought, and they made Rings of Power.” Moreover, they did so under Sauron’s guidance, taking his advice in the Rings’ creation.
The Elves created many of these Rings, “but secretly Sauron made One Ring to rule all others, and their power was bound up with it, to be subject wholly to it and to last only so long as it too should last.” I think anyone who is reading this has heard of this Ring before. The One Ring allowed Sauron to rule and influence the decisions of those who wore the lesser rings.
But the Elves immediately understood their gaff: “As soon as Sauron set the One Ring upon his finger they were aware of him; and they knew him, and perceived that he would be master of them, and all they wrought.”
The Elves took off their rings and hid them away, but Sauron could feel them, and in his great wrath, he waged war against the Elves to take the rings back, “But the Elves fled from him; and three of their rings they saved, and bore them away, and hid them.“
They saved the rings of the greatest power, Narya, Nenya, and Vilya.
Narya was called the Ring of Fire and inlaid with a Ruby. Nenya was called the Ring of Water and inlaid with adamant, and Vilya was called the Ring of Air and inlaid with a sapphire.
The rings could “ward off the decays of time and postpone the weariness of the world.” But they were kept secret and not worn while Sauron wore the One Ring. “Therefore, the Three remained unsullied, for they were forged by Celebrimbor alone, and the hand of Sauron had never touched them.”
However, Sauron never gave up his quest for power over the rings and battled against the Noldor incessantly. During this time, “Eregion was laid to waste, and Celebrimbor slain, and the doors of Moria were shut. (Celebrimbor sealed the gates of Moria using Mithril and Elven magic. These are the gates we see the fellowship open in “The Fellowship of the Rings” by speaking the Elvish word for Friend).”
Because Sauron was raging so hard against the Elves, Elrond founded Rivendell as a sanctuary, as a way to rally against Sauron. It is here we get the opening quote to this essay.
The Rings given to the Dwarves were of Gold, matching their heart’s greed. These golden rings kindled the evil of profits in their hearts and they hoarded Gold, “but all these hoards long ago were plundered, and the Dragons devoured them.“
Men took nine of the rings, which gave them eternal life, “yet life became unendurable to them.” Then eventually, “they could see things in worlds invisible to mortal men; but too often they beheld only the phantoms and delusions of Sauron.“
The nine men who held the Rings fell into thralldom to Sauron, “And they became for ever invisible save to him that wore the Ruling Ring, and they entered into the realm of shadows. The Nazgûl were they, the Ringwraiths, the Enemy’s most terrible servants; darkness went with them, and they cried with the voices of death.“
Join me next week for a breakdown of Episode 6 of The Rings of Power before we jump back into the next section, “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age!”
Blind Read Through: J.R.R. Tolkien; The Silmarillion, Akallabêth, Conclusion
“And there is not now upon Earth any place abiding where the memory of a time without evil is preserved. For Ilùvatar cast back the Great Seas west of Middle-earth, and the Empty Lands east of it, and new lands and new seas were mande, and the world was diminished, for Valinor and Eressëa were taken from it into the realm of hidden things.“
Welcome back to another Blind Read! This week we delve into the end of Númenor as we conclude Akallabêth.
We left off last week with the Númenóreans burning down Nimloth, the White Tree from Valinor. The tree’s destruction was to indicate the downfall of the Númenórean race because of the evil influence of Sauron and Melkor.
“Now madness and sickness assailed them; and yet they were afraid to die and go out into the dark, the realm of the lord that they had taken; and they cursed themselves in their agony.“
The Númenóreans suddenly became quick to anger, and there were many killings of people who rebelled against the strength of Númenor. For years it “seemed to the Númenóreans that they prospered, and if they were not increased in happiness, yet they grew more strong, and their rich men ever richer.“
I had previously compared Númenor to the Roman empire, and I think this is a great example. The Roman empire grew so big and grand that, for years, it was eating itself from the inside. What started as a republic became a monarchy with a single person with ultimate power. With that ultimate power comes hubris and selfishness, leading to civilizations’ downfall.
This is what happened to Númenor. They were angry with the Valar and the Eldar because the Númenóreans were mortal, despite their abnormally long lives. They held onto that anger, letting pride get in the way. They grew more intelligent and advanced than the people of Middle-earth, and they were the only culture able to capture Sauron.
But Ar-Pharazôn thought they captured Sauron because of how mighty Númenor had become. This misled confidence led to Sauron becoming an advisor to the king, creating the domino effect that ultimately killed off the culture.
The Númenoreans became “fierce men of war,” and Pharazôn “grew to the mightiest tyrant that had yet been in the world since the reign of Morgoth, though in truth, Sauron ruled all from behind the throne.”
He ruled that way for years, with Sauron as his closest advisor, until he began “walking under the shadow of death.” Pharazôn was mortal, and it was only a matter of time before his body gave out. Still, Sauron’s words ate at him: “The Valar have possessed themselves of the land where there is no death; and they lie to you concerning it, hiding it as best they may.”
Pharazôn became an outspoken detractor of the Valar and a supporter of Morgoth, so he made it known that he was going to sail to Valar to discover their secret of immortality and take it for himself.
The faithful learned of this, and Amandil, Elendil’s father and Isildur’s grandfather, chose to follow in his ancestor’s footsteps. He would sail to Valinor as Eärendil did and warn the Valar about the impending attack, hoping for clemency for the rest of Númenór. Eärendil did so with the Noldor at the end of the First Age, and Amandil was hoping for the same in the Second Age, but “Men could not a second time be saved by any such embassy, and for the treason of Númenór, there was no easy absolving.”
Amandil was never heard from or seen again. In response, Elendil and the faithful loaded up on their ships to be ready for anything to come. “Many things there were of beauty and power, such as the Númenóreans had contrived in the days of their wisdom, vessels and jewels, and scrolls of lore written in scarlet and black. And Seven Stones they had, the gift of the Eldar; but in the ship of Isildur was guarded the young tree, the scion of Nimloth the Fair.“
Hearing nothing from Amandil and seeing a change in weather, they decided to sail west to Middle-earth and leave Númenor behind. Notice that the Seven stones were the Palantirí, and the descendant of the great Trees of Valinor was with them.
Pharazôn had already set sail when Elendil and the faithful left, and because of the great Eagles of Manwë, the Valar knew the Númenórean fleet was on their way.
“Then Manwë upon the Mountain called upon Ilúvatar, and for that time the Valar laid down their government in Arda. But Ilúvatar showed forth his power, and he changed the fashion of the world; and a great chasm opened in the sea between Númenor and the Deathless Lands, and the waters flowed down into it, and the noise and smoke of the cataracts went up to heaven, and the world was shaken. And all the fleets of the Númenóreans were drawn down into the abyss, and they were drowned and swallowed up forever.“
Pharazôn made it to Valinor but was “buried under falling hills.” and the great wave created by the chasm Ilúvatar generated wiped Númenór from the face of the Earth. It was the event known as The Drowning of Númenór.
Sauron was caught in the catastrophe, and we would hope that would end him, but he is Maiar, the immortal servant to the Valar. “Sauron was not mortal flesh, and though he was robbed now of that shape in which he had wrought so great and evil so that he could never again appear fair in the eyes of Men, yet his spirit arose out of the deep and passed as a shadow and a black wind over the sea, and came back to Middle-earth and to Mordor that was his home. There he took up again his great Ring in Barad-Dûr, and dwelt there, dark and silent, until he wrought himself a new guise, an image of malice and hatred made visible; and the Eye of Sauron the Terrible few could endure.”
Thus the Second Age ends with another significant shift in the world, and another Dark Lord conquered with the help of Iúvatar.
There is only one more chapter in The Silmarillion, and it’s one that most people would look forward to more than anything that came previously. The title? “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age.”
Join me next week (Thanksgiving!) as we review Episode 5 of The Rings of Power before jumping back into this last chapter!
Blind Watch: The Rings of Power; Episode 4, The Great Wave
“And if the Elf were here now, what would she see? Men of Númenor? Or a gaggle of mewling children? We are sons and daughters of the Edain. Of Elros Tar-Minyatur, whose house conquered Morgoth himself. But now one Elf, a castaway, could threaten us? Look down, each of you, at the Gilcrests you bear, a heritage of mighty hands. Of men who laid the sea wall, who raised Armenelos, triumph of our civilization. But now one Elf could threaten us? My friends! Trust in me. For by the calouses of my hands, I swear that elven hands will never take Númenor’s helm. She will remain as always a kingdom of men!”
Welcome back to another Blind Watch! We’re back this week with Episode 4 of The Rings of Power, “The Great Wave.”
This episode has some incredible imagery and is terrific to watch, but it is the furthest from Tolkien’s original works than any previous episodes.
The show starts with a vision of the Palantirí, where Míriel sees a vision of the drowning of Númenor. It’s a portent of things to come, and the event is, in truth, what ends the dynasty of Númenor, but the showrunners are playing a bit here to give us more drama and add to their storyline.
Míriel tells Galadriel later in the episode that through her vision of the Palantir, she knows that the beginning of the fall of Númenor comes when Galadriel appears in Númenor. The issue with this is that I have not read anything in Tolkien yet that has Galadriel going to Númenor in the first place. The history of the fall of Númenor comes because Pharazôn forced Míriel, his first cousin, to marry him so he could take the crown. Over time he captured Sauron who became a consultant. Sauron eventually corrupted him and influenced him to sail to Valinor to step on that sacred ground.
Númenor named the Land of Gift because Ilùvatar (read that as God) gave the land to the Númenoreans as a gift for Eärendil and Elwing’s sacrifice in stopping Morgoth. He and the Valar (read Valar as Angels) laid a rule down that Men (read that as Humans) were never to sail to Valinor. Ar-Pharazôn, in his foolishness, decided he was above God. As penance, Ilùvatar washed the island of Númenor and its entire fleet away into the sea and buried Pharazôn and the men. These greedy men who took a step onto Valinor were interred under a landslide, buried forever, and forgotten.
Despite that inaccuracy, I love the way the show is framing Pharazôn. He has a dialogue with one of the characters early in the episode where he speaks of being a statesman and how to talk to the common folk. His big speech is what opens this essay, and that speech ends with raucous cheering. It shows how he positioned himself through politics and statesmanship into power. I’m a little disappointed that the showrunners decided against him forcibly marrying Míriel to take the ultimate control. Still, it appears they will work around that by having Míriel go to Middle-earth to fight against Sauron. I imagine he will take power while she is away and Tar-Palantir (Míriel’s father and King) dies.
We switch to the Humans in the Southlands, escaping to a tower to get away from the Orcish scourge. However, the humans are in danger because they need food, and foraging in the lands hasn’t gotten them enough. Theo, the son of the woman trying to take charge of the encampment, comes up with a bright idea to raid the village to get food. He sneaks out, thinking that the sword hilt he found will help him against the Orcs, and with the help of his friend, they try to get food and save the town.
Predictably Theo wants to go “just one more place” like a child trick or treating on Halloween night. Clouds roll in and cover the sun, and the Orcs come in. Theo takes out the sword, which gets its power from his blood. He sticks the hilt into his skin, and it forges a blade he uses to fight off the Orcs.
I’ve not read of any blade in Tolkien that uses blood for power (or at least I don’t remember if I did). So my first inclination is to assume this is Gurthang, which was Túrin Turambar’s blade.
This history of the blade was that Eöl, the Dark Elf, forged it as Anglachel. Years later, Beleg Strongbow requested it to assist in defense of Túrin. Through their adventures, Túrin accidentally killed Beleg with Anglachel, and Túrin had it reforged into Gurthang.
Túrin used the sword to kill Glaurung, the King of dragons and one of Morgoth’s Captains, and eventually killed himself with it.
So why would I think that the blade Theo has would be Gurthang? Because the sword had a mind of its own. It spoke to Túrin, and there are many passages in which the sword would ask for action and blood. None, however, as apropos as when Túrin asked the blade if it would kill him quickly:
“Yea, I will drink thy blood gladly, that so I may forget the blood of Beleg my master, and the blood of Brandir slain unjustly. I will slay thee swiftly.“
I think it’s possible that a sword with that history with some sentience could have ended up broken and corrupted by Sauron over the years. Of course, this is a theory based on the history of The Silmarillion, but it seems like this is the kind of thing that the showrunners would do.
Lastly, we go back to Durin and Elrond and find the dwarves mining Mithril. The showrunners try to make many events fit within the show’s timeframe, but dwarves found Mithril in Khazad-dûm in the First Age, not the Second Age as the show is trying to present.
Khazad-Dûm was the only place in Eä to find Mithril, and it was in the Third Age (Between the events of the Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Rings) that the Dwarves delved too deep and woke the Balrog, who eventually destroyed all the mines of Moria.
Though the timeframe doesn’t match, I hope to see a Balrog in this show in a more prolonged battle sequence than we saw in the movies.
At any rate, next week, we’ll come back for the conclusion of Akallabêth before breaking down Episode 5 of The Rings Of Power!
Blind Read Through: J.R.R. Tolkien; The Silmarillion, Akallabêth, Part 3
“Then behind locked doors Sauron spoke to the King, and he lied, saying: ‘It is he whose name is not now spoken; for the Valar have deceived you concerning him, putting forward the names of Eru, a phantom devised in the folly of their hearts, seeking to enchain Men in servitude to themselves. For they are the oracle of this Eru, which speaks only what they will. But he that is their master shall yet prevail, and he will deliver you from this phantom; and his name is Melkor, Lord of All, Giver of Freedom, and he shall make you stronger than they.’“
Welcome back to another Blind Read! This week we continue on our journey in Númenor and watch as the once-great empire begins to collapse.
We left off last time with the fact that the Valar were angered at Númenor and cut off ties with them. The lack of Valar support didn’t affect the mainland, but some were still faithful to the Valar and the Eldar, and they lived in a kingdom on the western shores in a city named Andúnië. The Men (read that as humans) who lived there “were of the line of Elros, being descended from Silmarien, daughter of Tar-Elendil, the fourth King of Númenor.” It was this line of Elros’ goal to unite the people of Middle-earth instead of trying to rule over them like the rest of the Númenóreans. In fact, Aragorn is a descendant of the Andúnië, and it’s his shame of what the Númenóreans eventually did that made him stay away from the crown for so long.
Years passed, and King begat King, until the beginning became the beginning of the end. Then, Tar-Palantir took the scepter and became King. He took an Elvish name (his Númenórean name was Inziladûn), and for the first time in years, a King of Númenor had used the dialect of a race the Númenóreans had begun to hate. He was a seer, so he took the name of the Palantirí, the seeing stones. One of his prophecies was that when the great “White Tree perished, then also would the line of the Kings come to its end.“
Tar-Palantir tried to bring back the old ways, but it was too little, too late. His daughter took to the throne after he died, “whom he named Míriel (whom you might know as the Queen Regent if you watch The Rings of Power on Amazon) in the Elven tongue.” But her first cousin Pharazôn was power hungry and hated the Valar for forsaking them, so he “took her to wife against her will, doing evil in this and evil also in that the laws of Númenor did not permit marriage, even in the royal house, of those more nearly akin than cousins in the second degree.”
Ar-Pharazôn became the most guilded of all kings to rule Númenor…and the proudest. His men told him that Sauron was building strength in the East, and in his hubris, he sent a contingent of men to capture Sauron. But the Dark Lord outwitted the Golden King and waved the white flag. So Ar-Pharazôn took him captive in Númenor, thinking he would keep the enemy close.
“Yet such was the cunning of his mind and mouth, and the strength of his hidden will, that ere three years had passed he head become closest to the secret councils of the King.“
The men of Númenor began to fall under Sauron’s sway, “save one alone, Amandil lord of Andúnië.” Of the Line of Aragorn. The men of this line remained faithful to the Valar and the Eldar, but the rest of Númenor “named them rebels.“
The quote which opens this essay is one of the examples of the cunning of Sauron. He twisted history and played upon the Númenórean beliefs, making them believe that Melkor was the true Lord and not Ilúvatar (also named Eru, as seen above). But, unfortunately, because of the pain of the Valar rejection and their own belief that they are better than any other race, the half-truths of Sauron rang true to them, and “Ar-Pharazôn the King turned back to the worship of the Dark, and of Melkor the Lord thereof, at first in secret, but ere long openly and in the face of his people; and they for the most part followed him.”
With this belief in the Dark Lord, Ar-Pharazôn threw Amandil, the Elf-friend of Andúnië and out of his council. But Amandil, along with his son Elendil, were the most significant ship captain of Númenor, so they were kept in Númenor, despite their outward rejection of the worship of Melkor.
While shunned, Amandil heard that Sauron had advised Pharazôn to cut down Nimloth, the white tree. Knowing of Tar-Palantir’s prophesy, he gathered his son Elendil and his grandchildren Isildur and Anárion. He told them the tale of the Trees of Valinor and the glory of the Valar.
“…Isildur said no word, but went out by night and did a deed for which he was afterwards renowned.”
Young Isildur went to Nimloth and stole its fruit. The guards gravely injured him, but he managed to escape and bring the fruit to his Grandfather, who planted it in secret. Upon its first bloom, Isildur was miraculously healed, showing the power of the Valar.
Soon after, the new tree bloomed just in time because “the King yielded to Sauron and felled the White Tree, and turned wholly away from the allegiance of his fathers.”
Ar-Pharazôn ordered that a gilded tower be turned into a fire altar and burned Nimloth so that “men marveled at the reek that went up from it, so that the land lay under a cloud for seven days, until slowly it passed into the west.“
“Thereafter the fire and smoke went up without ceasing; for the power of Sauron daily increased, and in that temple, with spilling of blood and torment and great wickedness, men made sacrifice to Melkor that he should release them from Death. And most often from among the Faithful they chose their victims.”
The Doom of Númenor has begun. Join me next week as we continue with Episode 4 of The Rings of Power and the week after when we return and complete Akallabêth!
Blind Watch: The Rings of Power; Episode 3, Adar
“If we didn’t do everything we weren’t supposed to do, we’d hardly do anything at all.“
Welcome back to another Blind Watch! This week we cover episode three of The Rings of Power, “Adar.”
Before we begin anything, I have to say how amazed I am at the show’s budget and their ability to capitalize on and make the show as beautiful as it is. Of course, there are problems with the narrative flow, as they are cherry-picking events from multiple different timelines, but they are keeping reasonably faithful to the character’s intent. That almost doesn’t matter when you get to see the beauty of Middle-earth and Númenor.
We are introduced to several characters you’ll know, even if you aren’t familiar with The Silmarillion or the Númenórean story. First, we meet Captain Elendil (which I’m pretty sure was never mentioned as a Captain in the book, but I’m still catching up) and his son Isildur, whom we all know from the Scene in The Return of the King where he cuts off Sauron’s finger and takes the One Ring from the Dark Lord.
It seems like the showrunners are forsaking that Andùnië (the city Elendil takes Galadriel to the library) was a major metropolis and a kingdom in its own right. Elendil was the ruler of that Kingdom on the western shores of Númenór.
In the show, we see a mural of Elrond and Elros, brothers and sons of Elwing and Eärendil, in that library. If we remember from The Silmarillion, Eärendil and Elwing came to Valar and told of Morgoth’s reign, which caused the Valar to come to Beleriand and stop him. They broke the rules by going to Valar and are lauded as heroes for risking their lives to destroy Morgoth. As a reward, the boys had a choice of which line to follow because Elwing and Eärendil were descendants of both Elves and Men. Elros chose Men, and Elrond chose Elves.
There is an interesting scene where Elendil comes before the Queen Regent and states that his name means either Elf-friend or Star-lover. Eärendil becomes a star and rides a chariot across the sky as penance and reward for his transgressions, so Star-lover shows respect to Elendil’s ancestor. Because Elendil is a direct descendant of both Elwing and Eärendil, the Elf-friend translation of his name shows his willingness to bring both Elvenkind and Men together.
The Númenóreans seem like an evil group of people in the show, and they progressed that way because they believed they were better than anyone else. They had progressed to be more intelligent and advanced and yearned for long life. It seems like that would be at odds with The Lord of the Rings mythology, where they call Aragorn the last great Númenórean king. But in that case, it’s because Aragorn was a descendant of Elendil, the Elf-friend, and not of the Kings (or Tar’s), which took power and eventually caused the Drowning of Númenor.
And Speaking of the Drowning of Númenor, the show seems to be headed in that direction. The Queen Regent Míriel is indeed a true Queen of Númenor, daughter of Tar-Palantir, the seer. He is named after the Palantírí, the Seeing Stones which Fëanor created in Aman, and Elendil brought with him to Middle-earth when he fled from the Drowning of Númenor. Of course, everyone can remember Saruman with his twisted claw hovering over the stone, looking into the future tainted with Sauron’s corruption.
Back to Míriel. She was forced into marriage by Ar-Pharazôn, who was possibly the worst of the Kings of Númenor. I think this is where the show is headed, though I wonder if we will see Ar-Pharazôn as a character.
He sought to take over Middle-earth under the glorious banners of Númenor and force Sauron to bend his knee. However, it was Sauron who outwitted him. Sauron raised the white flag and surrendered without lifting a finger. Ar-Pharazôn took him into custody, thinking he had successfully created a kingdom of Eä (the world in which all the lands were in. Feel free to read that as Earth).
Over the years, Sauron corrupted Ar-Pharazôn to the point that he eventually became a council to the king. This led to the world’s downfall and caused the great wars of the Second Age.
Obviously, the show will speed this up, as they need to do so within the next six episodes. Still, I’ll be very interested in where they take this, as we’ve just touched upon the history of Númenor, which is the basis of the Current Blind read essays on one of the final chapters of The Silmarillion, “Akallabêth.”
We have two other storylines in this episode that don’t progress much, but one gives a deeper understanding of what is happening behind the scenes in the show. The other shows a broader sense of the progression of Middle-earth itself.
The first is Arondir’s storyline, which gives the episode its namesake. He awakens and finds that he’s a slave to the Orcs. They force a team of captives to dig tunnels when the prisoners realize that the Orcs are looking for something, not necessarily tunneling under the Earth. This hilt can only be what we saw the boy Theo hiding in the first and second episodes. The assumption is that they need the hilt to try and bring Sauron to power, but that all remains to be seen. We meet Adar at the very end as Arondir is concussed, and his vision is blurred. Adar comes in his point of view as a blurry Orc Captain.
The second storyline is Nori’s, and whom I can only guess are the originations of the shire folk, I.E., Hobbits. There is a mention in The Fellowship of the Rings that Hobbit’s used to be nomadic, but they settled down, and they are calm and gentle folk who don’t like adventures. Not only do their names (Brandyfoot and Proudfellow) match those of the Hobbits, but their demeanor does as well. After watching this episode, I’m doubling down on the “Stranger” that they found to be Gandalf. I’ve always wondered why Gandalf had a propensity for hobbits when danger was in the way and why he thought of them when he had a task. It may be that Nori is an ancestor of the Baggins clan, and Gandalf feels an affinity with her because she made sure he was safe.
The plot thickens, but it closely matches Akallabêth, so join me next week for a continuation of the Blind Read before we return for Episode 4 of the Rings of Power!
Blind Read Through: J.R.R. Tolkien; The Silmarillion, Akallabêth, part 2
“In this Age, as is elsewhere told, Sauron arose again in Middle-earth, and grew, and turned back to the evil in which he was nurtured by Morgoth, becoming mighty in his service. Already in the days of Tar-Minastir, the eleventh King of Númenor, he had fortified the land of Mordor and had built there the Tower of Barad-Dûr, and thereafter he strove ever for dominion of Middle-earth, to become a king over all kings and as a god unto Men.“
Welcome back to another Blind Read! This week we continue the story of Númenór and watch as they create cancer within themselves, eventually leading to their demise.
We left off last time with the Númenóreans hitting landfall in Middle-earth, so they could hold to their word that they would not sail East towards Valinor.
The people of Middle-earth “sat under the Shadow were now grown weak and fearful,” but the Númenóreans taught them to farm and trained them “in the hewing of wood and the shaping of stone.“
This enabled the people of Middle-earth to forget their ancestor’s transgressions and shed Morgoth’s taint. They revered the Númenóreans because of this and took them as godlike kings.
This power went to their heads. “And they said among themselves: ‘Why do the Lords of the West sit there in peace unending, while we must die and go we know not whither, leaving our home and all that we have made? And the Eldar die not, even those that rebelled against the Lords. And since we have mastered all seas, and no water is so wild or wide that our ships cannot overcome it, why should we not go to Avallónë and greet our friends?‘”
The sentiment of Hubris is central to the Númenórean downfall and the wars which would follow in the Second and Third ages. The Dúnedain thought themselves so great and powerful that they allowed their demise. There is a very close parallel with the Romans in the Númenórean storyline, and I have to wonder if Tolkien didn’t model their rise and fall after that ancient empire. We’ll touch on that more later.
Some heavy theology follows the above quote, which spans pages. It is Tolkien’s search for meaning between the godlike and the mortal. There is quite a bit of documentation that Tolkien eventually meant for these histories to progress into later ages, which would become our history, almost like alternate history and mythology to the real Earth. Because of this, we see this Theology in the struggle of suffering. Why do Men have to suffer and die when the Elves and Valar live eternally? These are surrogate Angels of our world, with Ilúvatar being God.
They go back and forth, showing the youth and entitlement the Númenóreans felt. Why shouldn’t they get to see Valinor and become undying like the rest? But the Valar argued with them, telling them they were given their own gifts; they were not allowed to have the gifts of the Valar and the Eldar.
The Númenóreans all believed this, so it wasn’t until Tar-Atanamir (King of the Dúnedain) that their quest for eternal life saw its first downfalls (which they were blind to) because “Atanamir lived to a great age, clinging to his life beyond the end of all joy; and he was the first of the Númenóreans to do this, refusing to depart until he was witless and unmanned.”
The curse they would keep was this obtuseness of desire. Instead, they would cling to power and life to the detriment of all else.
It was during this age that they built significant structures on the mainland. Many of the Númenóreans reveled in the worship they received from the men of Middle-earth, “and the power and majesty of their kings were increased; and they drank, and they feasted, and they clad themselves in silver and gold.”
Reading this passage, I couldn’t help but think of Denethor and his disgusting eating habits while Merry sang his lamentations.
But the Númenóreans had more power and prestige than Denethor, and it enabled Sauron to gain his own power. So it’s here in the book that we get this essay’s opening quote.
There are some confusing and contradictory passages here which I probably need to read a few more times to understand completely. Still, it seems as though Sauron was around and in the land building power and creating Mordor, and during the Númenórean King Tar-Minastir’s reign, he created the One Ring. It was a partnership between Tar-Minastir and Gil-Galad, the Elven King, which stopped his ascension to power. I hope to see what that struggle looks like in the last chapter of The Silmarillion, “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age.”
His fear and hatred of them grew through his exposure to the Númenóreans. “Yet Sauron was ever guileful, and it is said that among those whom he ensnared with the Nine Rings three were great lords of the Númenórean race. And when the Úlairi arose that were the Ring-wraiths, his servants, and the strength of his terror and mastery over Men had grown exceedingly great, he began to assail the strong places of the Númenóreans upon the shores of the sea.”
Because of this struggle against Sauron and their own Hubris, the Númenóreans continued their segregation from the Eldar and Valar. It was years and numerous Kings later when they stopped taking Elvish names and stopped tending the White Tree. They didn’t strike out against the Eldar but punished those of their ranks who sympathized with the Eldar. The Valar saw this, and they “gave them counsel and protection no more in their wroth.”
Tolkien does something exciting here. It’s the telling of the rise and fall of civilization over age, but he tells it so simply that it feels like one event after another leading to their eventual fall. But these events are slow-moving, and little things happen during the reign of each of the Númenórean great Kings. Of course, Sauron was around in Middle-earth during this time. Still, his influence was slight, mainly because of the impact of Gil-Galad, but also because he was interested in building up his great fortress, much like his Valar master, Morgoth.
There was no nail in the coffin for the Númenóreans, which makes this history so believable. Great empires can withstand a single significant event. What they cannot resist is years of degradation from the inside. The Númenórean pride and hatred lead them down a path of righteous death.
These people lived hundreds of years, and we’re up to the 24th King of Númenór, and we haven’t even gotten to the linchpin event, which caused the eventual downfall. Tolkien is taking his time, creating an environment within Númenór that will allow this linchpin event to happen.
So join me next time when we see what that event is as we continue on the story of Akallabêth!
Blind Watch: The Rings of Power; Episode 2, Adrift
“No! This is different. He could have landed anywhere and he landed here. I know it sounds strange but somehow I just know he’s important. It’s like there’s a reason this happened, like, I was supposed to find him. Me. I cant walk away from that, not, until I know he’s safe. Can you?“
Welcome to another Blind Watch! This week we delve back into Amazon’s realization of Middle-earth with the second episode of “The Rings of Power.” Be warned now! This blog is meant to be read after watching the episode. There are heavy spoilers and explanations of the episode, so please watch before reading!
This episode, “Adrift,” follows a stranded Galadriel in the middle of the sea. Arondir as he searches for the root of the plague. Nori Brandyfoot finds a mysterious giant and tries to befriend him. Then lastly, Elrond brings us to see the Dwarves of Khazad-Dûm.
Though the title is a metaphor for all the characters and the uncertainty of what is to come, let’s begin with the most apparent message and cover Galadriel.
A group of shipwreck survivors finds her floating in the ocean. A creature they call the worm attacked them, which is some giant sea creature. It harasses them and breaks up their flotilla, leaving only one survivor after its destruction. However, Galadriel does see (with her elf eyes) some spear impaled into its tail fin. I’m sure there is a significance that I’m missing at the moment, but it’s something to remember moving into future episodes.
In the Silmarillion, many creatures remained undescribed and grew in the darkness of Middle-earth. They were creatures of Morgoth’s creation because he corrupted the land. I believe that this sea creature, this “worm,” is one of those creatures, and it’s fun to see what the imaginations of Amazon can come up with because they have such an open slate.
The last survivor, Halbrand, lets Galadriel know that Orcs destroyed his home, Orcs that were supposed to be gone from the region. Instead, we find that the Orcs come from the Southlands, which we already know from Arondir’s storyline. Eventually, they are seen by someone on a ship, who undoubtedly is a Númenórian.
Moving back to Arondir’s storyline, he heads to the Southlands and finds a city that has been destroyed from beneath. The scourge is Orc that has tunneled underneath the earth and popped up to sack the city. He and Bronwyn find enough evidence to realize that Bronwyn’s town is in danger. They head back to find that Orc’s have come from underneath, and there is a fun fight scene towards the end of the episode where they fight and kill one of the orcs.
The mystery here is Theo, who is Bronwyn’s son. He has a sword hilt with Sauron’s mark on it, and the question is, where did he get that hilt? Could Theo be Halbrand’s son? Could the mysterious broken sword have come from a previous battle where Sauron was defeated? We are led to believe that Sauron’s armies heeded the call of the sword hilt, so all those questions remain to be answered.
Elrond’s storyline is the least impressive of the episode and takes up most of the run time. However, the whole point of the storyline is a setup for the rings of power in general. Elrond meets up with Celebrimbor, the premier elvish smith who wants to create something spectacular. However, he somehow lacks the ability, so Elrond takes him to visit his “friend” (speak friend and enter) Prince Durin. The goal is to get Prince Durin and Celebrimbor together to create what can only be the Rings of Power. There is also a decent amount of back and forth about Dwarvish/Elvish relations, which will only enrich the later storylines.
The final storyline is, to me, the most interesting and is represented by the quote at the beginning of this essay. It follows Nori, who is a precursor to the Third Age Hobbits we know and love (based upon the name, I have to imagine she is a descendant of the Proudfoot and the Brandywine Hobbit lines).
Nori finds the mysterious giant who has some magical powers. I think the showrunners are taking a little more creative license here because I believe this being is a Maiar named Olórin, otherwise known in Middle-earth as Gandalf.
The Maiar are basically celestial beings, second only to the Valar, and indeed are servants of the Valar (Morgoth is and was Valar, and Sauron is his Maiar adjutant). The Istari were a sect of Maiar “wizards” sent to Middle-earth to assist the people against Sauron’s deception and armies. At the end of the first episode we see this giant being shot down to the earth like a meteor, and spends the majority fo the second episode trying to learn speech, and to understand his magic.
That follows with the general storyline of The Silmarillion, but the only issue is that the Istari were all sent in the Third Age, not the Second Age, so the showrunners are ignoring some history of Middle-earth here to work to make a better and more fluid show.
The whole of what I know about the Second Age comes from Akallabêth, which I’ve just finished, and we’ll get a Blind Read over the next few weeks to complete it. The issues I see here are that in the Second Age, Sauron worked his silver tongue to fool the great kingdoms of Middle-earth. He became a consultant of the Númenórians and created distrust from the inside rather than fighting them directly.
Sauron’s real story may still be the case in the show because we are just getting to Númenor in the next episode, but because there are already armies of Orcs fighting, and no one seems to know where Sauron is, I don’t think this is the direction they’re going.
It also is a complete divergence for Galadriel’s character because she was a fighter, but at this point in history, she was married to Celeborn and living peacefully, but there is no mention of him in the show. It was Morgoth who killed her brother, not Sauron, so her motivation has changed entirely.
Despite all that, it’s fun to be back in Middle-earth on screen, and I can’t wait to see their take on Númenor!
Join me next week as we continue with Akallabêth. We will switch back and forth between Blind Reads and Blind Watch every week for the next few weeks, as the last two chapters in the Silmarillion pertain to what is happening in “The Rings of Power.”
Blind Read Through: J.R.R. Tolkien; The Silmarillion, Akallabêth, part 1
“And the Doom of Men, that they should depart, was at first a gift of Ilùvatar. It became a grief to them only because coming under the shadow of Morgoth it seemed to them that they were surrounded by a great darkness, of which they were afraid; and some grew wilful and proud and would not yield , until life was reft from them. We who beat the ever mounting burden of the years do not clearly understand this; but if that grief has returned to trouble you, as you say, then we fear that the Shadow arises once more and grows again in your hearts.“
Welcome back to another Blind Read! This week we delve into the Decendents of Elves and Men, otherwise known as the Númenorians or Dúnedain.
Tolkien begins the chapter by giving us an abridgment of the story of Men in The Silmarillion, but with a slight adjustment: “It is said by the Eldar that Men came into the world in the time of the Shadow of Morgoth, and they fell swiftly under his dominion; for he sent his emissaries among them, and they listened to his evil and cunning words, and they worshipped the Darkness and yet feared it.“
Interestingly, he begins this chapter from the perspective of the Eldar because the majority of the end of The Silmarillion has to do with how the “men” (meaning humans) helped with the ultimate defeat of Morgoth. Indeed without their influence, Morgoth would probably have taken over the land of Middle-earth.
What I find so fascinating about this passage is that Tolkien is saying that the majority of Men in the first age fell under Morgoth’s deception. However, just a select few, the Edain, who made their way West into Beleriand, were free of The Dark Lord’s corruption. Indeed, these Edain are whom we’ve read about thus far in the Quenta Silmarillion.
With Morgoth’s defeat, his thralls went back into the east, and the Edain faithful to the Valar were rewarded for their servitude. “Eönwë came among them and taught them; and they were given wisdom and power and life more enduring than any others of mortal race have possessed.”
They were also given land that was “neither part of Middle-earth nor of Valinor, for it was sundered from either by a wide sea.” The Valar raised the ground from the sea and enriched it with life, and the Star of Eärendil shone like a northern light to show the Edain how to reach that land. The land was called Andor, or “Númenóre in the High Eldarin tongue.“
“This was the beginning of that people that in the Grey-elven speech are called the Dúnedain: the Númenóreans, Kings among Men.“
These “Kings among Men” were blessed with abnormally long lives to allow them to gain wisdom and help with the progression of Men in Arda, but the original gift of Ilùvatar was still intact. The gift of death.
Ilùvatar (you can read this as God) wanted Men of Middle-earth to have the ability to die, so he gave them short lifespans. The Valar are eternal, and the Eldar are immortal unless mortally injured. So men were given short lives to appreciate the splendor that Ilùvatar and the Valar had wrought. The drawback was that none of the great human kingdoms of the First Age could produce the marvels that the Elves or even Dwarves were able to create. Thus Númenor allowed them to grow “wise and glorious, and in all things more like the Firstborn than any other of the kindreds of Men; and they were tall, taller than the tallest sons of Middle-earth; and the light of their eyes was like the bright stars.“
It was here on Númenor, the island kingdom, that Elros, brother to Elrond and son of Eärendil and Elwing, became the first King of the Dúnedain in the great city of Armenelos.
Because of his parent’s sacrifice and their mixed blood, the Valar gave the brothers the choice of whom they would live their lives. Elrond chose Noldor blood and lived the rest of his life amongst the Elves. Elros, however, decided the blood of Man, and it’s from his shared blood that the Númenórian line descended.
Elros ruled in splendor for over four hundred years, growing Númenor into the legend it would become. “The Dúnedain dwelt under the protection of the Valar and in the friendship of the Eldar, and they increased in stature both of mind and body.”
They accepted a ban from the Valar that they were not to sail to the west and thus spent their time growing in knowledge and the arts. They became great shipbuilders, as you would expect of people living on an island. They accepted gifts from the Valar and planted seedlings of the great trees of Valinor, echoing Telperion. I have to wonder if this is the antecedent of the great white tree of Gondor we see in The Lord of the Rings. The men of Gondor were, in essence, descendants of the Dúnedain, so having the tree be the standard on their armor and flags makes sense, especially because Aragorn was a descendant of those great kings.
It was during this time that Middle-earth’s wisdom faded, all while the Númenórian knowledge increased. It was only a matter of time before the Dúnedain would make their way to the mainland. Over the years of building ships and gaining their knowledge, a natural curiosity about the surrounding world cropped up among the Dúnedain. They were denied the ability to sail west, so naturally, they sailed east to Middle-earth’s dark lands.
This was the beginning of the corruption of the Dúnedain. They came as seekers of knowledge but went to the land that had regressed. They came to a land of people who had become hunter-gatherers and lived tribally. They came as wanderers and became conquerors. They became, in their own eyes, Gods of Middle-earth.
Join me next week as we review the second episode of The Rings of Power before returning to the saga of the Dúnedain!
Blind Viewing: J.R.R. Tolkien; The Rings of Power, Episode 1
“We had no word for death, for we thought our joys would be unending. We thought our light would never dim. So when the great foe Morgoth, destroyed the very light of our home we resisted. An a legion of Eleves went to war. We left Valinor, our home, and journeyed to a distant realm. One filled with untold perils, and strange creatures beyond count. A place known as Middle-earth.”
Welcome back to another Blind Read! Or, in this case, let’s call it a blind watch! This week, we’re taking a step back from The Silmarillion and reviewing the first episode of “The Rings of Power” on Amazon.
The show is pretty much what I was expecting. It corrupts the lore of Tolkien, using some, changing most, and making much up on their own.
That may sound like a denigration of the show, but it is entertaining – Of which you can’t deny when you first look at Valinor and its two shining trees. People who have not read the Silmarillion will probably take great joy in the show because they get to return to Middle-earth and join along with a few characters they remember from the Movies. Namely Galadriel and Elrond.
So there is entertainment value in the show, and the special effects and visuals of the first episode are incredible. If nothing else, you can tell this was a labor of love for at least the special effects crew.
I have not finished the book (nor any of the other histories which expound upon the core that is The Silmarillion, but if you’ve been reading along with me, you know that), but just getting through the Quenta Silmarillion has given me a good enough knowledge to notice the inconsistencies in the show.
The first of which is in this introduction. We start by viewing Galadriel and Finrod Felagund speaking in Valinor, but the show ignores the entire Fëanor and Silmril plot, which was the fundamental basis of The Silmarillion. In the book the storyline was an effort to show a fall from grace and how people born with the best intentions were corrupted by greed, hubris, and familial bond. If you remember, Fëanor created the Silmarils, and Morgoth stole them with the help of the great and horrible Ungoliant, Shelob’s mother.
Morgoth was a Valar, a creation of Ilùvatar, the God of Arda (“God,” for lack of a better term). Ilùvatar created the Valar, who in turn created the world they created through their song from Valinor. Morgoth was a fallen angel who was jealous of the abilities of the Children of Ilùvatar (The Eldar, or Elves). So he stole the Silmaril’s, which held the light of Valinor, and went to Middle-earth. That is all true.
What the show doesn’t cover is that Fëanor and his sons and the rest of the Noldor (Galadriel included), Killed their kin because they were denied an exit from Valinor, and then they stole boats and sailed to find Morgoth and take the Silmarils back.
The showrunners did this because they wanted to keep the Elves the uncomplicated heroes of the show. They needed them to be beings that the viewers would root for, yet that depth of character, which they tried to infuse within Galadriel, is lost on the rest of the Elves.
So we see in the opening quote of this essay, which is part of the opening voiceover from Galadriel, that the Elves chased Morgoth to Middle-earth to battle the called angel. They include every grand battle and say that the war lasted for centuries, but they gloss over the other incredible stories of the age. But, of course, they didn’t have the rights to those stories, so we can’t blame them for it, and there is a possibility that they framed the show this way because they were not allowed to mention the I.P. of The Silmarillion, I.E., the Silmarils.
So all of that is just the setup for the show. The introduction has some spectacular visuals, and it was fascinating to see the aftermath of the Fifth Battle called Nirnaeth Arnoediad. For example, the pile of Elven helms (which probably should have been bodies, but it’s a show), which was called Haudh-en-Nirnaeth, or the Hill of Tears (The fifth battle was called Unnumbered Tears), which eventually grew over with grass. You’ll notice this heartbreaking scene immediately when you watch it.
The first considerable divergence the show takes, however, is that Galadriel’s Brother, Finrod Felagund. In the show he falls in battle with Sauron, which is factually incorrect. Instead, he falls in battle with Morgoth, so the back story of Galadriel in the show is false.
The second divergence is The High King Gil-Galad sends the warriors of the Elves back to Valinor, presumably to get them out of the way because Gil-Galad doesn’t believe that Sauron will come back in the next few centuries, if ever. The problem is that at this time, sending the elves to Valinor is not a decision that Gil-Galad can make. It has to be approved by the Valar, and if he had that palaver, there is no way the Valar would allow all of the warriors to return. Not to mention that Galadriel is the last of the Noldor who are accountable to the Curse of Mandos, so she would never be allowed to return to the undying lands.
The scene of the warriors entering Valinor is breathtaking, however, showing the showrunners’ love for the source material. I just wish they had not changed the motivation and basis of Galadriel herself.
I did enjoy the episode, however there are more things to say. First, there is quite a bit of back and forth about black elves. I have seen articles and posts on Social Media where people thought there were no black elves in Middle-earth. I’m here to say that if you hold this belief and you think all elves are described as golden haired, white, and thin, then you did not read the Silmarillion. The description of the Moriquendi, otherwise known as dark elves, had dark (sometimes grayish) skin and dark hair; not to mention the most famous of the Dark Elves, Eöl, the master of the forge and father of Maeglin.
The second is a specific point of interest. It is said in The Silmarillion that because Galadriel is the last of the Noldor who had seen Valinor’s light (yes, despite the actress’s age, she is the oldest of all the Elves in Middle-earth during the events of the show), the light of the trees are reflected in her eyes. The show does a great job at having that reflection of the light of the trees of Valinor in her eyes at all times.
I hope you all enjoy the show as well! Next week we’re returning to the book with The Akallabêth, which is (I think) the history of the Nùmenorians and the second age!
We have a lot to talk about, so join me every Thursday!
Sean McBride 
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