elaby | Some musings on The Silmarillion

Reading The Silmarillion is such a totally different experience from reading LotR. While it's still a narrative, it takes so much more of my concentration to understand, and it triggers all of these grad schooly close-reading thought processes. The edition I have includes a letter Tolkien wrote that explains his reasons behind creating and writing this mythology, his opinions on Art and the human desire to create and what constitutes folklore and fairy tales. Reading it reminded me of reading articles for my grad classes, where I'd have to go over paragraphs several times before I understood them.

The actual text of the Ainulindale (*fails at umlauts*) and the Valaquenta and the Quenta Silmarillion are easier for me to follow than the introductory letter, but only if I pay very close attention. Everything has so many names. You wouldn't believe how long it took me to figure out that Val(i)mar is the city of the Valar in the country of Valinor on the continent of Aman. I remember back when I tried to read this the first time being like ZOMG! to find out that Middle-earth is the name of the continent the action in LotR takes place on, not the world. There's a glossary of names in the back for your convenience, but of course I didn't realize that for a few chapters e_e At least I'm starting to pick up on the linguistic roots, so for example if they talk about Amon Something I at least know it's probably a hill, and Ered Something is probably a mountain range.

But the thinkythoughts reading this is giving me are much more philosophically complicated than anything LotR made me think (although they are related). The Silmarillion is supposed to be mythology, and along with "how we got here" and "why natural phenomenon are the way they are", one point of myths is to teach people how they're supposed to act, right? And The Silmarillion's basic moral confuses me. I think this is because I don't belong to a spiritual belief system that looks to a higher power for rules to live by.

Tolkien says in the introductory letter that The Silmarillion - "like all stories" - is concerned with "a fall". In this case it's the fall of the Elves. In my understanding, it all boils down to this: Elves wouldn't have had any problems if they had just listened to the Valar and done what they were told*. The Valar, having sprung from the thoughts of Eru (the equivalent of God), have - aside from Melkor, who I'll get to - everyone's best interests in mind, and are, for all intents and purposes and barring a couple of reconsiderations of how natural phenomena should work, always right. At least, that's what I feel I'm supposed to understand from reading this. Seeing as this is a myth (which is intended to teach people how to act), I tried to figure out how this would apply to "how one lives their life". And I came up against a brick wall, because to me, there is no such thing as someone (including extra-earthly/mortal beings) who is always right, no power that can be depended upon to always know best. It was then that I realized that to understand this mythology, you have to understand that it exists in the context of a spirituality that does believe in a higher power that always knows best.

This may seem obvious, but it was a revelation to me.

*[Reasoning:
- Feanor, and other Noldor who followed him, believed Melkor's lies and didn't trust that the Valar had their best interests in mind. They had no reason I can see to distrust the Valar, but that the Elves should believe in their infallibility is assumed.
- When the Trees were killed by Melkor and Ungoliant, Feanor refuses the Valar's request to let them use the light from his Silmarils (which came from the Trees in the first place) to resurrect the Trees.
- Some of the Elves didn't obey the Valar's summons to Valinor in the first place. They became clearly less awesome (except when it comes to music?) because of this, although I have yet to read much about their doings so I don't know if they'll end up making truly bad choices or if they just remain "rustic" and less enlightened (hur, dumb joke) than their distant kin who did go to Valinor.]

Speaking of Feanor, it did please me that his affinity for doing stupid things was clearly a function of his personality, not his race/parentage/social class. He was, in fact, one of the mightiest and cleverest and most skilled artists of his entire people, which makes his foolishness and blindness in believing Melkor less distasteful to me than if he had been "always a bad sort" or in some other way supposedly predisposed to evil.

And, speaking of evil. One of the things that's really starting to develop for me in reading this is Tolkien's idea of what constitutes "good" and "evil". It's apparent from the moment Melkor starts throwing his own ideas into Eru's music: the very first "bad" thing ever to happen, and something that I think resonates throughout LotR, is creation for the sake of personal glory and domination. Creation for the sake of beauty is exalted as the best virtue of the Valar and the Elves, but creation (or anything, for that matter) motivated by a desire for domination of others and for personal glory is, so far, the worst mistake someone can make.

Feanor falls right into this trap. When he makes the Silmarils (which are jewels) out of the light of the two Trees, it doesn't say exactly why he made them aside from because he loved to make things and wanted to preserve the light of the Trees forever. Whether this was personally motivated or not, I don't know. But he grows possessive of the Silmarils, and the thing that pushes him over the edge into open rebellion against the Valar is Melkor's suggestion that the Valar want to take the Silmarils from him. This possessiveness, that the Silmarils are for him alone and not for everyone to enjoy, is the core of all of the evils that befall the Elves thereafter (omfg I'm falling into Tolkienese, just listen to me. My brain sucks up style and spits my thoughts back out in it). When Feanor and his sons swear the oath that they'll suffer no one, not Elves or Men or gods or anyone, to possess or keep the Silmarils from them, they create and get caught in this massive spiral of destruction. The worst thing ever to happen to the Elves of their own doing is the result of greed and pride for their own work.

What does this mean for LotR? I keep remembering ways this good-evil dichotomy plays out. Boromir, first of all. The good in him is shown by the way he protects the hobbits and his valiance in battle, all things that are generally unselfish. And all of his bad traits circle around his desire for glory (for himself or Gondor). He wants the Ring because he thinks Gondor can defend itself with it, but integral to that is Boromir at the head of the army, winning renown, being the one to save the world. The fact that the one who DOES save the world is this humble little self-doubting nobody - who in the end can't actually throw the Ring into the fire himself - clearly illustrates Tolkien's opinion of glory-seekers.

Eowyn's another example. Luckily she doesn't have to die in order to be redeemed - she just repents. Her whole problem with being left behind is that she doesn't get to go to battle and win renown and glory with the other soldiers. Yeah, she wants to go with Aragorn, but her infatuation with him is so obviously hero-worship and its briefness indicates that something more connected with her whole being - this desire for glory and dissatisfaction with her lot in life - is at the root. It still pisses me off that she wants so badly to be part of the "men's world" and then once she does her one super-heroic deed, she accepts her socially defined role without question, as if it was such folly to ever want otherwise. I think the folly Tolkien probably had in mind was the "all for my own glory" bit, but it's still so steeped in "women's place is in the home". And it's not as if her new dedication to healing and growing things isn't admirable, it's just that it's an admirable thing that's acceptable for women to do. As evidenced by Aragorn and Eomer and Faramir and a billion other characters, men can be warriors for unselfish reasons.