Корни персонажей Д.Р.Р.Толкиена

Корни персонажей Д.Р.Р.Толкиена

Gymnasium №2

The roots of some Tolkien’s characters.

Tolkien’s view on some events from the Bible

and archaic history.

Name: Yanov Andrey

Teacher: Mordasova L.M.

Voronezh 2004

CONTENTS

I. Introduction 3

II. Body

1. J.R.R.Tolkien: A biographical sketch

a) Tolkien’s birth 4

b) Tolkien’s childhood in South Africa 4

c) Tolkien's childhood in England 4

d) Tolkien's childhood fears 4

e) Tolkien's education at home 5

f) Tolkien's childhood books 5

g) Tolkien in elementary school 6

h) Tolkien learns some philology 6

i) Tolkien's mother dies 6

j) Tolkien in high school 7

k) Tolkien in Oxford 7

l) Tolkien after World War II 9

m) Tolkien now 10

2. The roots of some Tolkien characters 11

3. Tolkiens view on some events from

The Bible and archaic history 15

III. Conclusion 19

IV. List of used literature 20

V. Appendix 21

Introduction

I have many hobbies and one of them is reading. I like to read. Books

liberalize us, and it is just very interesting. My favorite kinds of

literature are fantasy, science fiction, myths and historical books. But

when I saw the film “The Lord Of The Rings” for the first time, I liked it

very much. I realized that there was something unusual in it that attracted

me. One day someone told me, that this film is a screen version of the

book, written by Tolkien. Then I decided to read the book. And when I read

its last page, I realized, that the world, that was described there is very

close to me. That is how my keening of Tolkien’s works started. I’ve read

the whole “The Lord Of The Rings”, “The Silmarillion”, “The Hobbit Or There

And Back Again”, some Tolkien’s poems, such as “Namarie” (which means

“farewell” in the “Quenya Lambe” (The Elvish Language)), “Oh, queen beyond

the western sees…” and other works. Besides I’ve read “The Biography Of

J.R.R.Tolkien”, written by H. Carpenter and many works of different famous

critics devoted to Tolkien. While reading such literature, I understand and

realize very interesting ideas of Tolkien, his philosophy, and it is very

interesting to know, what things influenced the creation of his characters

and his own world that he developed in “The Silmarillion”. And in my work

I’m trying to show you just some of those things.

J.R.R.Tolkien: A biographical sketch

Tolkien's birth

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born to Mabel Suffield and Arthur Tolkien in

South Africa on January 3, 1892.

On February 17,1894, Mabel gave birth to Hilary Arthur Reuel Tolkien,

J.R.R's only brother.

When Ronald (J.R.R)'s health worsened in 1895, the Tolkiens (except for

Arthur, who had to stay in order to wrap up business) left to Southampton.

On February 15, 1896, Arthur Tolkien, in South Africa, died due to a severe

hemorrhage.

Tolkien's childhood in South Africa

". . . many months later, when Ronald was beginning to walk, he stumbled on

a tarantula. It bit him, and he ran in terror across the garden until the

nurse snatched him up and sucked out the poison . . . Nevertheless, in his

stories he writes more than once of monstrous spiders with venomous bites"

(Carpenter 14)

"During the first year of the boy's life Arthur Tolkien made a small grove

of cypresses, firs and cedars. Perhaps this had something to do with the

deep love of trees that wood that would develop in Ronald" (Carpenter 14)

Tolkien's childhood in England

Since his father (the sole source of money) was dead, J.R.R. and his family

went to live with the Suffields (his maternal grandparents).

In the summer of 1896, the Tolkiens moved out of Birmingham to the hamlet

of Sarehole (located in the English countryside).

Tolkien's childhood fears

"An old farmer who once chased Ronald for picking mushrooms was given the

nickname 'The Black Ogre' by the boys . . . they began to pick up something

of the local vocabulary, adopting dialect words into their own speech:

'chawl' for a cheek of pork, 'miskin' for dustbin, 'pickelet' for crumpet,

and 'gamgee' for cotton wool. (Carpenter 21)

Tolkien's education at home

"Mabel soon began to educate her sons, and they could have had no better

teacher - nor she an apter pupil than Ronald, who could read by the time he

was four and had soon learnt to write proficiently." (Carpenter 21).

". . . his favorite lessons were those that concerned languages. Early in

his Sarehole days, his mother introduced him to the rudiments of Latin, and

this delighted him. He was just as interested in the sounds of the words as

their meanings, and she began to realize that he had a special aptitude for

language. (Carpenter 22).

"His mother taught him a great deal of botany, and he responded to this and

soon became very knowledgeable. But again he was more interested in the

shape and feel of a plant than in its botanical details. This was

especially true of trees. And though he liked drawing trees he liked most

of all to be with trees. He would climb them, lean against them, even talk

to them." (Carpenter 22)

Tolkien's childhood books

"He was amused by Alice in Wonderland, though he had no desire to have

adventures like Alice. He did not enjoy Treasure Island, nor the stories of

Hans Anderson, nor The Pied Piper. But he liked Red Indian stories and

longed to shoot with a bow and arrow. He was even more pleased by the

'Curdie' books of George Macdonald, which were set in a remote kingdom

where misshapen and malevolent goblins lurked beneath the mountains. The

Arthurian legends also excited him. But most of all he found delight in the

Fairy Books of Andrew Lang, especially the Red Fairy Book, for tucked away

in its closing pages was the best story he had ever read. This was the tale

of Sigurd who slew the dragon Fafnir: a strange and powerful tale set in

the nameless North." (Carpenter 22)

Tolkien's first experience with grammer

"'I desired dragons with a profound desire,', he said long afterwards. . .

. When he was about seven he began to compose his own story about a dragon.

'I remember nothing about it except a philological fact,' he recalled. 'My

mother said nothing about the dragon, but pointed out that one could not

say 'a green great dragon', but had to say 'a great green dragon'. I

wondered why, and still do. The fact that I remember this is possibly

significant, as I do not think I ever tried to write a story again for many

years, and was taken up with language.'" (Carpenter 24)

Tolkien in elementary school

In September of 1900, J.R.R. Tolkien entered into King Edward's School.

In order to prevent Ronald from walking several miles between the

countryside home and school, the Tolkiens moved from Sarehole to

Birmingham.

Due to school conflicts, Ronald Tolkien was transferred to King Phillip's

Academy for a short period.

Tolkien learns some philology

". . . he especially remembered 'the bitter disappointment and disgust from

schooldays with the shabby use made in Shakespeare of the coming of 'Great

Birnam Wood to high Dunisiane hill'; 'I longed to devise a setting by which

the trees might really march to war" (Carpenter 28)

"By inclination, his form-master Brewerton was a medievalist . . . if a boy

employed the term 'manure' Brewerton would roar out: 'Manure? Call it muck!

Say it three times! Muck, muck muck!'. He encouraged his students to read

Chaucer, and he recited the Canterbury Tales to them in the original Middle

English. To Ronald Tolkien's ears, this was a revelation, and he determined

to learn more about the history of the language." (Carpenter 28)

Tolkien's mother dies

"The New Year [1904] did not begin well. Ronald and Hilary were confined to

bed with measles followed by whooping-cough, and in Hilary's case by

pneumonia. The addition strain of nursing them proved too much for their

mother, and as she feard it proved 'impossible to go on'. By April 1904 she

was in hospital, and her condition was diagnosed as diabetes." (Carpenter

29)

"At the beginning of November 1904, she sank into a diabetic coma, and six

days later, on November 14, she died." (Carpenter 30)

". . . Perhaps his mother's death also had a cementing effect on his study

of languages. It was she, after all, who had been his first teacher and who

had encouraged him to take an interest in words. Now that she was gone he

would pursue that path relentlessly. And certainly the loss of his mother

had a profound effect on his personality. It made him into a pessimist . .

. Nothing was safe. Nothing would last. No battle would be won for ever."

(Carpenter 31)

Related to philosophy of THE LORD OF THE RINGS: Middle-Earth is never, ever

free from evil. The Simillirion states that Middle-Earth is destroyed and

all live in Valinor (quasi Middle-Earth) after the death of Morgroth (by

Turin, son of Thor).

Tolkien lives with his mother's aunt-in-law (in urban Edgbaston) along with

his brother Hillary.

"His feelings towards the rural landscape, already sharp from the earlier

severance that had taken him from Sarehole, now become emotionally charged

with personal bereavement. This love for the memory of the countryside of

his youth was later to become a central part of his writing, and it was

intimately bound up with his love for the memory of his mother." (Carpenter

32-3)

Tolkien in high school

"Headmaster Gilson also encouraged his pupils to make a detailed study of

classical linguistics. This was entirely in keeping with Tolkien's

inclinations; and, partly as a result in the general principles of

language" (Carpenter 34)

"It was one thing to know Latin, Greek, French, and German; it was another

to understand why they were what they were. Tolkien had started to look for

the bones, the elements that were common to them all: he had begun, in

fact, to study philology, the science of words." (Carpenter 34)

Tolkien studies all languages (Studies Chaucer, Beowulf, Old Norse, Gothic)

"He continued his search for the 'bones' behind all these languages,

rummaging in the school library and exploring the remoter shelves of

Cornish's bookshop down the road. Eventually he began to find - and to

scrape enough money to buy - German books on philology that were 'dry-as-

dust' but which could provide the answers to his questions. Philology: 'the

love of words'. For that was what motivated him. It was not an arid

interest in the scientific principles of language; it was a deep love for

the look and sound of words, springing from the days when his mother had

given him his first Latin lessons . . . And as a result of this love of

words, he had started to invent his own words" (Carpenter 35) Tolkien

begins to (at age 14) to create his own languages, namely 'Nevbosh', a

language filled with Gothic and Norse words.

1908 - Tolkien falls in love with Edith Bratt

1911 - Tolkien starts the Tea Club and goes to Switzerland

Tolkien in Oxford

In 1911 Tolkien entered Exeter College of Oxford. There he started writing

(poem 'Wood-sunshine'), modeled after several different authors.

"In 'Wood-sunshine' there is a distinct resemblance to an episode in the

first part of Thompson's 'Sister Songs' where the poet sees first a single

elf and then a swarm of woodland sprites in the glade; when he moves, they

vanish . . ." (Carpenter 48)

"Being taught by Joe Wright, Tolkien managed to find books of medieval

Welsh, and he began to read the language that had fascinated him since he

saw a few words of it on coal-trucks. He was not disappointed; indeed he

was confirmed in all his expectations of beauty. Beauty: that was what

pleased him in Welsh; the appearance and sound of the words almost

irrespective of their meaning. He once said: 'Most English-speaking people,

for instance, will admit that cellar door is 'beautiful', especially if

disassociated from its sense (and its spelling). More beautiful than, say

sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful'." (Carpenter 56-7)

Tolkien starts advanced languages (new): "He abandoned neo-Gothic and began

to create a private language that was heavily influenced by Finnish. This

was the language that would eventually emerge in his stories as 'Quenya' or

High-elven. That would not happen for many years; yet already a seed of

what was to come was germinating in his mind" (Carpenter 59)

1913 - Tolkien graduates from three-year program with second-class honors

and proceeds to study philology in graduate school.

At the same period Tolkien reads Cynewulf - "'I felt a curious thrill,' he

wrote long afterwards, 'as if something had stirred in me, half wakened

from sleep. There was something very remote and strange and beautiful

behind those words, if I could grasp it, far beyond ancient English'."

(Carpenter 64) Tolkien reads the Vцluspa - "The most remarkable of all

Germanic-mythological poems, it dates from the very end of Norse

heathendom, when Christianity was taking the place of the old gods; yet it

imparts a sense of living myth, a feeling of awe and mystery, in its

representation of a pagan cosmos. It had a profound appeal to Tolkien's

imagination" (Carpenter 65) Tolkien sees Edith again (he was previously

banned to see him by Father Francis, his guardian)

Tolkien reads Morris (NOTE: Mirkwood is the name of the great Necromancer's

forest in The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy) "Written partly in

prose and partly in verse, [Morris's book] centers on a House or family-

tribe that dwells by a great river in a clearing of the forest named

Mirkwood, a name taken from ancient Germanic geography and legend. Many

elements in the story seem to have impressed Tolkien. It's style is highly

idiosyncratic, heavily laden with archaisms and poetic inversions in an

attempt to recreate the aura of ancient legend. Clearly Tolkien took not of

this, and it would seem that he also appreciated another facet of the

writing: Morris' aptitude, despite the vagueness of time and place in which

the story is set, for describing with great precision the details of his

imagined landscape. Tolkien himself was to follow Morris' example in later

year." [Carpenter 70]

In the same year Tolkien visits Cornwall [NOTE: This is the location for

the Sea in The Hobbit and LOTR] " 'Nothing I could say . . . could describe

it to you. The sun beats down on you and a huge Atlantic swell smashes and

spouts over the snags and reefs. The sea has carved weird wind-holes and

spouts into the cliffs which blow with trumpety noises or spout foam like a

whale, and everywhere you see black and red rock and white foam against

violet and transparent seagreen.'." [Carpenter 70]

Tolkien begins to create works with Quentya (language of the high-elves):

"He had been working for some time at the language that was influenced by

Finish, and by 1915 he had developed it to a degree of some complexity. He

felt that it was 'a mad hobby', and he scarcely expected to find an

audience for it. But he sometimes wrote poems n it, and the more he worked

at it the more he felt that it needed a 'history' to support it. In other

words, you cannot have a language without a race of people to speak it. He

was perfecting the language; now he had to decide to whom it belonged."

[Carpenter 75]

Tolkien creates Valinor [Land of the Gods in the Silmarillion] "This, he

decided, was the language by the fairies or elves whom Earendel saw during

his strange voyage. He began work on a 'Lay of Earendel' that described the

mariner's journeying across the world before his ship became a star. The

Lay was to be divided into several poems, and the first of these, 'The

shores of Faery', tells of the mysterious land of Valinor, where Two Trees

grow, one bearing golden sun-apples and the other silver moon-apples."

[Carpenter 76]

1916 - Tolkien marries Edith, continues war, and gets to know soldiers

[Tolkien is an officer]. All of Tolkien's friends die [except C.S. Lewis]

Tolkien after World War II

Continuing the last wishes of the T.B.C.S (the society he had founded with

his friends at St. Edwards), Tolkien decides to create a whole society.

[Founding precepts of the LOTR] " 'I [Tolkien] had a mind to make a body of

more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic to the

level of romantic fairy-story - the larger founded on the lesser in contact

with the earth, the lesser drawing splendor from the vast backcloths -

which I could dedicate simply: to England; to my country. It could possess

the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent

of our 'air' (the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the

hither parts of Europe; not Italy or the Aegean, still less the East), and,

while possessing (if I could achieve it) the fair elusive beauty that some

call Celtic (though it is rarely found in genuine ancient Celtic things),

it should be 'high', purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind

of a land long steeped in poetry, I would draw some of the great tales in

fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The

cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other

minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama" [Carpenter 90]

[Researching, not inventing] "When he wrote The Silmarillion Tolkien

believed that in one sense he was writing the truth. He did not suppose

that precisely such peoples as he described, 'elves', 'dwarves', and

malevolent 'orcs', had walked the earth and done the deeds that he

recorded. But he did feel, or hope, that his stories were in some sense an

embodiment of a profound truth . . . Tolkien believed that he was doing

more than inventing a story. He wrote of the tales that make up the book:

'They arose in my mind as 'given' things, and as they came, separately, so

too the links grew . . . yet always I had the sense of recording what was

already 'there', somewhere: not of 'inventing'." [Carpenter 91-2]

Influences from language: "As to the names of persons and places in 'The

Fall of Gondolin' and the other stories in The Silmarillion, they were

constructed from Tolkien's invented languages. Since the existence of these

languages was a raison d'кtre for the whole mythology, it is not surprising

that he devoted a good deal of attention to the business of making up names

from them"

Tolkien creates Sindarin, precursor to Quentya

[Development of 'what is real?'] "As the years went by he came more and

more to regard his own invented languages and stories as 'real' languages

and historical chronicles that needed to be elucidated. In other words,

when in this mood he did not say of an apparent contradiction in the

narrative or an unsatisfactory name: 'This is not as I wish it to be; I

must change it.' Instead he would approach the problem with the attitude:

'What does this mean? I must find about." [Carpenter 94]

On the 16 of November 1917 Tolkien gets a son and writes story of Luthien &

Beren

1918 - Tolkien gets job in the OED (Oxford English Dictionary)

1920 - Tolkien gets a professorship at Leeds University

In October of 1920 Tolkien gets second son.

Tolkien writes poems: "Another, 'The Dragon's Visits', describes the

ravages of a dragon who arrives at Bimble Bay and encounters 'Miss

Biggins'. A third, 'Glip', tells of a strange slimy creature who lives

beneath the floor of a cave and has pale luminous eyes" [Carpenter 106] :

Dragon ~ Smaug, Miss Biggins ~ Bilbo Baggins, Glip ~ Gollum

1924 - Tolkien gets a third son Christopher.

1925 - Tolkien becomes a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford

1929 - Tolkien gets a daughter

Tolkien now

[Tolkien's Workplace] "The shelves are crammed with dictionaries, works on

etymology and philology, and editions of texts in many languages,

predominant among which are Old and Middle English and Old Norse; but there

is also a section devoted to translations of The Lord of the Rings into

Polish, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and Japanese; and the map of his invented

'Middle-Earth' is pinned to the window - ledge." (Carpenter 4) [Tolkien's

view of The Lord of the Rings] "He explains it all in great detail, talking

about his book not as a work of fiction but as a chronicle of actual

events; he seems to see himself not as an author who has made a slight

error that must now be corrected or explained away, but as a historian who

must cast light on an obscurity in an historical document." [Tolkien's

Voice] "He has a strange voice, deep but without resonance, entirely

English but with some quality in it I cannot define, as if he had come from

another age or civilization" (Carpenter 5)

The roots of some Tolkien characters

Gandalf

While reading “The Hobbit” and “The Lord Of The Rings” you will meat

such character as Gandalf. He is a magician (or Istary in the “The

Silmarillion”). And like all magicians he wears a long, thick, grey (or

white) beard, a big cone-shaped hat with wide fields and a wide grey

raincoat. This character owes with his existence to Tolkien’s trip to

Switzerland, where in the shop among the mountans he bought a postcard. It

was a reproduction of a picture of a german painter Madlenner, which was

called “Der Berggeist” (it could be translated as “The spirit of the

mountans”). There was an old man with white long beard and cone-shaped hat

with wide fields, who was seating under the tree. Many years later Tolkien

wrote on the other side of this postcard the following: “The prototype of

Gandalf”…

Sam Gamgee

Sam Gamgee is a hobbit (It tells us many things). He is the best

friend of Frodo and besides that, he is Frodo’s gardener. He is very brave,

bonhomous, kind, but careless and light-hearted, and, as all hobbits, he

likes to eat very much. It is very interesting, that the word “gamgee” can

be translated from one of the English dialects as cotton wool and besides

that, it was a surname of a doctor, who had invented 'gamgee-tissue', a

surgical dressing made from cotton wool. But the real character of Sam was

copied from the character of the mere english soldier of the war of 1914.

You already now from the biographical sketch that Tolkien took part in that

war. He battled on the front line in France. And he knows, what the war

is. Later in one of his letters he wrote: “My Sam Gamgee is indeed a

reflection of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the

1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself”.

Hobbits

Hobbits is a people of Halflings. They live in holes. They are very short,

practical, strait-laced and they like tasty food most of all things in the

world. These creatures were created by J.R.R.Tolkien. He was the first,

who used them in his books. There are two versions about the origin of the

word “hobbit”. V.A. Muravjov keeps one of them. He wrote in his entrance to

“The Lord Of The Rings”, that the world “hobbit” is a mixture of latin word

“homo”, which means “human” and english word “rabbit”. But Humphrey

Carpenter explained the origin of this word in a different way. In his “The

biography of J.R.R.Tolkien” he wrote, that in his youth Tolkien read the

book “Babbit” by Sincler Luis and it influensed him very much. Carpenter

shows us the resemblance of the personality of Babbit and Bilbo Baggins,

the main character of Tolkien’s book “The hobbit or there and back again”.

Tolkien himself told in one of his interview, that his hobbits have no even

a hint on rabbits. That is why I can say, that the second version about the

origin of the word “hobbit” is more correct.

The Shire

The Shire is a country of hobbits. But it also has its roots. From the

biographical sketch we know, that four best years of his childhood Tolkien

spent in the village of Sarehole. And wile reading Tolkien’s description of

the Shire I realized, that it is very close to the Carpenter’s description

of Sarehole. The same water-mill, the same pretty flower-beds, the roads

paved with stones of different colors. We can see the festive tree, which

was decorated by hobbits every holiday. And we know, that in Sarehole there

was a tree, that Tolkien remembered all his life. The first his wise tree.

In hobbits-halflings we can see the same efficient, plain and stiff english

peasants so much loved by Tolkien.

Trees and ents

All his life Tolkien loved trees. In his childhood he dreamed, they

could have mind, speak to each other and even move. And his dream came

true as we can see it in his works (mostly in “The Silmarillion” and “The

Lord Of The Rings”). When professor created reasonable trees, he desided to

creat someone, who will look after them. That is how ents appeared. Ents

look like trees, but they more reasonable, more movable and of course they

are immortal. They are not fidgety, but very wise. Their speech is very

slow and calm. Its manner (“Hrum, Hoom”) was copied with the deep bass of

Luis, the best friend of J.R.R.Tolkien.

The elves

The elves in their appearance, whom we can see in the books of Tolkien

were also mostly created by him. The roots of these characters are very

ramified. Professor read a lot of information about all kinds of elves and

finding something general tried to create something new. Finally he got

immortal creatures, who can be killed only with a sword or they can pine

away to death. They are tall, have perfect eyesight, bright hair and brave

harts. They are wise, because of the memory they keep in their immortal

mind. But elves themselves estimate their immortality as end-around

infinity of analogical events, which exhaust and oppress them. But they

have a dream to return to Valinor, country, where their immortality wont be

so hard and difficult.

Lutien

Lutien Tinuviel (“Tinuviel” could be translated from Quenya as

“nightingale”) is the most beautiful elven virgo in the whole Arda (The

Earth). One day she was singing the hymn to Varda in the forest:

Ir Ithil ammen Eruchin (When the Moon is for us, the

children of Eru,

Menel-vir sila diriel Like sky precious stone

shines and saves,

Si loth a galadh lasto din! Let the flower and the tree

listen in silence!

A hir Annun gilthoniel Oh, queen of the West, which

light the stars,

Le linnon im Tinuviel! I sing to you, it’s me,

Tinuviel.)

Beren, the bravest warrior herd this sounds and loved Lutirn in a

moment. But he was mortal and she was an elf. That is why they could not be

together. But their love was so strong, that Lutien managed to ask the

goddess Varda to help them. And Varda helped them, so Lutien became mortal

and shared the destiny of her sweetheart.

Lutien is a copy of Edith Bratt, the wife of Tolkien. Like Lutien

Edith had hair of the color of raven’s wing, satin skin, shining eyes. She

danced and sang very well. And like the elven virgo, she danced for him in

the forest. And there is a inscription on her tomb: “Edith Mary Tolkien

(Lutien)”

Shelob

Shelob is a brainchild of Ungoliant, a jumbo spider with a beak,

pincers and bottomless stomach. Ungoliant is the evil and concentrated

darkness. She terminated the Two Great Trees Telperion and Laurelin and

deprived the world frome the light that give life.

Shelob is smaller then her mother, but she is even more cruel and

always hungry. This creature lives in a lair on the border of Mordor (the

Dark Land). She has a poison in her stinger, using which she kills and

devours her victims.

In his early childhood, being in South Africa, Tolkien stumbled on a

tarantula. It bit him, and he ran in terror across the garden until the

nurse snatched him up and sucked out the poison. Since that time he began

to afraid spiders. Maybe this made him to create such a creature.

“She”+”lob” is a quite wide-spread model of forming words, like female

animals. For example “she-goat” or “she-wolf”. In this case words should be

written with hyphen. Tolkien took hyphen away and used the received word as

the name of his creature. It looks rather horribly, isn’t it?

Tolkiens view on some events from

The Bible and archaic history

The crash of the Lamps

In the beginning of ages in “The spring of Arda” (“Arda” means “The

Earth”) there was no light at all. The Earth was bare: no trees, no plants,

no animals. The Valar saw, that there was a need of the light. And then

“Aule at the prayer of Yavanna wrought two mighty lamps for the lighting of

the Middle-earth which he had built amid the encircling seas. Then Varda

filled the lamps and Manwe hallowed them, and the Valar set them upon high

pillars, more lofty far than are any mountains of the later days. One lamp

they raised near to the north of Middle-earth, and it was named Illuin; and

the other was raised in the south, and it was named Ormal; and the light of

the Lamps of the Valar flowed out over the Earth, so that all was lit as it

were in a changeless day.” And then plants and trees began to grow. And

Arda filled with different animals and creatures. But when Morgoth (the

lord of darkness and evil) saw the fragrance of Arda in his anger he

decided to destroy this all. He built an unshakable citadel in Utumno and

concentrated all his dark forces there. His power grew and he started the

war. He made his stroke when the Valar where not prepared. “He assailed the

lights of Illuin and Ormal, and cast down their pillars and broke their

lamps. In the overthrow of the mighty pillars lands were broken and seas

arose in tumult; and when the lamps were spilled destroying flame was

poured out over the Earth. And the shape of Arda and the symmetry of its

waters and its lands was marred in that time, so that the first designs of

the Valar were never after restored.”

See, how gracefully professor Tolkien handled the legend of the ruin of

dinosaurs and the fall of a giant asteroid which destroyed everything on

earth! Isn’t he a genius?

The fall of Beleriand

It was the end of the first age of Arda. The forth battle of Beleriand

against Morgoth and Sauron (the “right arm” of Morgoth) finished with a

defeat of the forces of the light, the armies of men, elves and dwarves.

And the only hope of the light was Earendel, the man, who dared to try to

find Valinor and ask the Valar for help (men never were in Valinor and they

where forbidden to go there). He sailed so long, and he was so tired, that

he thought to turn back. But suddenly he saw a big white bird like a white

cloud under the see. There was a shining silmarill on her bosom. The bird

flew on Earendels ship and he saw, that it was his wife, Elwing. Together

they continued their sail and the silmarill lighted their way to Valinor.

When the Valar saw the bravery of this man and his wife (by the way, she

was an elf), the understood, there is something in Middle-Earth, they must

save. That is how the fifth and the final battle for Beleriand started.

This battle was named The War of Wrath. The Valar, with the power of

their fire of anger terminated Angband (the citadel of Morgoth), they

knocked Morgoth down and numbed him with the chain of Angoinor. Sauron was

forgiven and turned into light, he became Majar again, as he was before

Morgoth tempted him.

But in their destructive anger, the Valar didn’t even noticed, that

they had destroyed the Beleriand. Many of Elves where save and settled in

Imladrise, Lothlorien and Mirkwood. But Beleriand was swallowed by the See

and no one could ever see its beauty: “Thus an end was made of the power of

Angband in the North, and' the evil realm was brought to naught; and out of

the deep prisons a multitude of slaves came forth beyond all hope into the

light of day, and they looked upon a world that was changed. For so great

was the fury of those adversaries that the northern regions of the western

world were rent asunder, and the sea roared in through many chasms, and

there was confusion and great noise; and rivers perished or found new

paths, and the valleys were upheaved and the hills trod down…”

Critics say, that this story is the Tolkiens view on the legend about

Atlantis. Who knows, maybe it was really so…

The fall of Numenor

In the end of the second age of Arda after the War of Wrath and the

fall of Beleriand the Valar opened a new land for elected genders of men.

It was an island. And it didn’t belong neither to Middle-Earth nor to

Valinor (the country of the Valar). The Valar decorated it with gardens,

fountains and flowers from Valinor. And this land was named Numenor (The

Western Land).

The life of the inhabitants of Numenor was very long – near 300 years.

But they still stayed mortal men. Hundreds of years passed and their

discontent about their mortality grew. They began to murmur on the Valar:

“Why didn’t they give us eternity, if they love us so much? They told us,

they could not. Maybe, they just don’t want to?” But the Valar really

couldn’t deprive men from death, the Eru’s gift (Eru – the one, who create

the Valar and Arda, elves and men and everything), just because they

couldn’t understand it.

And exactly in this moment, when the faith of men staggered, Sauron,

who betrayed the Valar and turned in the Darkness again, made his stroke.

He tempted men and directed them against the Valar. Finally the king of men

concentrated all his forces and threw his giant army against the Valar. Eru

saw this and made abyss to swallow this army and the isle of Numenor and

men and Sauron: “But Iluvatar (the other name of Eru) showed forth his

power, and he changed the fashion of the world; and a great chasm opened in

the sea between Numenor 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 Numenoreans were drawn down

into the abyss, and they were drowned and swallowed up for ever.”

“There came a mighty wind and a tumult of the earth, and the sky

reeled, and the hills slid, and Numenor went down into the sea, with all

its children and its wives and its maidens and its ladies proud; and all

its gardens and its balls and its towers, its tombs and its riches, and its

jewels and its webs and its things painted and carven, and its lore: they

vanished for ever. And last of all the mounting wave, green and cold and

plumed with foam, climbing over the land…” And the world has changed.

Only those who stayed faithful to the Valar was reminded about

forthcoming cataclysm. They sailed to Middle-earth on ships and founded

several kingdoms their: Gondor, Arnor and Eriador…

This legend intertwines with the Bible Great Flood. As in the Bible we

can see the sin of men and retribution for it. As in the Bible water

swallowed the sinners. And as in the bible there are some people, who

stayed faithful and who was saved and prized for their faith.

How the world changed

When Eru punished men in Numenor and destroyed the island, he changed

the whole world as well: “But the land of Aman and Eressлa (the islands of

Valinor) of the Eldar were taken away and removed beyond the reach of Men

for ever. And Andor, the Land of Gift, Numenor of the Kings, Elenna of the

Star of Eдrendil, was utterly destroyed. For it was nigh to the east of the

great rift, and its foundations were overturned, and it fell and went down

into darkness, and is no more. And there is not now upon Earth any place

abiding where the memory of a time without evil is preserved. For Iluvatar

cast back the Great Seas west of Middle-earth, and the Empty Lands east of

it, and new lands and new seas were made; and the world was diminished, for

Valinor and Eressлa were taken from it into the realm of hidden things.”

Before the fall of Numenor the Earth was flat, but Eru changed her:

“Thus in after days, what by the voyages of ships, what by lore and

star-craft, the kings of Men knew that the world was indeed made round”

By this episode Tolkien managed to conciliate two archaic theories

about the form of our planet. He intended that at first the Earth was flat

and then changed its form. Of course it is just a myth, but who knows,

maybe it was really so…

About wars

In “The Silmarillion”, in “The Lord Of The Rings” and even in “The

Hobbit” we can see wars. In his works Tolkien shows us real war with its

blood, pain and cruelty. Why does he pay so much attention to War? The

answer is simple. In 1916 he was in army and took part in the battle of the

Somme (France). Many of his friends fell in this battle. There Tolkien saw

all sides of the war. This period of his life influenced on his creative

work very much. That is why we can see so many wars in the books of the

professor.

Conclusion

Well, I think, that now, when I have studied many reasons and roots of

different characters of “The Silmarillion”, “The Hobbit” and “The Lord Of

The Rings”, I understood Tolkiens philosophy and his views on things a

little bit deeper. But the views of the Professor on such events, as I have

mentioned in my work, can’t be named allegory, because Tolkien himself

always declined the presence of any kind of allegory in his books. But the

method of his viewing can be called “myth-poetical method”. In his “The

Silmarillion” and “The Lord Of The Rings” we can see all sings of myth-

poetical space, which makes the book fantastic, historical, mythable,

poetical and very informative. Besides, “The Lord Of The Rings” is very

real and vital. And there is no such question for me, on which I couldn’t

find an answer in it.

Well, to my mind, my own experience in the sphere of literature,

tolkienism and just life experience is enough to advise you to read this

book. I think, after such reading, you wouldn’t forget it!

List of used literature

1. J.R.R.Tolkien “The Silmarillion”

2. J.R.R.Tolkien “The Lord Of The Rings”

3. J.R.R.Tolkien “The Hobbit or There And Back Again”

4. J.R.R.Tolkien “The appendix to “The Lord Of The Rings”

5. V. Muraviov an introductory article to “The Hobbit”

6. H. Carpenter “The biography of J.R.R. Tolkien”

7. Pictures by J.R.R.Tolkien, Karen Wynn Fonstad, Patrick Wynne and

frames from the film “The Lord Of The Rings” by Peter Jackson.

Appendix

-----------------------

The map of Numenor

The map of Beleriand

Beren and Lutien

The elven virgo Galadriel

Ent Treebeard

The Shire

Hobbits hole inside

Gandalf the Grey

Ronald with his family in South Africa

Ronald and Hilary

Edith Bratt

Ronald in student years

Ronald in army

Prosessor J.R.R.Tolkien

The spring of Arda

The Change of the world

The Monogram of

J.R.R.Tolkien

Elvish and runic scripts made by J.R.R.Tolkien

“The door of Moria”

by J.R.R.Tolkien

Professor Tolkien

Ronald and Edith

Tolkien

The last photo of

J.R.R.Tolkien

The tomb of Edith Mary Tolkien (Lutien) and John Ronald Ruel Tolkien

(Beren)