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Death and immortality in Middle-earth
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Death and immortality in Middle-earth
J. R. R. Tolkien repeatedly dealt with the theme of death and immortality in Middle-earth. He stated directly that the "real theme" of The Lord of the Rings was "Death and Immortality." In Middle-earth, Men are mortal, while Elves are immortal. One of his stories, The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen, explores the willing choice of death through the love of an immortal Elf for a mortal Man. He several times revisited the Old Norse theme of the mountain tomb, containing treasure along with the dead and visited by fighting. He brought multiple leading evil characters in The Lord of the Rings to a fiery end, including Gollum, the Nazgûl, the Dark Lord Sauron, and the evil Wizard Saruman, while in The Hobbit, the dragon Smaug is killed. Their destruction contrasts with the heroic deaths of two leaders of the free peoples, Théoden of Rohan and Boromir of Gondor, reflecting the early medieval ideal of Northern courage. Despite these pagan themes, the work contains hints of Christianity, such as of the resurrection of Christ, as when the Lord of the Nazgûl, thinking himself victorious, calls himself Death, only to be answered by the crowing of a cockerel. There are, too, hints that the Elvish land of Lothlórien represents an Earthly Paradise. Scholars have commented that Tolkien clearly moved during his career from being oriented towards pagan themes to a more Christian theology.
J. R. R. Tolkien was a scholar of English literature, a philologist and medievalist interested in language and poetry from the Middle Ages, especially that of Anglo-Saxon England and Northern Europe. His professional knowledge of Beowulf, telling of a pagan world but with a Christian narrator, helped to shape his fictional world of Middle-earth. His intention to create what has been called "a mythology for England" led him to construct not only stories but a fully-formed world, Middle-earth, with languages, peoples, cultures, and history. Among his many influences were his own Roman Catholic faith, medieval languages and literature, including Norse mythology. He is best known as the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, both set in Middle-earth.
Tolkien set out his view of "Death and Immortality" in The Lord of the Rings in a 1956 letter; Verlyn Flieger and Douglas Anderson describe this theme as "the Escape from Deathlessness":
The real theme for me is .. Death and Immortality: the mystery of the love of the world in the hearts of a race [Men] 'doomed' to leave and seemingly lose it; the anguish in the hearts of a race [Elves] 'doomed' not to leave it, until its whole evil-aroused story is complete. But if you have now read Vol. III and the story of Aragorn [and Arwen], you will have perceived that.
The scholar of fantasy Charles W. Nelson writes that this seems surprising at first sight, given the prominence of other themes like "loyalty, love, [and] the importance of compassion and selflessness". But, he comments, alongside the major battles, there are "intense scenes of particular deaths which impress the reader with their impact". He gives as instances Sam Gamgee's reaction to the death of a warrior in Ithilien, and Bilbo's "moving" final farewell to Thorin Oakenshield as the Dwarf-leader dies. He argues, too, that a central event in The Hobbit is the death of the dragon Smaug, while the novel sees the three trolls turned to stone, and the deaths of many goblins and their King. As for The Lord of the Rings, Nelson writes, the dead are well represented by "the Barrowwights, the Dead whom Aragorn leads out of the White Mountains, the dead elves and men [who] Frodo sees in the Dead Marshes with their mysterious candles, and the Black Riders who are among the living dead." The deaths of major characters, including Boromir, Denethor, Gollum, Saruman, Sauron, Théoden, and Wormtongue all form "significant scenes", while Gandalf both dies and returns from the dead.
Mortality is confronted in the first chapter of The Lord of the Rings, as Bilbo Baggins states that he feels he needs "a holiday, a very long holiday... Probably a permanent holiday: I don't expect I shall return." Giovanni Carmine Costabile comments that Bilbo means he will go to Rivendell to rest; but that it is also a metaphor for death.
Immortality, too, is represented in multiple ways in The Lord of the Rings. The Elves are immortal, while other races like the Dwarves and the Ents are long-lived. There is, as Nelson states, "a complex system of otherworlds and eternal dwellings" for when members of the various races leave Middle-earth. And the One Ring tempts and corrupts partly through its promise of immortality.
The medievalist Verlyn Flieger writes that nobody knows where Men go to when they die and leave Middle-earth, and that the nearest Tolkien came to dealing with the question was in his essay On Fairy-Stories. There, "after speculating that since 'fairy-stories are made by men not by fairies', they must deal with what he called the Great Escape, the escape from death. He went on to the singular assertion that 'the Human-stories of the elves are doubtless full of the Escape from Deathlessness'." Flieger suggests that two of the "human stories" of Tolkien's Elves really focus on this kind of escape, the Tale of Beren and Lúthien and The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen, where in both cases a half-elf makes her escape from deathlessness. The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey comments that "the themes of the Escape from Death, and the Escape from Deathlessness, are vital parts of Tolkien's entire mythology." In a 1968 BBC television broadcast, Tolkien quoted French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir and described the inevitability of death as the "key-spring of The Lord of the Rings".
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Death and immortality in Middle-earth
J. R. R. Tolkien repeatedly dealt with the theme of death and immortality in Middle-earth. He stated directly that the "real theme" of The Lord of the Rings was "Death and Immortality." In Middle-earth, Men are mortal, while Elves are immortal. One of his stories, The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen, explores the willing choice of death through the love of an immortal Elf for a mortal Man. He several times revisited the Old Norse theme of the mountain tomb, containing treasure along with the dead and visited by fighting. He brought multiple leading evil characters in The Lord of the Rings to a fiery end, including Gollum, the Nazgûl, the Dark Lord Sauron, and the evil Wizard Saruman, while in The Hobbit, the dragon Smaug is killed. Their destruction contrasts with the heroic deaths of two leaders of the free peoples, Théoden of Rohan and Boromir of Gondor, reflecting the early medieval ideal of Northern courage. Despite these pagan themes, the work contains hints of Christianity, such as of the resurrection of Christ, as when the Lord of the Nazgûl, thinking himself victorious, calls himself Death, only to be answered by the crowing of a cockerel. There are, too, hints that the Elvish land of Lothlórien represents an Earthly Paradise. Scholars have commented that Tolkien clearly moved during his career from being oriented towards pagan themes to a more Christian theology.
J. R. R. Tolkien was a scholar of English literature, a philologist and medievalist interested in language and poetry from the Middle Ages, especially that of Anglo-Saxon England and Northern Europe. His professional knowledge of Beowulf, telling of a pagan world but with a Christian narrator, helped to shape his fictional world of Middle-earth. His intention to create what has been called "a mythology for England" led him to construct not only stories but a fully-formed world, Middle-earth, with languages, peoples, cultures, and history. Among his many influences were his own Roman Catholic faith, medieval languages and literature, including Norse mythology. He is best known as the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, both set in Middle-earth.
Tolkien set out his view of "Death and Immortality" in The Lord of the Rings in a 1956 letter; Verlyn Flieger and Douglas Anderson describe this theme as "the Escape from Deathlessness":
The real theme for me is .. Death and Immortality: the mystery of the love of the world in the hearts of a race [Men] 'doomed' to leave and seemingly lose it; the anguish in the hearts of a race [Elves] 'doomed' not to leave it, until its whole evil-aroused story is complete. But if you have now read Vol. III and the story of Aragorn [and Arwen], you will have perceived that.
The scholar of fantasy Charles W. Nelson writes that this seems surprising at first sight, given the prominence of other themes like "loyalty, love, [and] the importance of compassion and selflessness". But, he comments, alongside the major battles, there are "intense scenes of particular deaths which impress the reader with their impact". He gives as instances Sam Gamgee's reaction to the death of a warrior in Ithilien, and Bilbo's "moving" final farewell to Thorin Oakenshield as the Dwarf-leader dies. He argues, too, that a central event in The Hobbit is the death of the dragon Smaug, while the novel sees the three trolls turned to stone, and the deaths of many goblins and their King. As for The Lord of the Rings, Nelson writes, the dead are well represented by "the Barrowwights, the Dead whom Aragorn leads out of the White Mountains, the dead elves and men [who] Frodo sees in the Dead Marshes with their mysterious candles, and the Black Riders who are among the living dead." The deaths of major characters, including Boromir, Denethor, Gollum, Saruman, Sauron, Théoden, and Wormtongue all form "significant scenes", while Gandalf both dies and returns from the dead.
Mortality is confronted in the first chapter of The Lord of the Rings, as Bilbo Baggins states that he feels he needs "a holiday, a very long holiday... Probably a permanent holiday: I don't expect I shall return." Giovanni Carmine Costabile comments that Bilbo means he will go to Rivendell to rest; but that it is also a metaphor for death.
Immortality, too, is represented in multiple ways in The Lord of the Rings. The Elves are immortal, while other races like the Dwarves and the Ents are long-lived. There is, as Nelson states, "a complex system of otherworlds and eternal dwellings" for when members of the various races leave Middle-earth. And the One Ring tempts and corrupts partly through its promise of immortality.
The medievalist Verlyn Flieger writes that nobody knows where Men go to when they die and leave Middle-earth, and that the nearest Tolkien came to dealing with the question was in his essay On Fairy-Stories. There, "after speculating that since 'fairy-stories are made by men not by fairies', they must deal with what he called the Great Escape, the escape from death. He went on to the singular assertion that 'the Human-stories of the elves are doubtless full of the Escape from Deathlessness'." Flieger suggests that two of the "human stories" of Tolkien's Elves really focus on this kind of escape, the Tale of Beren and Lúthien and The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen, where in both cases a half-elf makes her escape from deathlessness. The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey comments that "the themes of the Escape from Death, and the Escape from Deathlessness, are vital parts of Tolkien's entire mythology." In a 1968 BBC television broadcast, Tolkien quoted French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir and described the inevitability of death as the "key-spring of The Lord of the Rings".