The Silmarillion

I'm not a huge fan of how it's crammed with allusions, metaphors and all other kinds of confusing writing.

It certainly isn't accessible, and after reading Tolkien's adaptation of "Sigurd and Gudrun", it shows that you really need to have a strong grasp of Norse myth before you could probably get the fullest appreciation of the Quenta Silmarillion.

It's a neat enough mythology on its own, but much harder to appreciate in depth than LOTR or The Hobbit.

Who do you guys like more, Morgoth or Sauron?

I was asking this on another site and when comparing the two I remembered one of my favorite quotes from The Sil:

"In Angband Morgoth forged himself a great crown of iron, and he called himself King of the World. In token of this he set the Silmarils in his crown. His hands were burned black by the touch of those hallowed jewels, and black they remained ever after; nor was he ever free from the pain of the burning, and the anger of the pain. That crown he never took from his head, though its weight became a deadly weariness."

I feel this perfectly encapsulates the character of Melkor/Morgoth. Others might ask "what was the point of all this? He chose to live in perpetual agony because of some gems? And he will never eve remove a crown no matter how much it ails him?"

But that, in essence, is Morgoth. Foolish and stupid these things seem to us and hardly any of it is practical. Sauron at the least was much more pragmatic than his master. But Morgoth wanted all and he would have all, even if it destroyed him.

I would have to say Sauron, because he was smarter. While Morgoth squandered his power and spent most of his life in imprisonment, Sauron's master of subtlety allowed him to delay his final defeat several times, and while his crafting of the One Ring eventually became a weakness, it did prolong his time in Middle-Earth for an extra few thousand years, as without it he likely would not have been able to reconstruct a physical body after the fall of Numenor.

Ignoring my annoying ranting of adaptation of Silmarillion I cry absolute tears of sadness that this tale of Vaire wasn't in Tolkien final draft of the Silmarillion as referenced in this blog post:

Without this Vaire is nothing but a name and pretty face.

edited 8th Jul '14 6:56:26 PM by Couchpotato20

Ultimately they were right, mostly because the resentment between the son of Miriel and the sons of Indis were the cornerstone for the entire tragedy of the Noldor (or what compounded the initial tragedy of Morgoth's theft of the silmarils)

Vaire definitely showed balls going against her husband's council. In life the house of Finwe is screwed over but in death they have it alright. Irony.

x5 Morgoth pretty much defines Stupid Evil

I would put him more towards Evil Is Petty but I guess insofar as everything Morgoth wanted was impossible, he was stupid. Tolkien himself said you had to be stupid to be evil when referring to Sauron. Makes sense when you know God is up there waiting to undo everything you accomplish. Although in Melkor's case he was just too insane to realize this and Sauron believed Eru had abandoned Arda.

You can all read about it here.

Sauron engineering a downfall of an entire continent is PURE.UNADULTERATED.BADASS.

Eh, I kind of wanted to see Ar-Pharazon kick elf ass.

I was rooting for the Numenoreans too. The Vala suck and it is entirely their fault that Numenor ended up the way it did.

From teh beginning the Vala's incompetence has caused irreparable harm to the race of Men.

edited 12th Jul '14 8:22:58 PM by Nikkolas

And Elves. The only reason the whole thing with the Silmarils happened was because the Valar took the Elves to Aman.

So what *should* they have done, then? Just take Melkor there to be imprisoned and leave the Elves in middle earth?

That actually would have worked okay. Elves would never have advanced as far as they did, but the world would have been saved a lot of destruction.

You guys aren't being fair... >_>

Plus IIRC Mandos even remarked how "It is doomed" when they decided to bring the Elves into their realm. As Illuvatar mentioned the Elves are the first children. Because of how much religion was implemented into Silmarillion tale you could even say the elves were like what the Jews were to Yaweh the Christian god.

Well yeah, he said that because he foreknew that the "flight of the Noldor" would happen as a result.

And you could take the comparison much further. Numenoreans/Dunedain and Dwarves are all counterparts to the biblical Israelites in one way or another. I would say that Elves are more like the biblical angels then the Jews, though.

edited 18th Jul '14 4:20:26 PM by shiro_okami

@Shiro Okami

Naw Shiro-kun that's the Valar. Since Eru is like the Christian god that makes the Valar and Maiar his angels.

Well yeah, but the Elves are also somewhat angel-like, or at least inhuman, in that they don't age and their deaths aren't final. I guess maybe the best comparison is neither angels nor regular humans, but rather somewhere in-between. I would almost say that they would be like an "unfallen" version of mankind, but those Elves can screw up pretty badly.....

Unless it's LOTR where they are perfect and pure and unbelievably beautiful.

One of the many ways The Sil is better.

^And sad. They are so very, very sad.

True but they at least have Eden to flee to. Men and Dwarves are fucked.

It's one thing I didn't quite grasp about the mythos from the movies but which I came to understand from the books. In the movies it just seemed to me like the Elves could say Screw This, I'm Outta Here and abandon all of Middle-earth to the tyranny of Sauron. Of course in the books we learn that the Elves are forever stuck on this world until the universe ends while Men at least know the true peace of the afterlife.

Perhaps even the Undying Lands grows unbearable after a few million years.

Well, the Elves could leave Middle-Earth the continent anytime they want, but they can't leave Arda, the planet as a whole. Humans are confined to only one hemisphere during their life but escape Arda entirely at death.

Don't really know if the afterlife is true peace. Given the frame of the mythos being Noldorin Elves who were with the Valar pre-first-age, we never really got the "true" story because Eru hid the truth of the fate of men from the Valar.

The Doylist explanation is that they did go to heaven, out in the realm with Eru and the Ainur that elected to never come to Arda, in keeping with Tolkien's pious Catholicism. The Watsonian explanation is, ironically, the agnostic one. Nobody knows where they went, just nowhere that Elves or Valar knew about.

Dwarves weren't screwed, btw, Aule collected their souls and set them apart in different halls in the houses of Mandos.

Well it's like I said, none of this is really apparent in the films. We just know the Elves and ONLY the Elves can get in a boat and leave everyone else to be taken over by Sauron.

And while it's true we don't know if death for Men is truly better, I'm inclined to have faith in Tolkien's devout Catholicism. Sure it leads to a lot of....questionable things in The Silmarillion but it also means Men have a chance for something bettr after all teh shit they have been put through.

Like the updating done for the Valar on in the The Gods Must Be Lazy trope page guys. Be cool if Feanor's whole Rage Against the Heavens episode could be added to that trope. Also quite the poignant point made on the main The Silmarillion page with the comparing and contrasting Eol and Feanor. While Feanor is indeed responsible for much of the downfall of the Noldor and woes of middle Earth and having his sons swear to retrieve the Silmarils at any cost and Jumping Off The Slipperyslope just as he in no way did his malice leak out like Eol. As repeatedly mentioned in The Children of Hurin Anglachel/Gurthang held the malevolent feelings of its maker and lead to Turin accidentally killing Beleg. Plus, Feanor despite all his efforts to avoid Morgoth in Valinor became part of his machinations regardless.

Badass slideshow of Fingon vs Gothmog in Nirthmaeth Arnodiead

edited 16th Sep '14 5:47:50 AM by Couchpotato20