The Gift of Men

FoxFire

Member
So as not to get in to a long discussion on the Questions to Narnion forum, I've placed my response to Halstein's question from this thread https://forums.signumuniversity.org/index.php?threads/punishment-vs-gift.692/ here.

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


I think Tolkien was purposely on to something when he called death the "Gift of Men" (only to be lamented later by humanity). When he wrote and created his alternate universe with Arda and Middle-earth, the entire thing was really quite blasphemous to his Catholic/Christian upbringing.

The Christian (and many other) theologies include this idea of 'eternal life'. Likely because our lives are so short. We would like our lives to be much longer than they are. But how can they be longer? Science (knowledge, medicine and technology) has extended human lifespans to a degree. Though in Tolkien's day (at least when he was writing Lord of the Rings) it was not commonly conceived that science might extend human lifespans to hundreds or thousands of years or more. Even today that's not something most imagine happening. Only an all powerful creator deity is thought to be able to provide extended existence. And if he extends it beyond a typical human lifespan, surely it must then be eternally? Yet, how much extra life (or existence) do we REALLY want to have?

In general people don't really examine this question too closely. Most people don't want to die. Or certainly not after only 80, 90, 100 years. So... many religions offer ETERNAL life. Why not? Sounds good, right? But... the truth is, eternal life would ultimately become a living hell. No matter how 'wonderful' that life is.

What can you do in 100 years? Not nearly enough. 1000 years? So much more. 10,000 years? Nearly everything you can currently think you'd find interesting or fulfilling, including thousands of years of just relaxing and taking in the beauty of your surroundings (like Tolkien elves seem to do). But ultimately it would get quite boring as you might be thinking as you're sung to on your 23,641 'st birthday (use number candles on the cake please).

Then what about existence for 100,000 years? A million? A billion? A trillion? One googolplex years!!! You'd have explored and examined in finite detail everything in the universe down to their subatomic particles a million times over, thought every possible thought, learned everything there is to know, and done everything there is to do a billion times over. The banality and boredom of it would have set in an eternity ago, feelings (especially if they're always positive feelings) would become meaningless, continued existence would become utterly meaningless and yet you wouldn't have even scratched the surface of eternity. Inability to die, no matter how pleasant your surroundings, would become hell.

I believe Tolkien had conceived this and understood it, and didn't think the idea of immortality, or eternal life as promised by his religion, was so great. Eternal life would become unbearable the longer it went on. And in Middle-earth, the immortal elves grow weary of existence after thousands of years.

Life, our lives, human lives, have meaning and purpose because we are unique, because the odds of us (individually) being here are astronomically unimaginably small and not inevitably preordained (we each won the cosmic lottery), AND because our lives are limited (albeit too limited - give me a Numenorian lifespan any day). Since even after just 10's of thousand of years of existence it would become wearisome, boring and tedious, oblivion, eternal slumber (which for all we know of humans in the Middle-earth universe is what happens to them) IS truly a 'gift'. And yet humans in Middle-earth (as in reality) do not appreciate this. We (most people) lament the idea that we will cease to exist one day. Again that's likely because our lives are TOO short. An immortal elf surely has a different perspective on the subject. And so, they consider men's mortality a GIFT. One that was denied to the Oath breakers, who desperately desired redemption so that they might finally be allowed to die and go into oblivion (annihilation).

Personally, I'm of the mind that Tolkien, despite the expectations of his social circle and in particular those of his religion, was not particularly taken with the mythology of our universe's creation nor certain ideas put forth by his religion. And this, the ability to cease existence entirely, is one he saw as being a welcoming gift rather than the curse it has long been considered, and told to be in Genesis.
 
Great post. But I also think there is the possibility that death is only a transition from one type existence to an other. In the Silmarillion, Tolkien is quite nebulous about of what happen after death.
 
Indeed. Apparently Tolkien didn't make it clear what he truly thought of the fate of men after they died (if he had made up his mind on the subject). My suspicion is that if his true feelings on the matter were conventional, he would have clearly stated them. I believe had he stated definitively that humans simply ceased to exist entirely, that would have been very controversial.

As it stands his re-creation of the world and universe in which we live, up to and including the very deity of it, and yet still presumably our actual world and universe, despite being fictional, would likely have been viewed as blasphemous by some church authorities. Clearly eliminating an after-life entirely for humanity would likely have ruffled even more feathers among people in general.

My personal opinion is that Tolkien did have a definitive notion of where he thought humans in his stories went after death, and it was unconventional enough that he thought it best to keep it to himself. My suspicion, given available hints, is that he felt oblivion/annihilation was that fate and was indeed a 'gift', given the well-considered implications of eternal life.
 
Interesting argument. You grapple with some pretty big topics here, and quite intelligently. I respect your reasoning, and your conclusion, though I'm undecided about whether I agree with it.

In terms of what was going on in Tolkien's head, I'm not wholly convinced. We could argue that he was a sufficiently committed Catholic that if he believed the canonical story about what happens to us after we die, he would have made it explicit in his world. Or we might argue that he thought the uncertainty about what happens to us after we die is so important to the human condition that it shouldn't be something the characters in his world just "know," even if he was pretty sure he knew the answer. Or perhaps they're not supposed to know for certain until after the coming of Christ, which postdates all the events in Tolkien's Legendarium (I'm not up on my Catholic doctrine, so I've no idea if that's plausible or not). Then again, on this point, I don't think it matters so much what the author believed, so long as your interpretation holds up within the logic of the books - which it does, as far as I can see.

However, you're making a number of implicit and explicit assumptions in this post - many of which I agree with - which I want to unpack. I also believe that our existence isn't preordained, that we won the cosmic lottery, but many people's theologies include the belief that every person and every event is all part of God's divine plan, and I can't empirically prove that this is not the case the same way I can empirically prove, say, that the Earth is more than 6,000 years old. Neither can I prove that death means the cessation of existence, rather than reincarnation or an afterlife of some sort - again, I believe as you do, but it's an unprovable assumption.

Most importantly, your argument is reliant upon a human psychology which evolved under circumstances where humans inevitably age and die. But that just begs the question. Are phenomena like boredom and banality intrinsic to the workings of our universe? Perhaps, but I don't see why they should be. Terry Pratchett described boredom as a brilliant human invention, but one that was only necessary due to the fact of our finite life spans. We could hypothesize a race of immortals whose perception of reality is different, such that they don't get bored as we do.

Douglas Adams illustrated your point extremely well with his character Wowbagger the Infinitely prolonged, but pointed out that this guy was so psychologically messed up because he was made immortal by accident, and noted in passing that the universe's natural occurring immortals came into being with an intrinsic understanding of how to cope with it all.

Come to think, if we push your argument to its logical conclusion, then we have to assume that if the God of the Abrahamic religions does exist, then God must be terminally bored; that's a sad thought.

Personally, I feel as though death must happen for a reason, but I don't think it's because "otherwise we'd be bored." I also can't find the prospect of the total cessation of existence a comforting thought, which doesn't make for a happy metaphysical outlook, but it's what I've got. I appreciate your argument, getting to see your view of the world, and I'm glad for you if you've reached an outlook you find comforting, but I'm afraid you haven't totally convinced me.

Cheers.
 
Thanks Lincoln.

Those are some interesting considerations. It's perhaps difficult to imagine how an immortal being's mind would operate and think, since we really only have our own human minds (as far as sentient beings go) to reference from. I think Tolkien tries to capture that to some degree with the elves, though their thought processes still seem fairly comparable to humans. Of course elf immortality in Middle-earth seems a lot more reasonable and easy to wrap our own minds around when elven lives span mere thousands or tens of thousands of years; which is down right infinitesimal compared to eternity.

It's an interesting philosophical question, because humans, even those who are obsessively routine, thrive on stimulation of our senses, learning, and novelty. It's hard enough to imagine how an immortal being would cope with existence (as Douglas Adams humorously touches on), let alone one which is all powerful and all knowing, as the Abrahamic god is told to be. Being all knowing would allow for no novelty, joy of learning, exploration, sense of wonder, and the like. I do find that a bleak idea of existence. For someone starting with no knowledge, being immortal would eventually approximate omniscience, assuming you could retain all the knowledge you acquire.

Of course I'm trying to get inside Tolkien's mind and what he was thinking when he decided mortality would be called the "gift of men". I understand he is said to have been a staunch or devout Roman Catholic. I'm not a Tolkien scholar so I don't know what that characterization of him is based on. In what ways did he demonstrate his piety? Even then, that might say little about what his mind frame is, because religion (some more than others) is like a club where you have certain requirements to be a member. And you can be kicked out (excommunicated) if you don't abide by those rules or otherwise should contradict them. People tend to stick with the religion they were brought up in because these are the people you know, your friends, family, community. Being cast out of your community can be something most would want to avoid at all costs. And given what I know of the Roman Catholic Church (particularly of old), the church and the community are your life, and they are fairly strict about towing the line. But perhaps I'm mistaken, and perhaps this was not even a concern of Tolkien's.

In the event that it was, I don't know that we can necessarily take at face value things Tolkien may have said regarding certain subjects as to his true views on it, should there have been any concern on his part for offending or rattling church authorities. We might find more of his true feelings in his fictional writings. Still he remained nebulous on the topic of what happens to humans in Middle-earth once they die. And while I personally have no trouble with the idea of non-existence (as Mark Twain stated “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."), it occurred to me that this may also have been Tolkien's view and preference, regardless of what his religion taught about the existence of a soul and afterlife. Perhaps even belying his own words about it (if indeed he ever expressed any regarding the fate of humans in reality).

As for my personal view. While I think our lives are far too short, I think they have greater meaning for being limited, and for having been an extraordinary stroke of luck to have lived, thought, felt, experienced, and irrevocably impacted the universe. Think of it, photons which have struck and bounced off your body will be traveling out into the universe for as long as the universe exists. Perhaps some aliens out there on the other side of the universe, with the proper advanced technology to gather and process such an extremely attenuated signal will be able to do so, and see YOU here on Earth, billions of years in the past, and those aliens will be altered for having seen you and wondered about your life. Of course there are greater impacts closer to home here on Earth which will resonate throughout the rest of Earth's history. Many things on Earth are no longer the same anymore (than what they would have been) for you having been here, and given the 'butterfly effect' in the future virtually nothing on Earth will be the same for your having been here and the things you've done to alter history and more.

If this is all we get, then I'll appreciate what I got, for the unfathomably countless entities which never even got to exist. And if there is nothing after... well it certainly won't trouble me then, so I see no reason to let it trouble me now. In fact, I find the thought of eternal existence more troubling. Meanwhile, I will strive to appreciate and enjoy my time here and hopefully leave the world a better place than when I arrived.
 
Thank you for the reply. Again, very thoughtful and well-reasoned.

I thought I heard somewhere that there's an implication at some point that when human souls die in Middle-Earth, they go to join Iluvatar, and get to bask in his presence and, I think, share his omniscient understanding of the universe, at least to an extent - moreso even than the Valar. This seems entirely in keeping with what very little I know both of Catholic doctrine and of Tolkien's own avowed religious sensibilities, and it's been my operating assumption of how Tolkien interpreted his "death as gift" philosophy.

I'm not a scholar of Tolkien's life, either, but I'm pretty sure I remember hearing that Roman Catholicism was something he actively chose and committed himself to out of a set of options available. Indeed, I think joining the Roman Catholic Church required some degree of defiance of expectations on the part of his caregivers. It's also my understanding that he had many friends from other Christian denominations, like C. S. Lewis, so I don't think he was just following the current. Everything I've heard suggests he was a true believer.

It's possible he was masking his "true" thoughts on this point for fear of the social consequences of speaking his mind - but you could say the same with equal confidence about any number of topics, because it's the sort of reasoning which is next to impossible to disprove. In terms of positive evidence to support your hypothesis about Tolkien's attitude toward death, all you really have is the fact that he refers to it as a "gift" in his fictional world - which, as I've mentioned, is open to multiple interpretations - and some stuff about the portrayal of the Elves which is broadly compatible with your own philosophy.

So again, it's possible Tolkien shared your attitude about what constitutes death, and why that's a good thing - I can't disprove the hypothesis - but I'm not seeing a compelling reason to believe it, either. Then again, as I've previously deluded, I'm enough of a devotee of Barthesian philosophy as I understand it to be less interested about what he "truly" thought than whether your interpretation is compatible with his fictional world - in the way that, say, modern gender theory clearly isn't.

humans ... thrive on stimulation of our senses, learning, and novelty
Right, but as long as we're speculating on an undying being or species, I don't find it so difficult to imagine them also thriving on stimulation, and even learning, but not being dependent on novelty. (I say learning is still possible, because in an infinite universe, the possibilities for learning would also be infinite.) When I walk outside at night and look at the moon or the stars, I only look for a little while, because I have other things to do, and because I get bored. But I could easily imagine a deathless being staring at the moon and stars for centuries or millennia, feeling the same level of wonderment I do when I first take them in, and only stopping when the mood strikes them. Sure, this is highly speculative, but no more speculative, I'd argue, than imagining that a deathless being would experience boredom to the same extent we mortals do.

Perhaps some aliens out there on the other side of the universe, with the proper advanced technology to gather and process such an extremely attenuated signal will be able to do so, and see YOU here on Earth, billions of years in the past, and those aliens will be altered for having seen you and wondered about your life.
It's possible, but we have no more evidence, for or against, than we do about what happens to us after death.

While I think our lives are far too short, I think they have greater meaning for being limited, and for having been an extraordinary stroke of luck to have lived, thought, felt, experienced, and irrevocably impacted the universe.
This is a beautiful sentiment, and wonderfully articulated. I respect your outlook, and your arguments to back it up, even where I don't share it, and I appreciate the chance to discuss these matters with you.

And if there is nothing after... well it certainly won't trouble me then, so I see no reason to let it trouble me now.
Ha, I seem to remember Caesar once made a very similar argument, speaking from the viewpoint of his Epicurean philosophy, in a debate with Cato the Younger, a devoted Stoic. Cato was not happy with this argument.
 
When I walk outside at night and look at the moon or the stars, I only look for a little while, because I have other things to do, and because I get bored. But I could easily imagine a deathless being staring at the moon and stars for centuries or millennia, feeling the same level of wonderment I do when I first take them in, and only stopping when the mood strikes them. Sure, this is highly speculative, but no more speculative, I'd argue, than imagining that a deathless being would experience boredom to the same extent we mortals do.
Just imagine the astronomical knowledge which could be gained by someone who could happily watch the skies for years—even decades—on end. They could see variations which happen on a timescale that we move too fast to notice :cool:
 
Thanks Lincoln,

Indeed not being a Tolkien scholar I know little of him and his life as a person other than the most broad and widely bandied about information regarding him. I've heard that he was a devout Catholic (Roman Catholic? I'm not sure I understand the difference other than I've been under the impression that Roman Catholic is more Orthodox) and had been Catholic since his mother converted when Tolkien was a child. I know not where those who say he was devout in his religion obtain their information in that regard, but I've heard it mentioned on occasion in various forums and comment sections. (I suppose now would be a good time for me to do more research on Tolkien's life, but I'm sure to get distracted by something else before I do).

Still I'll take people at their word that he was as devout as is claimed. It's given that told piety where I find his writing to be quite at odds with Christian mythology and theological ideas. Though again, I'm not entirely familiar with the Catholic take on Christianity.

Furthermore, knowing the pressure one can experience among their family and community when it comes to religion, I can't help but speculate that we might find Tolkien's own disillusionment, disappointment and/or disagreement with Catholic doctrine, as well as more of his true feelings about things and the way he thought they ought to be, in his fictional writings, particularly surrounding Middle-earth which he DID write as an alternate reality and history of our very own planet and universe rather than a wholesale fictional place.

Even still today it can be difficult for some to shed their religious community even while they have come to odds in their beliefs with that religion. For instance there is The Clergy Project for members of the clergy, some of who are STILL in the pulpit, but who have actually come to no longer believe in the supernatural. They are not out to their family, friends, community, or even their congregations, for a variety of reasons, but largely because these people are their life (not to mention their line of work). In any event, the point being you can't find anyone of whom those who know them will say they are "very devout" than someone who is actually a preacher, meanwhile that person secretly holds other beliefs.

So yeah, basically in the context of Tolkien's strong ties with his religion (which I've only been told and am taking at face value), and my understanding of being part of a religious community in which professed faith in doctrine is paramount to belonging, I wonder if we don't find more of Tolkien's real thoughts and ideas about things in his writings. And so we come round to things like considering death to be the "gift of men", among a variety of other things one could point to, such as lack of any real worship, supernatural things said to be magic as opposed to miracles, and even the very mythology of the deity itself which Tolkien spoke of in his magnum opus.

Of course it's not uncommon even among the non-religious to necessarily express one's true feelings regarding any particular topic if it does not conform to what one's society, community, or even family expect it to be. And if those people write stories, I'd anticipate finding more insight into their true feelings within them. Though that obviously has its limits.

As to the immortal eternal being discussion, I agree it's difficult perhaps for us mortals to comprehend how such a being would even experience time, which might be entirely different than our own. I'm unfamiliar with, or don't recall, how Tolkien may have expressed the experience of elves who's lives are on the order of thousands of years and yet who are more human-like than they are akin to supernatural beings.
 
On second thought, I'm not sure whether Tolkien's religious affiliation was Catholic or Roman Catholic, and, indeed, I am so unversed in Catholicism that I couldn't tell you the main differences. Sorry for the confusion, there.


A great deal of your post restates assertions that you've made previously. And my response is the same: you've convinced me that your scenario is plausible, but not that it's particularly likely.

Part of the issue, no doubt, is my aforementioned lack of education on Catholic doctrine (Roman or otherwise), so I can't evaluate the ways in which Tolkien's imagined world differs from the world as described in Catholic theology.

However, the bulk of your argument (which, again, you've mostly already stated before) consists of justifications for why it's possible your interpretation of how death works in Tolkien's Legendarium is, indeed, what he himself had in mind. You're knocking down arguments for why this couldn't have been his belief system - and fair enough, you've convinced me it's possible.

But, as I said in my previous comment, you've so far presented little positive evidence for why your interpretation of the facts you've presented is a superior explanation than other possible interpretations, including the ones I've suggested above.

considering death to be the "gift of men", among a variety of other things one could point to, such as lack of any real worship, supernatural things said to be magic as opposed to miracles, and even the very mythology of the deity itself which Tolkien spoke of in his magnum opus.

This is the only new evidence you've entered into consideration, and you don't really explain how it fits into your overall thesis. Remember that Tolkien was also writing fantasy, and trying to make it reconcilable with his faith - as opposed to writing his personal philosophy with fantasy windowdressing. Tolkien wrote a lot of things because they were genre conventions, and not necessarily because they reflected his personal beliefs. In the case of the Orcs - a race of creatures who were all irredeemably evil despite having free will - the genre conventions actively conflicted with his beliefs, and he never satisfactorily settled that contradiction in his own lifetime.

Again, I'm not particularly well-versed in either Tolkien's avowed beliefs or Catholic doctrine, but I've heard people who are give plausible-sounding explanations for most or all of the inconsistencies you bring up. There may be any number of reasons why their interpretations are wrong - as I've said, your position is possible - but I still have yet to see an argument for why it's probable.

At this point, your position reads to me like a situation where someone has a conclusion already in mind, noticed some elements which were compatible with this conclusion and could support it, then built a line of reasoning to explain why they therefore should be interpreted to support that conclusion. To me, it comes across as an argument which starts with the desired conclusion and interprets the facts to fit it, rather than starting with the facts and deducing a conclusion from there. This is where I'm coming from when I harp on my assertion that your argument has little positive evidence - you spend more time on the conclusion and on establishing plausibility than on close readings of the material Tolkien actually produced and explaining how and why it actively supports your interpretation.

I've also recently been listening to the recording of the latest Exploring LOTR episode - towards the beginning, Corey responds to a question about our in-class interpretations and speculations about certain elements of the story which are left unclear and ambiguous in the text itself. He finishes off by warning us, "it's always really tempting, to sort of convince yourself, 'this is totally what Tolkien really thought. This is what Tolkien would have written had he gone on to write it' - and we totally have no idea, and we're probably wrong about a lot of those things." This is his philosophy of how to approach Tolkien's outlook on the fictional world he (sub)created and the stories he told about it, and for me it goes at least double for how we treat Tolkien's sensibilities about the Primary World and how it "really" works.

I'm still not sure why you seem so invested in convincing me that this is what Tolkien thought, but if you continue insisting on doing so, this is where I'm stuck at.
 
Hmmm. I'm not actually trying to convince you of anything, and technically when I write in forums I'm just as often speaking to the readers as I am the person I'm responding to.

In any event, I'm merely putting forth my hypothesis regarding the possibility of Tolkien's own potential conflict with his avowed religious doctrine as reflected in this idea of death being "the gift of man", among other examples which are beyond the scope of the original topic. Although this controversial idea Tolkien put in Middle-earth for the fate of humans seems a good jumping off point for such a discussion.

I suppose if anything I'm seeking to put forth a rationale for why this could potentially be the case regarding Tolkien's writings as they might relate to his own personal thoughts and feelings on existential reality, and some reasoning as to why we can't even necessarily take at face value anything Tolkien may have said in regard to these subjects outside his fiction (as per the religious community ramifications such articulations would have - though again I don't know the depth of his involvement and ties with his church and its community let alone any statements he made regarding such, and so can't provide any degree of certainty as to how such considerations, if they were there, would have affected his professions).

I thought I was making it clear, and used the appropriate qualifiers, to indicate that this was merely speculation on my part, and not even the most well informed speculation. Not sure what I said whereas you might characterize my posts as having pre-conceived my own conclusion for which I'm finding potential evidence and insisting that therefore my pre-conceived conclusion is correct. This is not a modus operandi of mine. I let evidence lead me to the conclusions. I also adhere to the idea that unless there is good evidence for believing, or good reason for believing something, then I'm less likely to believe any particular claim (more so for mundane claims, less so for extraordinary claims). For the record, I'm not convinced for or against my hypothesis.

In this particular case it's impossible to prove one way or another as we can't get in to Tolkien's own head. And he's deceased so cannot confirm or refute any such speculations as to his thinking, though again that in itself would only be a compromised alternative to being in his head. And yes I know that would be impugning Tolkien's honesty regarding his openly expressed beliefs and reflects my own view about the pressures people, particularly those in ardent religious communities, can be under to say what is expected of them. We don't know this to be the case with Tolkien, but it's by no means out of the question. Which is where I come to the notion that we might find more of his inner thoughts and feelings in his fictional writings. My only belief in this regard is that it's a possibility. How likely that possibility is, is certainly debatable.

I think it's a reasonable consideration and one that I've not previously heard expressed in the little I've myself heard spoken or seen written of over the years regarding Tolkien and his writings. It's quite possible this has been debated elsewhere unbeknownst to me. More often have I heard the claims that Tolkien was a 'devout Catholic' and the subsequent speculations (frequently assertions) as to how that influenced his writing of Lord of the Rings, even going so far as to insist that these exceedingly popular tales are all a grand homage to and reflection of Catholic doctrine (presumably as a boast or even perhaps more cynically a lure). An idea which I would find disputable given my knowledge of Christianity (though not extensively Catholicism). And an idea I believe Tolkien rejected, as it's often stated how he adamantly denied his stories were allegorical in any way. I'm presenting an alternative hypothesis to those claims.

By-the-way, if it sounds like I'm repeating myself, that is often simply my trying to clarify and refine a particular position or idea, or further emphasize a point. Also, I didn't intend for this to become a thread for making the case, but more so to put the idea out there for consideration.
 
Last edited:
Okay then. Your previous post came across to me as claiming this probably was what Tolkien believed, not that you were putting it forward as a possibility. The internet can be a wonderful tool for communication, but over the years I've also learned it can also be a pernicious agent of miscommunication and uninentional distortion.

If you, were, indeed, merely attempting to establish possibility, then fine, given my comparably limited knowledge of Tolkien's biography, I think the suggestion holds up. It is certainly interesting to dissect the metaphysical underpinnings of the series from a different direction. As a point of consideration, I think it's certainly worth raising.

I think Tolkien's beliefs certainly influenced his writings, and that he tried to create a fictional world which was compatible with his outlook - indeed, our above discussion hinges upon that assumption - but I agree that it's probably too much to claim he was trying to preach or propagandize his belief system.
 
Hello gents! I'm going to jump into the fray here, dangerous as that might be...

It has been speculated in this thread that perhaps Tolkien was not as devout as some claim he was, and that his characterization of death as a gift to humanity is a possible example of this (as traditional Catholic/Christian doctrine considers it to be a punishment for original sin.) Having read his biography and about 2/3 of his letters, I am fairly confident in saying that he was indeed devout, and that it was this faith that influenced his work greatly. In fact, he blamed the societal and familial shunning that his mother experienced when she converted to RC (as England is mainly a Protestant country), as a cause for her early death. I have never read anything in his writings that would indicate otherwise, so to Lincoln's earlier points, there is no positive evidence of this being the case.

There are two important points I think we need to understand to fully grasp what Tolkien was trying to convey with this aspect of the story. Firstly, he considered himself to merely be a recorder of these tales, not the author himself. He noted in multiple letters that especially as time passed from when he wrote these books, he was able to separate himself emotionally, and could critique and analyze the work from an objective perspective. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the idea of death as being a gift to humanity was an elvish perspective of its meaning, not his own opinion of God's (Iluvatar's) intent. FoxFire, you mentioned in a few posts that if one lived forever there would be inherent boredom in this type of existence, so it would be easy to understand why a creature with such a lifespan would find death, or escape from Middle-Earth, as a gift. I think there is also an important distinction between what we are calling immortality and death; Tolkien repeatedly said that the Elves had a "limited immortality", meaning that they did not truly live forever, but rather that their spirits were tied to Arda for as long as it existed. We know that when Elves died, their spirits did not leave Arda, but rather returned to Valinor. When humans died, the Elves did not know where they went, but they knew that they left Arda. I believe it is this aspect of death, that they viewed as a gift, as it was a release from the world they inhabited. So from that perspective, we do not have any evidence that Elves' spirits lived on longer than humans' did, only the place where they go (or do not go as the case may be) when their corporeal bodies are abandoned.

This thread of conversation is very important to understand Tolkien's sub-creative world. He was not a Christian apologist as C.S. Lewis was, but as I said earlier, his faith was integral to his inspiration and intent [interesting side note: Tolkien was an influential factor, amongst others, in Lewis' conversion to Christianity, as he was an atheist in his earlier life (although he did not become a Catholic)]. He received multiple letters pointing out the perceived inconsistencies between his avowed faith and that represented in Middle-Earth (both around this topic of conversation, as well as the lack of visible religiosity, i.e., no churches or temples) and he was always able to articulate how the deeper meanings were actually aligned (it is too much to get into on this forum, but I would particularly recommend reading his letters--they are witty, insightful and give you a true sense of the man behind the myth.)

From the man himself (Letter # 211), "But I might say that if the tale is 'about' anything (other than itself), it is not as seems widely supposed about 'power'. Power-seeking is only the motive-power that sets events going, and is relatively unimportant, I think. It is mainly concerned with Death, and Immortality; and the 'escapes': serial longevity, and hoarding memory." And from Letter 212, " In this mythical 'prehistory' immortality, strictly longevity co-extensive with the life of Arda, was part of the given nature of the Elves; beyond the End nothing was revealed. Mortality, that is a short life-span having no relation to the life of Arda, is spoken of as the given nature of Men: the Elves called it the Gift of Iluvatar (God). But it must be remembered that mythically these tales are Elf-centered, not anthropocentric, and Men only appear in them, at what must be a point long after their Coming. This is therefore an 'Elvish' view, and does not necessarily have anything to say for or against such beliefs as the Christian that 'death' is not part of human nature, but a punishment for sin (rebellion), a result of the 'Fall'. It should be regarded as an Elvish perception of what death - not being tied to the 'circles of the world' - should now become for Men, however it arose. A divine 'punishment' is also a divine 'gift', if accepted, since its object is ultimate blessing, and the supreme inventiveness of the Creator will make 'punishments' (that is changes of design) produce a good not otherwise to be attained: a 'mortal' Man has probably (an Elf would say) a higher if unrevealed destiny than a longeval one. To attempt by device or 'magic' to recover longevity is thus a supreme folly and a wickedness of 'mortals'. Longevity or counterfeit 'immortality' (true immortality is beyond Ea) is the chief bait of Sauron - it leads the small to a Gollum, and the great to a Ringwraith."
 
Back
Top