Tolkien's Mythology for the Modern World The Literature of Middle-Earth Presents Canon of Linguistically Rich History of Legends

Author: Michael O'BrienStaff Writer

Some one-wit pedagogue in the 1960s said something to the effect of "I once said that J.R.R. Tolkien would be the most influential writer of the 20th century. Now I am afraid that I was right." I refuse to give her name, partially so that she does not gain the fame of Herostratus, who burnt the great Temple of Artemis at Ephesus merely so his name would last forever, and partially because I do not remember it. Succeeding decades have only served to buttress her statement, however, as the effect of Tolkien on a wide variety of life's ingredients continues to grow. Virtually all of fantasy literature written after the 1960s owes its origin to Tolkien, some blatantly ripping him off. The fantasy role-playing game, Dungeons and Dragons, has attracted tens of thousands of make-believe humans, elves, dwarves and halflings — also called "hobbits." Led Zeppelin often referenced the world of Middle Earth: "'Twas in the Darkest depths of Mordor/ I met a girl so fair…" — and the more recent band Blind Guardian has written entire albums on "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Silmarillion." "The Lord of the Rings" is so immensely popular (although this may have a little to do with the recent unveiling of the first of three Peter Jackson movies) that the novel got enough votes to garner both first and 12th place, nearly enough to double that of any other book, in Amazon.com's list of the 20th Century's Greatest Books.

The writing of these books was long and painstaking. J.R.R. Tolkien was first and foremost a linguist. Over the course of his life he learned at least 19 languages, many of which were dead tongues. It is often held that the beginnings of his creative labor came about when he read this line in the Old English poem "Crist," by Cynewulf: "Eálá Earendel engla beorhtast / Ofer middangeard monnum sended," meaning "Hail Earendel brightest of angels, over Middle Earth sent to men." This "Middle Earth" (middangeard) would be his name for his own world, and the character Earendel (which he later transformed to Eärendil) plays an important part in his mythology. The first work Professor Tolkien (for now he was teaching linguistics at his alma mater Oxford) did on middangeard was to invent the Elvish, not Elfish; language. Tolkien as a linguist was extremely precise in both his spelling and his grammar — languages of Quenya and Sindarin, loosely based on ancient Finnish. For "in the beginning, there was the Word…."

Tolkien's mythology, set down in the posthumously published, unfinished "The Silmarillion," begins just as the Bible does, with Eru, the One (read: One God) creating the Ainur (angels) and then the world, Eä, with the word "Eä! Let it be!" From here the different races are created: the immortal elves, who once resided in Heaven but were cast out, the dwarves, miners of the dark places and lastly mortal men. One of the Ainur, Morgoth, decides to create separately from Eru and breaks from the rule of Heaven. But everything he makes is not truly made, but only a twisted version of the creations of Eru.

"The Silmarillion" covers many thousands of years, and the most notable change is the gradual estrangement of Heaven from Earth. At first Heaven is directly connected to Middle Earth, and the Ainur come and go among elves and men. But over time these commit crimes against the Ainur, and Heaven splits and floats away, the Ainur walk Middle Earth less and less, and the races fracture and war against Morgoth and each other.

"The Lord of the Rings," Tolkien's epic novel (not, as it is sometimes published, a trilogy), picks up at the end of "The Silmarillion," at a time when magic has all but vanished from Middle Earth. Elves and dwarves are seldom seen, and many things are completely forgotten. Into this world comes Gandalf, a wizard and a lesser servant of Eru, and brings about an epic quest for one Frodo, a peaceful hobbit who has seen almost nothing of the magic that once existed on Middle Earth. Gandalf tells him of the One Ring, an evil tool of Sauron, Morgoth's heir. He tells him that it must be destroyed in the place where it was made: Mordor, a world away, teeming with danger and evil. But to carry the Ring is to carry evil itself, and Frodo, Gandalf and all those with them must struggle against its corruption. At the end of "The Lord of the Rings," mortally wearied by their task, Frodo and Gandalf sail away from Middle Earth with most of the remaining elves, bound for Heaven.

This is all the summary of Tolkien's writing I intend to give. Instead I want to point out what exactly Tolkien's intention was in undertaking such a massive project. The Biblical similarities should be obvious. Eru is God, the Ainur angels, and Morgoth Satan (he even undergoes a name change, as does Lucifer, from Melkor to Morgoth). "The Silmarillion," like the Old Testament, is the history of the chosen peoples from the Creation onwards, and "The Lord of the Rings" is the story of its ultimate product and the ultimate sacrifices by its members. The Ring Frodo carries is his Cross, and Gandalf too is a Jesus figure, although telling why would ruin the story for those who have only seen the first movie (My advice to you: read the books). Frodo must descend into Hell before he sees Heaven.

My object is to assert Tolkien's works are another Bible, although fundamentalist Tolkienites would object, and Tolkien himself, a devout Roman Catholic, would most certainly have violently objected to an allegation of this sort. Those who see only the Biblical parallels miss much.

There is also the question of why Tolkien's races speak variants of ancient languages and why he incorporated the common mythical archetypes of elves, dwarves, goblins and dragons seen in the prehistoric cosmologies of cultures from Germany to China. Prehistoric is exactly the right word: Tolkien's "The Silmarillion" functions as a sort of history of prehistory, a genesis account of mythology. By the time of "The Lord of the Rings," these things are already beginning to be forgotten: a chapter aptly titled "The Shadow of the Past," says of dragons: "I heard tell of them when I was a youngster, but there's no call to believe in them now." But it is direly important that they do believe, for danger in the shape of these old legends is reasserting itself once more upon the world.

There have been all sorts of studies on Tolkien's works, trying to prove that Middle Earth is the Earth we walk on, for example, hypothesizing that his world before the breaking away of Heaven directly correlates to Pangaea before its fragmenting. These studies miss the point. Tolkien was not writing a modern scientific history; he had had enough of modern science, as did many who fought in World War I and saw what mustard gas could do a man.

Much of the evil in "The Lord of the Rings" is marked by its technology: Mordor is a land blasted by furnaces and the twisted products of Sauron's genetic experiments. Tolkien was instead writing a history in the nearly lost Greek style, the style of Herodotus and Thucydides, which is less concerned with things that happened as with Happenings, less concerned with truth as with Truth.

"The Silmarillion" and "The Lord of the Rings" is a mythology written for our own times, whose author was quite aware of the environment in which he wrote. No one now prays in Zeus; no one has seen a faerie or an elf for centuries; King Arthur is dead, not sleeping; even the Bible is at most a religious text and at the least a poorly written piece of literature. But we know in the utmost of the creation of "The Lord of the Rings," and there is no falseness contained within; it is something in which we, jaded as we are, can believe.