J. R. R. Tolkien. The Silmarillion. Edited by Christopher Tolkien, Houghton, 1977.

When Peter Jackson began filming his famous Lord of the Rings trilogy, he told the actors, “This is not fantasy, this is history.” That no doubt helped his actors get into their parts, but it also says something about the whole Tolkien mythos, or as Tolkien fans say, the legendarium.

So The Silmarillion is not so much an adventure story or prose epic like The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) as it is a history book—in this the case, the history of Middle Earth leading up to the time of The Hobbit and LOTR.

I purchased The Silmarillion many years ago but never completed it. Each chapter pretty much tells a single discrete story. There are many names to keep track of and not a whole lot holding it together as a single work. Indeed, it was not written as a novel but was assembled by Christopher Tolkien, John’s son, from notes and individual tales his father had written but never published.

I discovered recently, though, a different way to read this book. It took a long time. I started in September and just finished this week. A pair of hardcore Tolkien fans have put together a podcast series called the Prancing Pony Podcast. They have posted chapter by chapter commentaries on Tolkien’s works. So I would read a chapter and then listen to their discussion of that chapter. Most of the chapters in the book are quite short, but the podcasts usually last anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours. A few chapters have two or three podcasts devoted to them.

I found the Prancing Pony Podcasts very helpful. They made some of the drier mere history come alive and provided many connections with other works by Tolkien. The also made connections to works that influenced Tolkien or that he liked to read or study himself. Because of the length of each session, it takes over sixty hours to listen to the podcasts in order to cover the whole book. That time commitment may be an understandable deterrent, but for this reader it was worth it. It also explains why it took nearly three months to get through the book.

The book is divided into four parts. The first twenty pages or so is called the Ainulindalë which is about the original creation of Middle Earth. The vast bulk of the book is the Quenta Silmarillion, the tale of the Silmarils, 24 chapters and about 230 pages. This is followed by the Akallabêth, which is the story of the fall of the city of Númenor—an epochal disaster mentioned in LOTR. This runs about fifteen pages. Finally there is an overview of the Third Age, which includes the era that The Hobbit and LOTR take place in. This is about twenty pages.

The book covers millennia leading up to the Third Age, so there are hundreds of names of places and people and genealogies that compete with the Bible and royal families for their detail. Fortunately, the editor included a few genealogies, a dictionary of names that runs over forty pages, and a glossary of terms from the Middle Earth. While The Hobbit and LOTR might be compared to medieval Norse eddas or epics, The Silmarillion takes after a medieval chronicle like that of Froissart—maybe a little dry, maybe based a little on hearsay, likely condensed, but a source of what we do know about the time period it covers.

The rest of this review are thoughts or reactions to certain things within The Silmarillion. Some were inspired by questions raised in the Prancing Pony Podcast.

The Silmarils were three enchanted jewels crafted early in the history of Middle Earth. They emitted light from the original white trees and appeared to have some supernatural powers. Though different in character from the rings of power, elves and other creatures lusted after them. One of the Silmarils figures prominently in the story of Beren and Lúthien ( a brief version of their story is told in The Silmarillion). Wars are fought over them, but in the end (and this is not really a spoiler) one ends up in each of the three realms of the universe—the land, the sea, and the sky.

One of the other heroes towards the end of the story is Eärendil. His name in Tolkien’s elvish language means “lover of the sea.” However the name is originally found in Old English. The “First Christ Poem” (a.k.a. “Christ A”) speaks of Ēarendel, the morning star:

Ēala ēarendel, engla beorhtast,
ofer middangeard monnum sended…

Hail Ēarendel, angel brightest,
Over middle-earth, sent to men…(ll. 104-105)

The earliest reference we have in Tolkien’s notes (from 1914) to anything connected with Middle Earth is an observation he made on these lines. Middle Earth was the Old English term for the earth, the same as the Norse Midgard. Tolkien wrote “There was something very remote and strange and beautiful behind those words, if I could grasp it, far beyond ancient English.”

In the context of the “Christ A” poem, Ēarendel seems to refer to Christ Himself who calls Himself “the bright morning star” in Revelation 22:16. Tolkien clearly saw something else as well, as he apparently began to imagine his own Middle Earth.

The Prancing Pony Podcast does a pretty good job of making connections with the Bible in different stories, especially the rebellion of Morgoth (a.k.a. Melkor) as it parallels the fall of the devil. I might suggest to them that they check out Paradise Lost as well for it records both the fall of Satan and the fall of man. Some of the specifics in The Silmarillion seem to be inspired by Milton. Any professor of English like Tolkien a hundred years ago would have known that epic well. The Silmarillion has a lot to say about temptation, especially the temptation of pride.

Like the Bible story of the Fall, Tolkien tells us there was no death in Middle Earth until some of the “ancient ones,” the first elves and other creatures, rebelled. The podcasters seemed to have a little trouble when Tolkien called death a gift. After all, the Bible calls death “the last enemy” (I Corinthians 15:26). Now Tolkien was Catholic, but he did not go as far as Francis of Assisi who called death a brother. Still, we understand that after the Fall God caused things to die because it was better for everyone. If sinners lived forever on the earth, the evil would be truly unbearable because there would be no end to the sin. In that sense, it was a gift to us.

Tolkien also raises interesting question about fate and free will. The devils in hell in Paradise Lost discuss the potentially “vain” circular reasoning of this subject:

Others apart sat on a hill retired,
In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high
Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate—
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.
Of good and evil much they argued then,
Of happiness and final misery,
Passion and apathy, and glory and shame:
Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy!—
Yet, with a pleasing sorcery, could charm
Pain for a while or anguish, and excite
Fallacious hope, or arm th’ obdured breast
With stubborn patience as with triple steel. (2.557-565)

Unlike such discussions, Tolkien presents what amounts to four different life principles all working together in the story of life. First, Providence, what the Creator (named Eru or Ilúvatar in Middle Earth) creates for men (and elves, maiar, valar, and dwarves) to inhabit and to react to. Then, there is Fate, prophecies that show God’s final intent and purpose. Fate reacts to mankind and mankind reacts to fate. There is also Free Will. Man (and maiar and elves, etc.) can choose to follow God or not. God may provide things to challenge the will, but He does not override it.

A biblical example (one used in the podcast) is the Pharaoh in Exodus. The Lord tells Moses He will harden Pharaoh’s heart (cf. Exodus 7:3). It also says Pharaoh hardened his heart (cf. Exodus 8:32). Basically, the Lord’s plagues caused Pharaoh to harden his own heart (Exodus 4:21). God was no puppet master, but he knew Pharaoh’s heart. By the way, the podcast suggests that the name of Ar-Pharazôn, the last king of Númenor, echoes the word Pharaoh. Ar-Pharazôn also hardened his heart and ended up seduced by Sauron.

And finally, there is Chance, occurrences that happen but seem to be apart from any plan other than simple physical cause and effect. Of course, in Middle Earth, and in our world, some things may appear to be chance, but they are working out something else. In the legendarium, the classic case of chance is in The Hobbit when Bilbo finds the ring. It is truly a kind of random encounter, but the LOTR certainly makes us realize that it is very significant and full of purpose.

There is a lot to consider here. If any readers are curious about the background of Tolkien’s Middle Earth and the “history” before LOTR, then The Silmarillion is for you.

N.B. In the now-legacy program Spelling Slammer by English Plus, we noted that the traditional spelling of the plural of dwarf is dwarfs as in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” However, Tolkien spelled it dwarves. This has caught on, and it really makes sense in Middle Earth because the plural of elf, after all, is elves. Shouldn’t the plurals be parallel? (Not to mention that the plural of the one noun that rhymes with dwarf is wharves, also ending with -ves.) It also makes a helpful distinction between the third-person verb and the plural noun.