Master of Middle Earth (12 page)

There is nothing
at all in
The Lord of the Rings
to hint that any of the free peoples has
evolved from other creatures or from one another. On the contrary, allusions
keep cropping up to their special creation by some nebulous divine act or to
some kind of life they are to enjoy after death, or to both. What Tolkien does
in the epic is to broaden the traditional concepts of Man's primacy into the
primacy of a group of free peoples who are more or less on a par with Man. But
having made the times pre-Christian, he has freed himself from the need to deal
with them in a Christian context, which would be awkward if applied to elves,
ents, dwarves, and the rest. He can and does retain, however, a general
foundation of natural theology in the areas of moral norms and the working out
of a providential cosmic order. Combining these with intimations of divine
origins and destinations, Tolkien achieves for his free peoples a status on
Middle-earth which if not precisely Christian is still very much like it in
overall tone.

So much is true of
them as a group. Tolkien's real mastery as a writer, though, consists in his
power to establish for each individual race a personality that is unmistakably
its own.
⁶
A dwarf is as different from an elf as an ent from a
hobbit, and all from a man and from one another. Further, each race has not
only its gifts but also its private tragedy, which it must try to overcome as
best it can. And it must work out its own often difficult way of living with
its peers. All this imparts great variety and drama to the epic within the broader
movement of events. It is worth watching in each race in turn.

Since Treebeard
awards the elves pride of place, we shall make no mistake in doing the same.
Besides, Tolkien has given them his heart.

1. Elves: The
People of the Stars

As if challenging those
modern sophisticates who scorn all tales about elves as childish fancies,
Tolkien takes delight in drawing them as the most superlatively gifted race
ever to walk Middle-earth. They are "eldest of all, the
elf-children," in Treebeard's catalogue of free peoples. According to
The Hobbit
they came out of "the twilight before the raising of the
Sun and Moon" to wander in the forests. Their desire "always ... to
talk to everything," as Treebeard recalls, is a sign of their curiosity
and keen original sympathy for other living beings. In order to speak with
ents, elves taught them the "great gift" of language, the first act
in their long career as teachers of the other peoples of Middle-earth. It was
an elf who, deeply sensing the tragedy of the ents, composed the sad dialogue
ballad between them and their departing mates which Treebeard sings to Merry
and Pippin. As compared with men, he ruminates, elves are "less interested
in themselves . . . and better at getting inside other things." Some of
these remarkable people stayed on in the forests of the continent to become
Silvan elves, but three of their tribes became "the People of the Great
Journey" by sailing far westward across the sea to find the Valar in
Valinor. There they "lived for ages, and grew fairer and wiser and more
learned, and invented their magic and their cunning craft in the making of
beautiful and marvellous things before they came back into the Wide
World."
⁶

Why the demiurgic
Valar should choose the elves alone from all the other intelligent species on
Middle-earth Tolkien does not explain in so many words. But it is a fair
inference that the choice was connected with the one salient characteristic
that sets them apart from other beings—their immortality of body. Not that they
are altogether invulnerable. They can be wounded and killed, as are Gil-galad
and many of his elfin warriors in the joint assault with Elendil on Sauron's
tower of Barad-dûr at the end of the Second Age. Short of violent death,
however, elves live forever, aging slowly but never growing old, knowing no
sickness or other ills of the flesh. In a world where everything else is always
dying such deathlessness can prove to be a fatal privilege. Endless life can
turn into endless boredom and stagnation, or assert itself in cruel domination
over other species, who do not live long enough to acquire equal power and
knowledge. Tolkien is setting up some interesting dilemmas here. The Valar
being aware of these, it would seem, undertake to teach the elves how to endure
their immortality. They are given a home in the Undying Lands, an environment
suited to their case because in it nothing ever grows old or dies. Their
intellects and artistic sensibilities are afforded every stimulation so that
they may always have inexhaustible fields for the highest sorts of mental
activity. Religious longings are assuaged by their love for Elbereth, who
kindled the stars. And surely, as wards of the Valar appointed by the One as
guardians of all Middle-earth, they come to apprehend those differences between
good and evil that are written into the cosmic order. For, as we know, the laws
of morality bind elves as much as they bind all the other free peoples, and do
not vary with place or time.

These laws the
elves, like all other intelligent races, retain free will to obey or disobey.
Fëanor's feat of imprisoning in three jewels, the
Silmarilli,
the light
of the Two Trees that illuminates Valinor, required genuis, but it is criminal.
It is a theft of beauty, an act of selfish "possessiveness" which makes
the jewels " precious" to him and his follower in the same bad sense
that the one Ring is "precious" to Gollum, to Bilbo, to Isildur, and
its other victims. Unhappily, they also become precious to Morgoth—a renegade
Valar?—who steals them in his turn and escapes with them to his fortress on
Middle-earth. So the history of the First Age begins. Pursuit of him by the
elves is expressly forbidden by the Valar as being motivated not by a desire to
undo a wrong but to recover the baubles for themselves. For their
"pride" in violating this edict the Noldor elves are exiled from
Valinor and allowed for centuries to wage hopeless wars against Morgoth in
which "they were at last utterly defeated."
⁷
In one sense
only are their fall and subsequent misery in a world of miseries a
felix
culpa,
a fortunate fall. They at least civilize the first primitive tribes
of mankind whom they enlist as allies. But all have to be rescued from disaster
together at the end of the First Age by the armies of the relenting Valar.

Although many
elves then return to the Undying Lands, many others have become too interested
in the affairs of Middle-earth to leave it. They spread their culture among
neighboring races. Halfway through the Second Age, however, the elven smiths of
Eregion, tricked by Sauron, commit a second grievous error, this time with the
noblest intentions but nonetheless fraught with doom for Middle-earth and for
their own future on it. The three rings of power which they forge to enlarge
the powers of elves are all meant for good uses, as Elrond explains at the
Council in Rivendell. They were not made as weapons of war or conquest.
"Those who made them did not desire strength or domination or hoarded
wealth, but understanding, making, and healing, to preserve all things unstained."
No purposes could be loftier. In part they are attained. Through one of the
three Elrond becomes "a master of healing," and through a second
Galadriel "makes" the lovely light of Lothlórien, which opposes
Sauron's darkness. But the trouble is that the elf rings, like the others
forged for dwarves and men, are ultimately dependent on the master Ring
secretly manufactured by Sauron. So, says Elrond, ". . . all that has been
wrought by those who wield the Three will turn to their undoing, and their minds
and hearts will become revealed to Sauron, if he regains the One." Well
may he add grimly, "It would be better if the Three had never been."

More, and worse,
about the predicament into which the elves have stumbled is disclosed to Frodo
and Sam by Galadriel during their stay in Lórien: ". . . if you fail, then
we are laid bare to the Enemy. Yet if you succeed, then our power is
diminished, and Lothlórien will fade . . . We must depart into the West, or
dwindle to a rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and be
forgotten." That is, the destruction of Sauron's one Ring, which is
Frodo's mission, will also annul the power of the elf ring she wears, through
which she created Lórien and sustains it in existence. That power gone, Lórien
must fade, as Barad-dûr immediately dissolves when Gollum falls into the fire
of the Cracks of Doom wearing the one Ring that built it. So must go all other
works performed by the other two elf rings.

But why must the
elves dwindle if they do not then forthwith return to Valinor? The answer can
only be guessed at. Yet in the very nature of a ring of power it may possibly
be found. A ring can have only such power as its maker gives it, and that power
must come from somewhere. In the case of the one Ring Sauron had to instill
much of his own native vigor into it to produce the awesome thing it was,
thereby weakening what was left in himself. The legitimate inference is that
the elven smiths of Eregion likewise had to infuse a large portion of elf
vitality into the three. These smiths were, after all, descendants of Fëanor,
who knew how to entomb the supernal light of the Two Trees in his
Silmarilli.
Though enfeebled in themselves by the making of their three
rings, the elves suffered no loss in the total sum of their vigor while the
three remained active. Yet when these went dead upon the melting of the one
Ring their stored energy was dissipated, never to be regained. The loss of
energy in Sauron's Ring renders his will too weak to hold his body together. He
is deprived of his grasp on physical existence on Middle-earth, though not of
spiritual existence elsewhere. By analogy the elves lose vital energy which can
be replenished only in Valinor.

Galadriel foresees
all this long in advance. Her age and wisdom are extraordinary even for her
race, however. It does not follow that all elves recognize the full
ramifications of their predicament as the epic opens. Before Frodo left the
Shire, elves could be seen passing westward on their way out of Middle-earth,
but their reason for leaving was simply that they "were no longer
concerned with its troubles." They are obeying the homing impulse for
Valinor deeply implanted in all their race.

Gildor and his
band, too, are feeling this homesickness when they meet the hobbits in the
Shire woods. "We are Exiles," he tells them, "and most of our
kindred have long ago departed, and we too are now only tarrying here a while,
ere we return over the Great Sea." The lovely hymn these elves chant to
Elbereth is full of nostalgia for the Undying Lands. They have lost interest in
earthly affairs. Sauron is not in their thoughts. They seem surprised when
Frodo asks them about the Black Riders tracking him, but respond by
safeguarding the hobbits with their company for that one night. Asked by Frodo
for advice how to proceed, Gildor complies reluctantly and not very helpfully:
"Now you should be grateful, for I do not give this counsel gladly. The
Elves have their own labours and their own sorrows, and they are little
concerned with the ways of hobbits or of any other creatures on earth. Our
paths cross theirs seldom, by chance or purpose."
⁸
Gildor cares
enough for the hobbits to send word of their danger ahead to the Wandering
Companies, to Bombadil, Aragorn, and Elrond. But he does not offer to escort
them to Rivendell, nor does he turn up there to take part in Elrond's Council.

Whether he even
helps in the actual fighting against Sauron is doubtful. This withdrawal
inward, coupled with a strong sense of isolation from all other creatures, is
not characteristic of all elves, naturally, or the Ring-bearer would have found
no help at Riven-dell or Lórien. Yet it can be met with even in Elrond's
household, when Lindir laughingly tells Bilbo it is not easy for him to tell
the difference between a hobbit and a man because "Mortals have not been
our study. We have other business."

There lies the key
to that body of elf opinion represented by Gildor and Lindir and latent even in
those others who help to rally the West against Sauron. Hobbits and such are
"mortals," very different from the immortals who watch their brief
generations blurring by. Mortals are "creatures on earth"; at heart
elves are of the Undying Lands. Gone in most elves is the childlike curiosity
of the firstborn who wanted to talk to everything alive. Well, the elves are
older now by many Ages and have acquired "their own labours and
sorrows." Sam has noticed this in Gildor's elves: ". . . so old and
young, and so gay and sad, as it were." When asked by Frodo how he likes
them, he replies wistfully, "They seem a bit above my likes and dislikes,
so to speak." He feels the distance between the species too.

Tolkien keeps
probing into various facets of the differences between elf and mortal as the
epic runs its course. But he knows he must keep showing the resemblances, too,
if we are to believe in elves. Besides, Tolkien has a bone to pick with the
view now current among us that elves are tiny and quaint, either in appearance
or behavior. Physically the elves of Middle-earth look much like men: "They
were tall, fair of skin and grey-eyed, though their locks were dark, save in
the golden house of Finrod; and their voices had more melodies than any mortal
voice that now is heard." Their clothes are not in any way peculiar,
except the elven cloaks designed for camouflage. Elves have a particularly
sustaining kind of bread and drink for wayfarers traveling far and light, but
otherwise they eat the common foods. The banquet Elrond serves at Rivendell is
eaten by elves, dwarves, hobbits, and men alike. Legolas needs no special diet
while traveling with the Company. Gildor and his band may walk the dark woods
in "a shimmer, like the light of the moon," but there is nothing
ethereally unphysical about them. "Now is the time for speech and
merriment!" he calls out, as bread, fruits, and liquor are passed around
to elves and hobbits.