Decline and fall in Middle-earth

J. R. R. Tolkien was an orphan, his father dying when he was three, his mother, a Roman Catholic, when he was twelve.^[1] He was then brought up under the supervision of a Catholic priest, Father Francis Xavier Morgan, in industrial Birmingham. The young Tolkien observed the growing city spreading over the English countryside that he had loved.^[2] He remained a devout Catholic all his life, and many Christian themes are visible in his Middle-earth writings.^[3] While at Oxford, he joined the informal literary circle of the Inklings, with C. S. Lewis and Owen Barfield among others.^[4]

The medievalist Tom Shippey suggests that the Old English poem "Deor" had a profound influence on Tolkien, and its refrain became central to his writing. Tolkien translated the poem's refrain of decline, Þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg!, as "Time has passed since then, this too can pass".^[5]

The classical scholar Giuseppe Pezzini writes that "narratives of decline" are common in the literature of ancient Greece and Rome. This is seen in Hesiod and Ovid, as the gods became more detached from the lives of mortals.^[6] Pezzini sees Arda's decline from its First Age "filled with Joy and Light" down to its "Twilight" Third Age as echoing the classical theme.^[6] More specifically, Plato's tale of decline in Kritias from the "decadent magnificence" of Atlantis to the humdrum life of Athens is "unambiguously and intimately" linked to Tolkien's Númenor, since Tolkien actually wrote of "Númenor-Atlantis" in his letters.^{[6][T 1]}

The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger has described in her book Splintered Light the progressive splintering of the first created light, down through successive catastrophes, leaving smaller and smaller splinters as the ages pass. In brief, the creator Eru Iluvatar forms the universe, Eä, with innumerable stars; these light the Earth, Arda, when it is created.^{[9][T 2]}

Angelic beings, the Valar, live in the centre of Arda, lit by two enormous lamps, Illuin and Ormal, atop mountainous pillars of rock. The "Years of the Lamps" are abruptly brought to an end when the lamps are destroyed by the fallen Vala Melkor; the powerful fiery light spills out and destroys everything around it. The world is remade with new seas and reshaped continents, no longer symmetrical; the Valar leave Middle-earth for Valinor.^[9]

The Vala Yavanna, goddess of plants, does her best to recreate the light, in the form of the Two Trees of Valinor, the silver Telperion and the gold Laurelin; they alternately brighten and dim, overlapping to create periods of "dawn" and "dusk". The light of the "Years of the Trees" is gentler than the lamps, lighting only Valinor: Middle-earth lies in darkness.^{[9][T 3]} The Two Trees exude droplets of light which the Vala Varda (who the Elves call Elbereth) catches in vats; she uses the dew from Telperion to shape bright new silver stars to give at least some light to the Elves of Middle-earth.^{[9][T 4]}

The splintering continues. In the First Age, Fëanor, the most skilled of all Elven-smiths, makes his finest work, the three Silmarils, forged jewels containing some of the light of the Two Trees.^{[10][T 5]} The making of the Silmarils is timely, as Melkor returns, bringing the insatiable giant spider Ungoliant to devour the Two Trees and absorb all their light into her darkness. These contain the only remaining true light not poisoned by Ungoliant.^{[10][T 6]}

Yavanna and Nienna manage to save the last flower of Telperion, which becomes the Moon, and the last fruit of Laurelin, which becomes the Sun. These splinters of light are formed into ships to cross the sky, steered by spirits.^{[10][T 7]}

The Silmarils are fought over in ruinous wars, as narrated in the Quenta Silmarillion. Eventually all are lost: one ends up in the sea, one is buried in the Earth, and one is sent into the sky: by the grace of Elbereth, it is carried by Eärendil the mariner, forever sailing his ship across the heavens, appearing as the Morning and Evening Star (the planet Venus). The light is still visible, but is now inaccessible to Middle-earth.^{[10][T 8]}

The island kingdom of Númenor has as its living symbol Nimloth, the White Tree, a seedling of another tree like Telperion, though it does not shine. The Men of Númenor become proud, cease to worship the One God, Eru Ilúvatar, and rebel against the Valar. The White Tree is cut down and burned. The Valar call on Eru Ilúvatar, who reshapes the world to be round. The island of Númenor is drowned, with most of its people,^{[T 9]} in a fall recalling both the drowning of Atlantis, as intended by Tolkien,^{[T 10]} and the biblical stories of the fall of man and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.^[11] Isildur brings one fruit of Nimloth to Middle-earth; it grows as the White Tree of Gondor.^[10]

Eventually the splinters become as small as the Phial of Galadriel, which she had filled with light gathered from her fountain as it refracted the light of the Star of Eärendil. The Phial enables Frodo and Sam to defeat the giant spider Shelob, descendant of Ungoliant, on their way to Mordor to destroy the Ring. The Ring contains the power of Sauron, the remaining servant of Melkor on Middle-earth.^[12]

Thus the light begins in The Silmarillion as a unity, and in accordance with the splintering of creation is divided into more and more fragments as the myth progresses. At each stage, the fragmentation increases and the power decreases, mirroring the decline and fall of Middle-earth.^[13]

The Inkling Owen Barfield had a theory of language, described in his 1928 book Poetic Diction, that interested Tolkien. Indeed, according to C. S. Lewis, Barfield's theory changed Tolkien's entire outlook. The central idea, connected to Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy, was that there was once a unified set of meanings in an ancient language, and that modern languages are derived from this by fragmentation of meaning.^[14] Tolkien took the fragmentation of language to imply the sundering of peoples, in particular the Elves. He took the division into Light and Dark Elves from Norse mythology, but went much further, devising a complex pattern of repeated splitting, migrations, and wars between kindred peoples, seen especially in the sundering of the Elves.^[15]