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The quest for Middle-earth canon. In some ways it always feels a bit of a Sisyphean endeavour.<\/p>\n The quest for Middle-earth canon. In some ways it always feels a bit of a Sisyphean endeavour.<\/p>\n
You know the story of the mythological Greek king, Sisyphus, right? <\/p>\n
For those who don’t recall, Sisyphus was just too crafty for his own good. So the Greek gods, never tolerant of being made to look foolish, designed for him the most frustrating of punishments: Sisyphus was compelled to roll a huge boulder up a steep hill. Just before he could reach the top, it would roll back down, forcing him to begin all over again.<\/p>\n
Consistency and canon in Tolkien always feels a bit like that — something that hovers just out our of reach. More, the harder you push for it, the more it slips away from you.<\/p>\n
The answer you seek isn’t in quite The Lord of the Rings, so you start examining what Tolkien wrote in the published Silmarillion. But that’s still too vague, so you delve into Unfinished Tales or the History of Middle Earth. You might find some hints, but they’re at best fragmentary, or worse, the stories offer conflicting information!<\/p>\n
Of course, as humans we feel compelled to seek consistency and place things within a coherent framework — a framework that does not always exist.<\/p>\n
Which is why people twist themselves into knots of logic to try and make sense of conflicting evidence of whether Balrogs do or do not have wings.<\/p>\n
Or whether Galadriel departed Valinor with Feanor’s rebels, or — as Tolkien later preferred but never integrated into the Quenta Silmarillion texts — left independently but at the same time.<\/p>\n
Or… well, I could go on, but I’m sure you get the idea.<\/p>\n
The fact is that no matter how hard you work at it, no matter how many resources you consult, there’s a limit to how consistent you can make canon. For some things in Arda, there is simply no single, definitive answer.<\/p>\n
My take is that this inevitable inconsistency is not not only not necessarily bad, but actually a good thing. This may seem counter-intuitive, but I believe the uncertainty about “factual truth” works to increase our investment in the story.<\/p>\n
Why? It makes us ask questions and discuss what “really” happened. We question and discuss not in the hope of a definitive answer, but as a means of discussing alternatives hypotheses. <\/p>\n
It’s worth considering that history — or more precisely — our knowledge of it, is messy and fractured. And the further one tries to delve into history, the more fragmentary and conflicting this knowledge tends to become.<\/p>\n
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This is self-evident. Oral traditions fail; records are lost, destroyed. <\/p>\n
The fractured, incomplete and contradictory nature of Tolkien’s legendarium mirrors this — and this is one of the keys to its deep verisimilitude. <\/p>\n
It helps make it more<\/i> believable, not less.<\/p>\n
Just think how many ancient records of the Edain would have been lost in the Akallabeth when Numenor sank beneath the waves. Consider how many more would have been lost in the sack of Ost-in-Edhil by Sauron, in the destruction of Osgiliath during Gondor’s terrible kin-strife, and in the decades when Arnor dissolved under the twin influence of internal strife and the assaults of Angmar. More — much more — was lost than just the Palantiri, I fancy.<\/p>\n
More, elves in the First Age were often poor record keepers:<\/p>\n
![\"Menegroth](\"http:\/\/www-images.theonering.org\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Menegroth-Lee-186x300.jpg\")
“By the Naugrim the Cirth were taken east over the mountains and passed into the knowledge of many peoples; but they were little used by the Sindar for the keeping of records, until the days of the War, and much that was held in memory perished in the ruins of Doriath.” The Silmarillion, Of the Sindar.<\/p>\n
And it’s not hard to conclude that this is one of the themes of the First Age. Every setback for the Noldor is not simply a blow against their forlorn hopes to overcome Morgoth, it’s another diminution of their collective memory — part of a piecemeal destruction of culture, knowledge and history.<\/p>\n
So many elves — both Sindar and Noldor — get (to employ the vernacular) toasted in that long, vain war to reclaim the Silmarils from Morgoth. In fact, it’s easier to list those who survive than those who perish before the Valar finally show up to haul them out of the fire.<\/p>\n
(For the record, of the dominant players in that long, bitter war, my shortlist of survivors amounts to Cirdan, Elrond, Gil-galad, Celeborn and Galadriel — and the middle two play only a small role in later events, while the latter pair left Beleriand either before, or in the wake of the ruin of Doriath.)<\/p>\n
Plus many of the few remaining Exiles who survived the War of Wrath chose to return to Valinor.<\/p>\n
The Second Age and Third Age are similarly chaotic — much is created but even more is destroyed in in conflict, or just lost in the mists of time.<\/p>\n
Is it any surprise that our knowledge of Middle-earth is so contradictory and incomplete as a result?<\/p>\n
Of course, there are exceptions. One is Pengolodh the Loremaster, who escaped the sack of Gondolin and then compiled the oral traditions, legends and stories that would eventually form the basis of the Quenta Silmarillion. This is the Quenta that later forms the basis of Bilbo’s translations of elvish that descend to us via the Red Book of Westmarch.<\/p>\n
Pengolodh later survives the destruction of Eregion in the Second Age (lucky guy!) before deciding enough is enough and heading off to Valinor.<\/p>\n
But to return to my point: all this messiness is actually really, really cool.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"http:\/\/www-images.theonering.org\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/bridge-of-khazad-howe-300x202.jpg\")
Just think: without this historical haziness there would be no Bombadil debates, no Balrog wing discussions, no asking “just where the hell did Hobbits come from?”.<\/p>\n
Instead of swapping theories we’d just have bald restatement of whatever Tolkien settled on. And by golly that would be ever-so-dull.<\/p>\n
Of course, some of this ambiguity is inadvertent — the result of Tolkien discarding stories mid-draft for reasons only known to himself.<\/p>\n
But read Leaf by Niggle and you begin to understand Tolkien was also aiming for this sort of effect. As he divulges in Letter #154 in The Letters of JRR Tolkien, it is “an elaborate form of the game<\/i> of inventing a country — an endless one, because even a committee of experts in different branches could not complete the overall picture.” <\/p>\n
And I wonder if that is not one of the most astute decisions he ever made as a writer.<\/p>\n
So I encourage you to enjoy the journey through Tolkien’s world. Because half the wonder of it is that you’ll never truly, and definitely, reach the destination.<\/p>\n
Demosthenes has been an incredibly nerdy staff member at TheOneRing.net since 2001. The views (and wacky theories) in this article are his own, and do not necessarily represent those of other TORn staff.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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