What ain't there and ought to be.

[Child of the 7th Age]

Fordim -

There's some awfully interesting ideas here. I like your description of geneologies as "tombs on paper" and as a way to keep the dead around as part of the living society....also, your reference to Bag-end as a "living tomb" and the idea that Merry and Pippin's unique burial emphasizes the way in which these two Hobbits have separated from the community.

It's strange to think of Merry and Pippin's wives buried safely back in the Shire, while their husbands' bodies were laid to rest so far away. Tolkien was so intent on keeping wives and husbands together throughout the entire Legendarium. Characters like Luthien and Arwen had to give up their very nature to cling to their spouse, Aragorn had to wait to marry till his wandering was over, and other characters like Bilbo and Frodo could not marry at all because, as Tolkien implies in Unfinished Tales, they had to be free to journey on their own and carry out their great responsibilities in terms of the Ring. Having Pippin and Merry buried so far away does represent a break from this theme of responsibility of husband to wife. He must have had a good reason for depicting Merry and Pippin's burial as being so separate from their wives and the Shire as a whole.

And it isn't only Merry and Pippin who had a "unique burial" that emphasized their separateness from other Hobbit kin. So too did Frodo and even Sam. Both of them were buried far outside the Shire in a tiny tomb in the West. (I love Mithadan's description of the Hobbits' resting place in his fanfiction. ) Like Merry and Pippin, Sam's burial involves separation from his own wife. So the mere fact of being a Hobbit who participated in the Ring quest requires you to be buried "separately" from the Shire and your normal kinfolk, even down to splitting the natural husband/wife bond.

But there's one part of your equation I'm wondering about: that of the nature of Elves.

Elves, for example, don't have graveyards -- at least, there is no mention made anywhere. Arwen, of course, gets buried after her death, but she's mortal then so gets treated like a human. It makes sense that Elves don't have tombs or graves or anything, since they are immortal. Seems to me that they would be rather ill-equipped to deal with death, or even to understand it really. This has always struck me as a particularly limited aspect to Elvish nature: to go on for centuries never having to face death. I am sure that there was plenty of death in the First Age but the wars of the Second and Third Age were relatively sparse and the casualties among the Elves well below the numbers of those departing for the West. Besides, death in war is a special case: there simply is no part or place for 'natural' deaths in Elvish society. They're almost like children insofar as they never have to think about their mortality or face the loss of a loved one.

Actually, I've usually thought of Elves as being very preoccupied with death, just as much as Men if not more so. They were so preoccupied with the need to stave off any change that they "embalmed" their own world. That word "embalmed" that Tolkien consistently used to describe Elven culture is laden with meaning. Maybe most Elves didn't die individually, but they turned life itself into a kind of living death because they feared the death of that which was around them. How hard it must have been to live for thousands of years and see death constantly taking away the people who were close to you. Finrod makes this clear in his discussion with Andreth:

"Sad to me, Andreth," he said, "is the swift passing of your people. For now Boron your father's father is gone; and though he was old, you say, as ages go among Men, yet I had known him too briefly. Little while indeed it seems to me since I first saw Beor in the east of this land, yet now he is gone, and his son's, and his son's sons also."

This type of loss would have been common in the First and even the Second Age when Men and Elves came in contact with some regularity. By the Third Age, Elves had purposely secluded themselves from Men and other mortals so they wouldn't have to deal with this distressing reality of death.

Many Elves met individual bodily death: this was common in the early ages. Finrod's response to Andreth on this subject was very strong, and suggests that Elves feared death greatly and and that this fear of death was uppermost in their minds:

What do ye know of death? Ye do not fear it, because ye do not know it," said Andreth.

We have seen it and we fear it ," answered Finrod. "We too may die, Andreth; and we have died. My father's father was cruelly slain, and many have followed him, exiles in the night, in the cruel ice, in the insatiable sea. And in Middle-earth we have died, by fire and by smoke, by venom and the cruel blades of battle. Feanor is dead, and Fingolphin was trodden under the feet of Morgoth."

When Andreth responds to him, she argues that Elves do not really know death, since they go out for only a limited time, but then return to the world and life. Finrod's response to that was very swift and worded even more strongly, stressing the fact that Elves have no idea what will occur at the end of Arda, when they will seemingly die forever.

Thus far, then, I perceive that the great difference between Men and Elves is in the speed of the end. In this only. For if you deem that for the Quendi there is no death ineluctable, you err.

.....You see us, the Quendi, still in the first ages of our being, and the end is far off. As may be among you death may seem to a young man in his strength...But the end will come. That we all know. And then we must die' we must perish utterly, it seems, for we belong to Arda... And beyond that what? "the going out to no return," as you say; "the uttermost end, the irredemable loss."

"Our hunter is slow footed, but he never loses the trail."

How sad this is! My feeling is that Elves, as much or more than the men of Numenor, were preocupied with images of death and demise: the death of the mortals around them, their own individual slayings and, most of all, the prospect of annihilation when the final chapter of Arda came. There was no way out of this cycle, no way to go "beyond the circles of the world" that had at least been promised to Men.

So I see the equation differently in terms of Hobbits. Rather than a balance with the Hobbits in the middle, the Elves on one end (unconcerned with death) and the Men on the other (preoccupied with death), I see a teeter totter: Elves and Men equally concerned by death, and Hobbits at the other end. I guess with their "tomb" burrows and their geneologies that pulled the dead back into their lives, they somehow incorporated death in life rather than being so ruled by it.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Child: thanks for the fascinating and eloquent reply, but I must clarify my point a bit in response to yours.

I do not think that the Elves are "uconcerned" with death: quite the reverse. Like you, I find the Elves to be nearly obsessed with death, but this obsession takes the form of denial. Everything they do and are is in defiance of death: they do not die, they live their lives in fear of what they love dying, the wars they fight are to prevent the death of what they want to keep. In this respect I suppose we see Men and Elves in the same way -- each is preoccupied with death, but in different ways.

For a race that is born to immortality, the idea of death must be a foreign thing. It is not a part of their 'natural' functioning, death for Elves is unnatural. Where I think they go wrong, all too often, is in letting their fear and denial of death effect the way they live. The same thing happens with Men. Whereas Men defy death by erecting tombs to the dead, the Elves seem to entomb, even mummify, their lives. The greatest of the Elven realms become like sterile sarcophagi that go on unchanging and static in defiance of natural change, and living. These are beautiful places, but static and 'dead' nonetheless: like the pyramids of Egypt, Lorien is a place that I'd love to visit, but I wouldn't want to stay there forever as to do so is to give up on the process of living.

This is why I cling to the idea of hobbits as synthesising the position of Elves and Men. They accept death into their lives and acknowlege it (as the Elves are not able to do) and commemorate it without it becoming the defining term of their existence (as it does for Men).

[Child of the 7th Age]

Fordim -

This must be my thread for misunderstanding what everyone is saying. However, on this one I'm going to stick to my guns. Actually, we agree on many points.... But I cannot agree with this sentence in your original post, and I think it's a critical point:

They're almost like children insofar as they never have to think about their mortality or face the loss of a loved one.

I can't agree. Elves were very aware of the fact that they would die at the end of Arda and had thought about that in some sophisticated ways. Moreover, death in battle was extremely common during the tumult in Beleriand: entire families were split apart, women and children murdered with the sack of cities by Orc armies. And once in the Halls of Mandos, there was no assurance that an Elf would leave them quickly. Death did affect their lives. They might pretend to deny that, but the reality was otherwise.

In the First Age, Men and Elves fought side by side. Close relationships and alliance were forged. Far down into the Second Age, the Men of Numenor had close contact with the Elves who paid frequent visits. Many of these Men earned the title "Elf-Friend". And then there was the alliance at the end of the Second Age. Surely, the Elves would mourn the deaths of Men that they termed friends and, in some cases this relationship was close enough that it can be said that the Elves did "lose loved ones". It's only in this context that we can understand the "gated communities" they had constructed by the Third Age.

This is why I cling to the idea of hobbits as synthesising the position of Elves and Men. They accept death into their lives and acknowlege it (as the Elves are not able to do) and commemorate it without it becoming the defining term of their existence (as it does for Men).

I would definitely agree that Hobbits were unique in not making death the defining term of their existence. They seem to have accepted it as part of a natural cycle. But I still don't see clear lines of demarcation between Elves and Men in this regard. In my opinion, both Men and Elves were preoccupied with denying the reality of death. One built memorials and had plaques with the names of the dead to try and perpetuate existence beyond physical life; the other tried to distance death by having philosophical discussions about the end of Arda and embalming their own community to avoid evidence of change.

The embalmed community was as much a commemoration of death as the physical remains left by Men. Remember that every evidence of change was an indication that the world was drawing nearer to its end, the point when all Elves would die. Hence, by stopping change they created an illusion that death could be defeated. But is this different in intent than the kind of funeral rituals and statuary that the Egyptians created, which Tolkien agreed was the best comparison with Numenor and, to some extent, with its step-child Gondor? Each was an illusion, an attempt to deny reality. As such I'm more comfortable with the teeter-totter than the three point balance.

It's interesting, however, how both our discussions focus on Numenor and Gondor as representative of men's fortunes but avoid place like Dale or Rohan.

It is the Hobbits who spend relatively little time or effort denying the reality of death. To the extent they pay attention to death, it is domesticated, with geneologies, tomb-like burrows and such. When death happens, it happens. A hobbit dying provides an excuse to gossip and probably to have a large potluck supper. To me the crucial difference is this: Hobbits accepted their place in the universe and didn't try to change or deny it as other races did. They had never even heard of Eru, but they were the ones most willing to accept the patterns that had been laid down by the Music and not to ask for a different portion in life.

Laying the teeter-totter and the balance aside, can we agree on this? Tolkien said that the LotR is a tale about death and the denial of death. It is this wish to deny or defeat death that Sauron used to corrupt the hearts of many. Perhaps the Ringbearer had to be a Hobbit because the urge to deny death was a little less strong in the heart of a Hobbit than it would have been in either an Elf or a Man? As we agree, Hobbits simply didn't spend a lot of time on such denial. Maybe the omission of the cemetary was very planned by JRRT. Sauron trafficked in death and the fear that others had of death, and the desire that different folk had to change their place in the grand scheme of things, which is a corollary of all this. Who better to defeat him than a people who had relatively little to do with death, but who were not terrified of it? Indeed, thoughts of death came as "consolation" for Frodo on the final stages of his journey....

[Lalwendë]

I've had to throw my lot in here because this is getting very interesting. I think that the concept of immortality is just as alien to us as is the concept of mortality to Elves. I am saying 'us' as I wish to draw our own thoughts and concepts into this as we are all mortal, but when I say 'us' you can think of Mortals in Arda. If I was immortal I would live through everything this world has to throw at me. For example, I may have been born in 2000 BC. If so, I would have seen the world change from small communities worshipping the Moon to vast urban communities worshipping Mammon; and considering my life would pass by extremely slowly, these changes would seem dizzying. Imagine staying in all week and then opening the door to find the world being covered in shiny metal, populated by weird floating beings who communicate by clicking their fingers. Mad idea, yes, but that is the kind of thing you would experience if you were immortal, in terms of your concept of time and change.

It is no surprise that Elves kept themselves shut away, and this is not even taking into account the fact that they would need to keep themselves away from mortals to spare themselves an endless cycle of grief. I don't think that they never had to face mortality at all, but many Elves will have chosen not to face it purely to save themselves the distress. So both Child and Fordim are right in a way. Immortality seems wonderful to us as Mortals, I for one would love to have a few extra years in which to get on with reading all those books I got for Christmas, but really, we couldn't even begin to comprehend the burdens of immortality. One of the few pieces of work which does approach it in some way is Dennis Potter's Cold Lazarus which really brought the horror of the concept home to me. In terms of Tolkien there is one heart-wrenching example, and that is the marriage of Aragorn and Arwen. Without doing the precise maths, it would be the equivalent of falling in love and then both your lives ending after just one week together. So Arwen gave up her life for just one week of love. Horrible.

Now, I want to throw in something else about Hobbits and Holes seeing as Hobbits are the topic here. And I want to defend the concept of a hole in the ground as a place of safety. I often see a similarity between the holes of Hobbits and the monuments of ancient peoples. Cave dwellers sought out 'holes' for safety, and as time went by, actually created their own caves. The Fogous of the South West of England (e.g. Pendeen Vau) are chambers cut into hillsides and lined with stone; each features a 'creep' through which access is gained to the inner chamber/s. One archaeological theory states that they were merely storage places; I reject this as if so, why were they not more widespread? Another theory states that they were ritual places, where a person might crawl into the safety of mother earth and there visualise, meditate or whatever they might do. Another example involves Mam Tor in Derbyshire; this is the great Mother Hill of the valley, but underneath is Odin's Mine which has been found to contain ritual objects, suggesting that people wished to find safety within the symbolic 'mother'. In many cases burial mounds and barrows were also used for this purpose. I think it is Wayland's Smithy which has shown evidence that it would be opened up not just for burial, but for ritual purposes. So, what am I hoping to say here (apart from giving an amatuer but enthusiastic lecture on archaeology )? I think that this is another example of the 'hole' as a place of safety and significance. Bag End has been passed on as a highly signififcant place right down to the Gamgee family; it clearly symbolises safety and protection and somewhere special. Interestingly, we even see, at the start of FotR, a Hobbit being caught delving for treasure in there; many of the old barrows and other such sites were often rumoured to contain treasure (and most did not!). If Tolkien had knowledge of Barrows and such, he may have known or suspected of the other uses of such places; even if not, it is an ancient concept and one that I couldn't lightly turn aside when thinking of why a hole should be invested with such status as Bag End.

[littlemanpoet]

Perhaps your statement about the ragged split in our nature and our inability to accept who we are does not apply equally to all human beings. Perhaps this is something that's more prone to strike so-called modern "educated" men and women, those who feel they've gone beyond man's "more primitive" side and rejected anything that can't be proven rationally.

Child, I would say that you are right that the ailment does not affect all humans. I think that your following surmise is a little too narrow. It has to do with language. I refer you to my first post in the Mythic Unities thread.

Higher learning may be an ingredient in the ailment, but not the only one. I have a test for you to apply to people you know, including your 94 year old mother and her community: listen to their working vocubulary. How much of what is said derives from the Anglo-Saxon heart of English or your community's ethnic speech? How much is borrowed in from Latin? Greek? French? The more polysyllabic borrowed-in words in a person's vocabulary, the more that person is likely to suffer from the ailment.

What I find most interesting is that Tolkien, thoroughly educated in the Classics (he could speak fluent Latin and Greek), never lost the capacity for Hobbitness. I have an idea why. Most English speakers who use much Latin, Greek, and French borrowed words do so in ignorance of etymology. By contrast, Tolkien not only knew the etymologies of the words he used, he knew each language he studied to its bones: grammar, etymologies, cognates, etc. In essence, he could speak Latin, Greek, Gothic, Nordic, Anglo-Saxon, West Midland, etc., as a native speaker. That's my guess, anyway. So he could be hobbit in any language he chose!

Given how out of touch Elves are with the natural cycle, what do we make of their desire to live in the earth?

Fordim, I must disagree with your "given". Perhaps "out of touch" is an unfortunate way to express your thought? My understanding of Elves is that they are both fëar and animal at once (I've already metioned this in the Mythic Unities thread). Rather than being out of touch, Elves are as close to nature as any created being in Arda - with the exception of their long lives. This very closeness is cause for their sorrow, since everything else in Arda, dies. Thus they embalm, perserving that which is supposed to die, by means of their art. Thus, Lorien with the leaves remaining in the trees until the next buds are ready to sprout.

As for living underground, I think that there are two aspects to it. First, Elves are close to nature, as our Dwarves and Hobbits. Men are also, except for those who have advanced cultures. It is the advanced cultures of Men in which the Towers have been erected and the obsession with death has been seen in elaborate tombs. In fact, it is only Men who have had contact with deathless Elves, who become obsessed with death. For all other free races, death is a part of life.

Second, Tolkien the historian understood that abodes built above ground is a relatively recent development in human culture, really in only the last five thousand years or so. Even then, most humans continued to live in abodes that were closely connected to the earth, drawn from the earth. Stone structures (though drawn from the earth) represent a departure from that humble way of life known outside human cities.

So I think that your notion of the hobbits' holes as their tombs is perhaps stretching the analogy a bit. Death as a part of life, yes, but I think it would be more apt, considering Tolkien's Elves as well as human history, to understand hobbit holes and underground palaces as the abodes of living beings still close to the earth.

I also like the metaphor of genealogies as "tombs on paper". Good thought!

So if we still want to chase after those analogies, I see neither a "balance" nor a "teeter totter". Rather, I see each race progressing along their own paths depending upon their history. Elves embalmed in order to preserve the nature they were so close to. Dwarves, Hobbits, and Men remained close to the earth, except for those Men who were confronted by, and befriended, deathless and culturally advanced Elves; these alone became obsessed with death.

What about Rohan, then? Perhaps their contact with the Descendants of Numenor is akin to the Men who had contact with Elves. On the other hand, burial mounds have a long tradition according to European archaeological history, so what about the Rohirrim and the proximity of the kings' mounds to Edoras? It occurs to me that these were the mounds of the kings. We have no record of other mounds in Rohan, except those raised after battles. I still think this is an example of "death as a part of life".

Which is precisely why it's so fascinating to me that there were no burial grounds mentioned in the Shire!

[Tolkien] must have had a good reason for depicting Merry and Pippin's burial as being so separate from their wives and the Shire as a whole.

I think this points to two things. First, the significance of the Fellowship of the Ring. Second, Pippin and Merry swore oaths of fealty; not as land holders under kings (as in feudal times) but as "men" bound to their liege, as in the old Germanic times before feudalism. Thus Pippin became of Gondor, and Merry of Rohan. They were adopted into new kingdoms, as it were. To be buried with their lords was significant.

Lalwendë's reference to Barrows put me in mind of Frodo facing the barrow wight, and how alien the experience was. This illustrates how unlike tombs hobbit holes were.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Fordim

It makes sense that Elves don't have tombs or graves or anything, since they are immortal. Seems to me that they would be rather ill-equipped to deal with death, or even to understand it really

Well, some of them at least have tombs, but they seem only to be mentioned where they are significant to the tale:

Many are the songs that have been sung of the duel of Glorfindel with the Balrog upon a pinnacle of rock in that high place; and both fell to ruin in the abyss. But the eagles coming stooped upon the Orcs, and drove them shrieking back; and all were slain or cast into the deeps, so that rumour of the escape from Gondolin came not until long after to Morgoth's ears.Then Thorondor bore up Glorfindel's body out of the abyss, and they buried him in a mound of stones beside the pass; and a green turf came there, and yellow flowers bloomed upon it amid the barrenness of stone, until the world was changed. 'The Fall of Gondolin'

This makes me wonder whether the same is the case with hobbits - they have graveyards & maybe even family tombs, but they are simply not signicant to the story being told. No major hobbit character dies throughout the events of LotR, so why mention burials. When Tolkien did plan the demise of a major character - Bilbo - there was a mention of a funeral. Hobbits died, so something must have been done with the bodies, whether funerals or graveyards are mentioned or not. We don't hear much of Hobbit 'industry' generally. But we know they had books, umbrellas, clocks, etc.

I can't see, either, that Elves were 'out of touch' with nature - its simply that their own nature was different to that of others. Yes, they sought to 'remake the world in their own image' - but their desire was that their world reflect their own nature. Their motivation was to 'embalm', yes, but in the sense of wishing to turn life into 'art'. That's simply what they do - in other words, its not a 'vice' they've fallen into, something against their nature. They take it too far in the end, but its not unnatural for them to think the way they do.

Originally Posted by LmP

In fact, it is only Men who have had contact with deathless Elves, who become obsessed with death. For all other free races, death is a part of life.

Is this so? Have we had contact with the 'deathless Elves' ourselves? Well, I haven't. Yet one of the things that draws me to the Legendarium is this exploration of death & deathlessness. I wouldn't say it was an 'obesssion', mark you! Perhaps one could say that if the 'deathless Elves' didn't exist men would have to invent them. Death is always a tragedy. It is always a part of life, but that doesn't make it acceptable. Bilbo's grief at the death of Thorin for example - two members of mortal races - shows that while mortality is a known & accepted 'fact' it is not one that anyone merely shrugs their shoulders at.

[littlemanpoet]

Have we had contact with the 'deathless Elves' ourselves? Well, I haven't.

When discussing things Tolkien, one always runs the risk of crossing the border between history and myth .... wrongly! I hope I'm not doing that now, and think not.

But I would say that the contact of Men with the deathless Elves is comparable - and merely that! - to historic human progression into abstract thinking and all the distinguishing within concepts that has resulted from it. I was originally going to say that Men's contact with deathless Elves was perhaps Tolkien's mythological treatment of that progression, but I think it claims far too much. As it is, I only offer the comparison for the sake of application, if you know what I mean.

I think it's an apt comparison. When humans only thought concretely, death was the last step in any human's life. With the onset of abstract thinking, humans began to ask the difficult questions about death that still remain unanswered.

Oh, to be a hobbit!

Perhaps one could say that if the 'deathless Elves' didn't exist men would have to invent them.

Death is always a tragedy. It is always a part of life, but that doesn't make it acceptable. Bilbo's grief at the death of Thorin for example - two members of mortal races - shows that while mortality is a known & accepted 'fact' it is not one that anyone merely shrugs their shoulders at.

Yes. Even when humans thought concretely, they still created myths to fall back on to explain death. Hene, "He joins our ancestors in Valhalla!" And we have not changed, really, have we? "She has gone to be with Jesus." Not that to believe such a thing is necessarily to believe a lie, but it shows that we still seek, and seem to need, the same comfort as our concrete thinking forebears. And maybe our abstracting has only served to hinder our ability to access that comfort - the ailment in the human soul.