The atrocity of the Akallabêth

[Elmo]

Yes there was children on the Akallabêth (spelt it right this time ) "and Numenor went down into the sea, with all its children and its wives and its maidens and its ladies proud" So Eru is a child killer and also do the Valar really need to kill every mariner who has the misfortune to accidently reach the undying lands?

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by hewhoarisesinmight

Yes there was children on the Akallabêth (spelt it right this time ) "and Numenor went down into the sea, with all its children and its wives and its maidens and its ladies proud" So Eru is a child killer and also do the Valar really need to kill every mariner who has the misfortune to accidently reach the undying lands?

I think I could've said many more, but now I am reacting just to this little post of yours. If we go back in time to the beginning, Eru creates Eä - he creates the whole world. I don't know if I didn't say it somewhere earlier, but aren't these drowned children (with small c) also his Children (with big C)? I am quite sure he didn't want them killed. But, there was probably not another solution at the moment.
The idea that even the children face the death as well as the parents reflects that the whole society is responsible. I think you'll agree with me that the parents, although they might have denied it to themselves, must have known - or if confronted with truth, they must've admitted, that by all the evil deeds they put a of punishment upon themselves. Why not, of course, this is their problem. You can do wrong, but you cannot be surprised that you have to face the consequences later then. If it's just your own life, no problem. But they could've thought on that they also might influence the life of those around themselves. I think we all agree on that parents take responsibility for their children as long as they are not grown up enough to take care of themselves, right? So, it was the parents' role to think of what would become of their children. They could've reared their children in a way of wrong deeds, for example teaching them that human sacrifice is o.k., fine, but the responsibility is theirs - they reared them (here comes, I think, the idea of passing on the sin of parents on the next generation - but not somehow "supernaturally", but just because the parents teach the children to behave that way). So, if I say it another way, the "cold-blooded murderer" is not Eru, but actually, these are their parents. I imagine that in some final Judgement, Eru says he's sorry for the children, but the parents are now shown any mercy, for they have the blood of their children on their hands, literally.

And to that mariner thing - I think you mean "some" mariners, not those who went with Ar-Pharazon, right? Then I'd say it was not possible for anyone to reach the Undying Lands: the Valinor was hidden, there were the Shadow islands and Shadow seas, and even Eärendil spent all his lifetime searching for the coast of Valinor and didn't find it, until Valar themselves allowed him. Only Elven ships were able to reach the coast, so no "accidental landings" could take place. The only others who ever landed there were Eärendil, maybe (but I doubt) Amandil, and Ar-Pharazon - all of them very special cases (old AP because he was just given what he wanted).

[Elmo]

no after reading this little discussion i decided to reread the akallabeth and stumbled upon this passage Mariners 'who by some fate or grace ir favour of the Valar, had entered in upon the Straight Way and seen the face of the world sunk below them, and so had come to the lamplit quays of Avallone, or verily to the last beaches on the margin of Aman, and there had looked upon the White Mountain, dreadful and beautiful, before they died.'

I took this to mean that they were killed when they reached the undying lands through no fault of themselves.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Hmm, I'll quote once more the beginning part of the passage you cited:

who by some fate or grace or favour of the Valar, had entered in upon the Straight Way

To see the Undying Lands is a gift, not a curse. To visit the beautiful lands of Faërie in a mortal body would be, let's say, a thing worth dying. Who of us, here on this forum, has not seen just a glimpse of the lands of Faërie? I think we all did, reading Professor Tolkien's books, at least at one point. But is it our fate to dwell there forever? No, we are (and some would say unfortunately) bound to this world of Men, and the fate of the Elves is not ours, literally spoken. We've been just given the chance that we "might look upon other times than those of our bodies' life" and nothing more. And so it is with the Men in Middle-Earth...

[Child of the 7th Age]

I'll agree with all of this (and the rest, actually )! I think that's the crucial point (even in this world, let alone the secondary one created by Tolkien) - that you cannot assign good/bad to the creator. A creator just is. It's from living in and experiencing the world as given to them that the peoples learn what is right and what is wrong.

Lal,

Interesting. I can definitely understand how a person reading LotR (or viewing the real world) would feel that way. In a real sense, there is no right or wrong way to view Eru given Tolkien's stated preference for "applicability" in terms of his readers and the experiences they bring to the text. Plus, Eru's position in Middle-earth is not clear cut. There are ambiguities and layers of contradiction, at least partially brought on by Tolkien's "contrasistency": his conflicting desires about the role of religion in a subcreated world. We can find quotations that emphasize the author's preference to keep religion out of the subcreated world, and others that suggest the opposite: that Tolkien incorporated Catholic elements within the revisions of the text.

Still, I keep coming back to one queston. Is it possible to have an "absolute" sense of right and wrong if that choice is defined solely in the experiences of the individual character rather than an outside agent? I am using the term agent loosely here, whether a god or another absolute construct like that envisioned by Plato. Your post suggests that morality and its application lie solely within the province of the individual. Yet the one thing I've always felt in Lord of the Rings is that Tolkien did not regard moral virtues as a matter of subjective preference or social norm. There is good and there is evil: an objective morality that may become blurred in application but that constitutes a non-changing framework that gives meaning to everything Tolkien writes.

Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men.

To me, this says it all. If morality comes solely from "living in and experiencing the world", you would have more than one standard since people bring such diverse experiences and backgrounds to this task. In our own world, for example, there have been cultures that accept the validity of suicide, like classical Roman or Japanese, and others like Christianity that do not. In Tolkien's world, things are clearer. There are instances where characters sacrifice themselves to save others and Aragorn is able to order the hour of his own death, but that is different from suicide. When the deranged Turin initially tries to take his own life, he is stopped by his companion. Turin's later suicide and that of his sister Nienor who carries an unborn child (modeled on the Kalevala) as well as the scenes with Denethor are depicted in such a way that the deeds are both moving and horrific. There is no suggestion of honor. (Lost Tales II, 115-116, suggests that there will be a redemption for turin and Nienor at the end of the world.)

Given what I know about the author, I can not help but feel that an objective morality exists in Arda and that it is grounded on some level in Tolkien's personal theology. In that sense, I am less willing to let Eru off the hook than you are. I went back and reread some of the Numenor material and was struck by how debased the culture had become: hauling off men into slavery from Middle-earth, the imposition of blood sacrifice, willful disobedience to the dictates of the ban. If I had been one of the occupants of the lands across the Sea, I would have cheered the drowning of Numenor as it would have brought some hope of relief. It is possible to say that all the men and women in Numenor were responsible for the evil. Even if these people did not actually foment evil, they stood by and did nothing when human sacrifices took place. (This assumes that there is some kind of absolute standard that says human sacrifice is wrong.) But where does that leave the children?

Tolkien does not tell us what happens to men after their death, only that they go beyond the circles of the world. If you assume that what happens to an innocent child is horrific, then there is clearly no justice. If you assume a different and more favorable ending for the innocent child, then you might argue that, by removing the child from the world, Eru is doing them a favor....that there is actually no way they could grow up in Numenor and not be corrupted by Sauron and the Ring. At least this way, they are removed from the mess and are able to keep their moral compass.

Still, that's an uncomfortable argument for me to make. I think the true answer can only be that, in a world corrupted by evil, which Middle-earth clearly was, there can be an absolute standard for good and evil but things get mightily blurred in the application. Simply it is impossible to have an absolutely good act, even by Eru, in a world where evil is woven into the fabric of existence.

Numenor had clearly become a blight on the world: a force for evil that was destroying not only the lives of its own inhabitants but those across the Sea whom they imperiously ruled. If Eru destroyed only the attacking fleet, that blight would still be there, capable of rejuvenating and expanding outward. Whatever action is taken--destroying the island or not destroying it, the evil will not go away. On the one hand you have the continuing existence of an evil Numenor and on the other hand you have innocent children killed. The only answer seems to be that you weigh one evil against another and make a choice based on that, taking the path that will eventually lead to the greatest healing.

As men, we certainly do not have the knowlege that would allow us to do this cosmic weighing or make a choice. (I too do not believe in capital punishment.) But Eru is in a different position and could possibly have made such a choice with clear understanding of its consequences. This is essentially a no-win situation. Whatever Eru does, there will be evil consequences. He is trapped by his own creation and the latitude he has given to his children. What it comes down to in terms of the individual is "trust". Some readers "trust" Eru enough to believe that his choice was just. For them it is not an atrocity--just a sad, sad choice. For others, the action by Eru can only be seen as an amoral or immoral one because there were certainly bad consequences and he had foreknowlege of those. Rather than a choice, it becomes an atrocity. There is no easy answer here.

[Lalwendë]

The point though is that Eru is beyond good/evil, he is at once both of them, and he creates the circumstances in which both enter the world. Eru just is. And why should that be a bad thing? I certainly haven't got a dislike of Eru, in fact this seems much more natural.

It's up to the people of Arda to discover what is right and wrong, and there are indeed things which are right and wrong, for them (but not equally for Eru), it is not a moral free-for-all. Likewise its up to the reader to discover these things too. They are not necessarily set down on the page for us - Gollum is an example of that. If there was a strictly laid out moral objectivity then Tolkien's work would have been incredibly didactic and that's one thing that it is not - or else why would be discussing this now?

This world is not corrupted by evil, it is created from the very beginning with evil inbuilt, into the very fabric of its being. There is no 'paradise' from which the Children can fall because the world was fallen before it even began. That's an essential and crucial difference between the way Tolkien's own religion saw the world and the way he created his own secondary world. It underlines the Long Defeat. But I reckon, Child, that you get around to that thought anyway! The problem is that if we apply Tolkien's own earthly religion to this idea of Eru being a whole law unto himself (which he clearly was, as Tolkien tells us that) then we start to get into torturous argument because it just doesn't 'fit' snugly. And thus, if we look at the Drowning of Numenor in the context of Eruism, it becomes less morally contentious.

[Břicho]

Then why would Eru punish them at all? Why should he protect the rest of the world from Numenor? Why would he care if men picked a fight with the Valar?

[Lalwendë]

Tar-Telperien explains it well earlier. But basically the Numenoreans were granted a special gift by Eru, who does not interfere much at all, with the condition that they did not seek to go to Valinor. But they did, and Eru had to reshape the world so that no Men could ever attempt it again. This was for their own good as Elves and Men were in essence very different creatures. Eru did not do it to protect the ordinary Men of Middle-earth.

[Tar-Telperien]

Originally Posted by Břicho

Then why would Eru punish them at all? Why should he protect the rest of the world from Numenor? Why would he care if men picked a fight with the Valar?

People are too dead set on looking at this as a punishment!

As I said before, Eru reacted to the request of the Valar to do something. He repaired the problem that had been there in the first place: namely, giving Men an unfair command not to sail beyond an arbitrary line. The Valar should not have put Men in such a tempting situation; they should have known that the "Ban system" is an ultimately untenable situation for Men to be in.

So Eru fixed that problem in the best (i.e., most permanent) way possible. Since the Númenóreans had decided not to have any concern for Eru's existence and/or actions in Arda, he ignored them accordingly. It was willful ignorance repaying willful ignorance. Eru wasn't going to perform any miracles in keeping Númenor afloat on their behalf if they hated him and didn't want him interfering with their lives and beliefs (they did, after all, think him a malicious phantom invented by the Valar). This concept is a bit difficult to explain, but don't you think that, if the Númenóreans spent their lives saying and acting as if Eru did not exist, he was justified in acting as if they did not exist? Eru does not "baby people". He lets them see the logical conclusions of their beliefs. This is an example of that.

That the physical aspects of the Breaking of the World included the Downfall should not be considered amazing. Eressëa was saved from it because it was taken off the world proper and thus protected from physics as we know it. But Númenor was still on the world, and was included in the catastrophe. Of course, that it happened to bring down a very unjust society while simultaneously greatly injuring its seducer and terrorizer is, perhaps, a little more than coincidential.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

This world is not corrupted by evil, it is created from the very beginning with evil inbuilt, into the very fabric of its being. There is no 'paradise' from which the Children can fall because the world was fallen before it even began.

Actually, I dare say not. If by the term "world" you mean just "Arda", then you are right: the evil was inbuilt in it. But in our case I'd change the term "world" for "creation" here: because this is what we are dealing with if we ask for Eru. Arda was actually not created just by Eru, it also (and as we know, VERY MUCH) contained thoughts made by Manwë, Varda, Melkor etc.: and this happened at the point in which they were individual entities. They were no way linked to Eru at that time: it was their own ideas what they put into the world. Melkor brought in the dischord, and this way, evil was inbuilt to the history of the newly created World. We all know the story of Ainulindalë, and what Eru said to Melkor. When Eru put the plans of the Great Music before Valar, there was nothing of what Melkor later did. In the beginning, there was nothing evil: not even Sauron, as it was said here many times. Eru created beings (meaning the Ainur now) with completely free will. He gave them their powers, yes, but he did not imprint in them "You Melkor are going to behave like this and this". And since there was no dischord in Eru's original plans for the Music of Ainur, we have to conclude that everyone of the Ainur behaved as he wished: and Melkor has chosen to behave differently.

Then Ilúvatar said to them: 'Of the theme that I have declared to you, I will now that ye make in harmony together a Great Music. And since I have kindled you with the Flame Imperishable, ye shall show forth your powers in adorning this theme, each with his own thoughts and devices, if he will. But I win sit and hearken, and be glad that through you great beauty has been wakened into song.'

ye make in harmony together=in harmony, no dichord was in the plan
I have kindled you with the Flame Imperishable=they are now "real" beings with their own life (cf. Dwarves when Aulë tries to get them working without Ilúvatar)
each with his own thoughts and devices, if he will=their own thoughts and devices, since they are free beings. Ilúvatar gave them powers, let's say, "you have now the ability to create nice bricks, you have now the ability to be a good architect, you have the ability to be a good gardener, etc., etc., now make me a nice house with garden". You can build a house in Victorian style, in postmodern style, as you wish - it's up to you if you put one or two doors there. But if you decide to build a rocket silo instead, it was not what I asked of you. (I am sorry, I am neither an architect nor a mason, but I hope you catch my meaning.)
and be glad that through you great beauty has been wakened into song.=I don't consider dying children, or dying Thingol, or the Kinslaying, or Saruman's destruction of the Shire, or death of Denethor being beauty. This was not Eru's plan. But when it happened, he accepted Melkor's free will, as much as he accepted the free will of anyone else: this is justice. And what he said to Melkor, we know.

Then Ilúvatar spoke, and he said: 'Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.'

I know this is the source of "Eru wanted Melkor to do this!" opinions, but I say, nay, as I said above, Eru didn't want this in the first place, and if you read this quote carefully, you'll probably see for yourselves. Eru is not saying "You cannot play anything which I didn't want to do". Eru is saying: "But that ye may know that I AM ILÚVATAR" = so there is no way you could make anything which will overthrow me, most crudely said. It does not mean "if you play this, Melkor, it means that I wanted to play this as well" but "you cannot play this. And you cannot play anything new. I created all. You might choose whether the grass would be green or yellow or pink, but you cannot invent a new color. You might choose whether the balrogs will or will not have wings, but you cannot invent other shape for them than putting the bull's head or pig's head together with human body." I know this is bad example, since the Ainur actually created even the shapes, but since we are bound by the material world and cannot imagine invisible things, I think this is the best.
Someone might point out (and I think you, Lalwendë, inclined to that) that Eru surely is not "stupid" and that he could've known that the evil would come and that he could have, crudely said, for example "erased" Melkor. I think it is like this: if you create something with its own free will, you have to count with that it may - or even be sure that it will - do things you didn't want it to. But is it better just to sit in the void and not create anything? Please leave now aside that the World itself was created after the creation of Ainur: we know that Melkor had the thoughts of dischord in him even before the Music itself. These were his thoughts. But if you look into the world after creation, Eru also wouldn't censore every single baby's genetic structure to make sure that no possible thief is born. They have free will, if they want to steal, it is their choice.
So, if I sum it all up: before the Great Music, Eru didn't know what will the Ainur play. He also didn't know what all would happen: even if he would have some suspicions on Melkor, he couldn't ve known if he would play alone or if some Saurons and Balrogs would join him, or if he would be "overshouted" by the others. During the Music, when it seemed really bad, he intervened (!). And when it was probably unbearable (?), he said "ok, that's enough of suffering - let's cut it" and he ended the Music. And after the Music, he didn't just say: "Okay, I wanted this to be a nice piece of music and I wanted to create a world according to it, but you screwed it up, so on second thought nothing," but he said: "Okay, Melkor, so you screwed it up, but that you all know that I am Ilúvatar, now watch what you have done."

[Tar-Telperien]

Originally Posted by hewhoarisesinmight

Yes there was children on the Akallabêth (spelt it right this time ) "and Numenor went down into the sea, with all its children and its wives and its maidens and its ladies proud" So Eru is a child killer and also do the Valar really need to kill every mariner who has the misfortune to accidently reach the undying lands?

Ah. You got me there; it's been a while since I looked at the "long sentence" describing Númenor's destruction. But the fact that there were children in Númenor at the time does not invalidate my point!

I don't know if you read that whole long post of mine above, but one of my main points is that the Númenóreans weren't just sitting there happy and content when the Great Armament left. Sauron was still in Númenor! And, as I said, because of his hatred of the Númenóreans and his desire to keep them from ever interfering with his purposes again, he would eventually have killed off all the remaining people (once the military power that had kept him from making a move was gone from the island) to keep their population from increasing again. And Sauron would not have been very nice in his methods, I think we can all agree. He was Morgoth's Chief Torturer, after all. And it was the Númenóreans' fault for bringing Sauron to their land and giving him enough trust so that he could hurt them. They chose that for themselves and their children; the act of bringing Sauron to Númenor really can't be blamed upon the Valar or anyone else aside from the Númenóreans.

In light of that, there was no easy way out for the residents of Númenor. The options for dealing with that island were:

1. Nobody did anything, and Sauron was left to do with the Númenóreans as he wished. He would surely have tortured and killed them all now that the Númenórean army was gone. As I have tried to indicate, this is the worst possible option, as far as their wellbeing is concerned.

2. There would be a long war between Sauron and the Valar. Probably the second-worst option, given how difficult it would be to defeat Sauron. Even if the Valar tried to evacuate the Númenóreans, they would have to build the ships (since most of the Númenóreans' were gone in the Great Armament), which would have taken years. By then, Sauron would have succeeded in killing most of them off anyway; see Option 1.

3. Númenor is suddenly destroyed, and Sauron gets "punished" (though I still don't think it was active punishment, rather neglect) along with the society he helped corrupt. This is what happened, and I still think it was the best option out of a series of very bad ones.

The Númenóreans had put themselves in a situation beyond easy repair, is what I mainly want to illustrate. Defending Eru's action is only secondary to the sense of sympathy I have for the Númenóreans, who suffered so horribly under Sauron, and would have continued to do so if not for this act. It is because of that sympathy that I can see the mercy in this act.

In short, there are worse ways to suffer than by dying suddenly and unexpectedly (which is, actually, one of the best ways to die). And if you don't believe that, if you think rather that any and all death is cruel punishment, then you are in the end bound to be incensed by this story. (As for myself, I too think it might have fared better if Tolkien continued to ascribe the deed to the Valar, as he did in the earlier versions of the story.)

And if you do indeed think that all death is an injust punishment, then why are you defending the Númenóreans? Their society had been constantly dealing out death to innocent people for decades.