Silmarillion - Chapter 24 - Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath

[Belegorn]

Originally Posted by VarTalman

Men do enter the story of Creation but long after the Elves who if angels in representation had the First Age to themselves.

The rising of the Sun was the start of the 1st Age, into which Men were come. There were Ages before that, but this was before the Sun was made.

Originally Posted by VarTalman

If I am correct, Tolkien had to account for the chaining and bannishment of Satan from heaven, the creation of Hell, the building of Eden all before introducing humans to the tale.

This was actually accomplished when Elves were introduced into the tale. The Valar had the Elves come to Aman where Melkor was imprisoned for three Ages. Also, the Maiar were all bound to Eä who entered it. There was no heaven. Melkor reigned in the North of Beleriand. Aman was set west of Beleriand in the sea. In Manwë's words:

Originally Posted by Of the Coming of the Elves

we should take up again the mastery of Arda, at whatsoever cost, and deliver the Quendi from the shadow of Melkor.

I'm not sure about the Aman - Eden comparison. It was never meant to be a home to Men, but rather of the Elves [who it seems you are assuming are like the angels of the Bible; I'd say, if I were to have a pick, that it was the Maiar who were like angels] and the Maiar, and they built it and fortified it as a defense against Melkor.

[Faramir Jones]

When I read this chapter, particularly about the Great Battle, I keep thinking of what Bilbo said above, after finding out about the outcome of the Battle of the Five Armies.

In this world, there's also what the Duke of Wellington wrote about the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo (1815), his great victory: 'My heart is broken by the terrible loss I have sustained in my old friends and companions and my poor soldiers. Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won'.

This is without even mentioning Tolkien's own experience of the First World War, and how he and many of his contemporaries might have thought when it ended.

In one sense, it's even worse than the wars already mentioned; because while not only have so many been killed, maimed, mutilated, and suffered psychological scars (what Tolkien's contemporaries would have called 'shell shock'), Belariand itself has been destroyed. Belgium and Northern France at least survived what happened in 1914-1918, although they still show the scars.

We also have the victors fighting among themselves, the surviving sons of Fëanor killing again to take the surviving Silmarils, but finding that they couldn't keep them...

Do people feel that the Valar missed an opportunity, by failing to take Sauron prisoner as well as Morgoth?

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Faramir Jones

This is without even mentioning Tolkien's own experience of the First World War, and how he and many of his contemporaries might have thought when it ended.

In one sense, it's even worse than the wars already mentioned; because while not only have so many been killed, maimed, mutilated, and suffered psychological scars (what Tolkien's contemporaries would have called 'shell shock'), Belariand itself has been destroyed. Belgium and Northern France at least survived what happened in 1914-1918, although they still show the scars.

Even though Western Europe was not destroyed in the Great War, in a sense it had indeed gone forever, as those of Tolkien's time might have thought.

That war was one in which traditional conduct of honor and chivalry in battle were finally dismissed, and civilian casualties were no longer seen as something to be avoided at all costs, but a means to demoralize the enemy.

It also brought the use of WMDs in the form of mustard gas, and aerial conflict. I've wondered if the sights and sounds of dogfighting aircraft might not have figured in Tolkien's mind as he conceived the fight of Eärendil and Ancalagon.

Originally Posted by Faramir Jones

Do people feel that the Valar missed an opportunity, by failing to take Sauron prisoner as well as Morgoth?

I think the Valar wanted to give Sauron the benefit of the doubt, seeing him maybe as a deluded and misguided servant. After all, Ulmo's vassal Ossë had been deceived by Melkor long before, and had been given an opportunity to repent, which he had accepted.

[Mithadan]

Absent from the published Silmarillion are a few lines found in Morgoth's Ring (don't recall which section, either the Annals of Aman or the later Silmarillion) regarding Morgoth's release from Mandos. Manwe is described as being without evil and being unable to understand it. As a result, he believed that Morgoth could be redeemed or rehabilitated.

The same error seems to have been made regarding Sauron after Morgoth's defeat.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Mithadan

Absent from the published Silmarillion are a few lines found in Morgoth's Ring (don't recall which section, either the Annals of Aman or the later Silmarillion) regarding Morgoth's release from Mandos. Manwe is described as being without evil and being unable to understand it. As a result, he believed that Morgoth could be redeemed or rehabilitated.

The same error seems to have been made regarding Sauron after Morgoth's defeat.

Indeed. Giving second chances was apparently hardwired into the Valar. Remember too that Gandalf was ready to pardon and allow Saruman to repent, though in that case an imperfect and merely temporary atonement would seem to have carried much more risk than a backsliding Sauron.

[Faramir Jones]

Thanks for the comments, Inziladun and Mithadan.

The published Silmarillion does say in Chapter 6 that Melkor was first given a provisional pardon by Manwë, and confined to Valmar; but after a while he was allowed to 'go freely about the land'. The reason was that Manwë 'was free from evil and could not comprehend it', knowing that in the beginning, Melkor 'had been even as he; and he saw not to the depths of Melkor's heart, and did not perceive that all love had departed from him for ever'.

I was always amused by the fact that at least two of the Valar weren't taken in by Melkor's act: Ulmo and Tulkas.

John Garth, in Chapter 11 of his Tolkien and the Great War, looked at Tolkien's story 'The Fall of Gondolin', saying of the bronze dragons, fiery dragons, and iron dragons built by Melko for the assault on the city, that 'The more they differ from the dragons of mythology, however, the more these monsters resemble the tanks of the Somme'.

[Faramir Jones]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

Indeed. Giving second chances was apparently hardwired into the Valar. Remember too that Gandalf was ready to pardon and allow Saruman to repent, though in that case an imperfect and merely temporary atonement would seem to have carried much more risk than a backsliding Sauron.

As you correctly pointed out, Saruman had only gone to the bad for a short time, while Sauron had behaved that way for millennia. By the time of the War of the Ring, the latter was so known for deception that he was called by Gandalf 'Base Master of Treachery'.

[Mithadan]

I found the quote I referred to above: "and it seemed to Manwe that his evil was cured. For he himself was free from the evil and could not comprehend it..." This is found at section 48 of the later Silmarillion.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Belegorn

The rising of the Sun was the start of the 1st Age, into which Men were come. There were Ages before that, but this was before the Sun was made.

This is true in the Silmarillion as first written and also in the Silmarillion as published by Christopher Tolkien. However when setting up the Silmarillion material when writing The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien changed this. See the first four lines of the poem “The World was young, the mountains green” on page 315:

The world was young, the mountains green,
No stain yet on the Moon was seen,
No words were laid on stream or stone
When Durin woke and walked alone.

In the standard Silmarillion chronology these events occurred long before Sun and Moon were created from the last fruit and flower of the Two Trees.

Gandalf later sings a short poem about the Ents (emphasis mine) on page 544:

Ere iron was found or tree was hewn,
When young was mountain under moon;
Ere ring was made, or wrought was woe,
It walked the forests long ago.

Here the moon predates the first hewing of trees, presumably by Elves.

Tolkien had originally written in The Hobbit:

In the Wide World the Wood-elves lingered in the twilight before the raising of the Sun and Moon; and afterwards they wandered in the forests that grew beneath the sunrise.

In the revision of 1966 this was changed, removing all mention of a “raising of the Sun and Moon”:

In the Wide World the Wood-elves lingered in the twilight of our Sun and Moon, but loved best the stars; and they wandered in the great forests that grew tall in lands that are now lost.

In the last three volumes of the HoME series the Sun and Moon are in existence in all accounts if Middle-earth from earliest times, save in accounts attributed to the “Quenta Silmarillion” or the “Grey Annals”. The Silmarillion is here imagined as a partially inaccurate mythology partially invented by Men.

In Morgoth’s Ring (HoME X), Christopher Tolkien writes as Note 19:

In other scribbled notes (written at the same time as text II and constituting a part of that manuscript) my father wrote that Varda gave the holy light received in gift from Ilúvatar (see p. 380) not only to the Sun and to the Two Trees but also to ‘the significant Star’. The meaning of this is nowhere explained. Beside it he wrote Signifier, and many experimental Elvish names, as Taengyl, Tengyl, Tannacolli or Tankol, Tainacolli; also a verbal root tana ‘show, indicate’; tanna ‘sign’; and kolla ‘borne, worn especially a vestment or cloak’, with the note ‘Sindikoll-o is masculinized’.

It seems to me that this “significant Star” was likely intended by Tolkien to have been the planet Venus, the brightest regularly seen object in the sky next to the Sun and Moon. The story that Eärendil became with his ship the planet Venus was intended to become a further mythical inaccuracy in the Silmarillion account of Eärendil’s fate, similar to the mythical account that the Sun and Moon were in origin the last fruit and flower of the Two Trees.

Note that in all Silmarillion accounts Eärendil’s heavenly ship is identical with his earthly ship Vingilot in which Eärendil “was lifted up even into the oceans of heaven” and which he sails through the air to his battle with the dragon Ancalagon the Black. However in Bilbo’s poem “Eärendel was a mariner”:

A ship then new they built for him
of mithril and of elven-glass
with shining prow; no shaven oar
nor sail she bore on silver mast:
the Silmaril as lantern light
and banner bright with living flame
to gleam thereon by Elbereth
herself was set, who thither came
and wings immortal made for him,
and laid on him undying doom,
to sail the shoreless skies and come
behind the Sun and light of Moon.