A Doom or a Gift?

The Fate of Men in J.R.R. Tolkien's Legendarium

Apr 25, 2024

Mae govannen, friends! Josh here. This week a guest piece from

Amy Mantravadi

, who has written here at the newsletter before and has her own Substack at
Sub-Creations
.

Today’s piece is an examination of the “Gift of Ilúvatar” in Tolkien’s legendarium. I found it fascinating and am excited to share it with you all.

A Doom or a Gift?

The Fate of Men in J.R.R. Tolkien's Legendarium

by
Amy Mantravadi

Aragorn's Funeral. Arwen's vision — Credit: New Line Cinema

The legendarium of J.R.R. Tolkien is packed with enough moral fodder for a lifetime’s worth of philosophical contemplation. The nature of heroism, the purpose of human life, the continual fight against evil: all are explored in depth. But when one C. Ouboter of Rotterdam asked Tolkien about the overall message of The Lord of the Rings, the professor initially replied that there was no intended message. However, he continued,

It is only in reading the work myself (with criticisms in mind) that I become aware of the dominance of the theme of Death. (Not that there is any original ‘message’ in that: most of human art & thought is similarly preoccupied.) But certainly Death is not an Enemy! I said, or meant to say, that the ‘message’ was the hideous peril of confusing true ‘immortality’ with limitless serial longevity. Freedom from Time, and clinging to Time. The confusion is the work of the Enemy, and one of the chief causes of human disaster.1

Throughout the works that compose Tolkien’s legendarium—The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and other secondary volumes—we see the theme of death continually interwoven with the tales of victory and defeat, love and loss. The God of this fictional world, Ilúvatar, created Children to inhabit it, and they were divided into two groups or races: Elves and Men. It was the Elves’ fate to live forever within the circles of the world. They did not grow sick or die naturally, and if their bodies were destroyed through violence, their spirits would eventually be re-housed in restored bodies.

Men were subject to a different fate. As Tolkien explained in a letter to Milton Waldman, “The Doom (or the Gift) of Men is mortality, freedom from the circles of the world.” This means that Men do grow old and die, their bodies decaying and their spirits departing from the “circles of the world,”2 which is to say the realm of the created earth. So, the lives of Elves are ultimately tied to the earth, while those of Men are separate from it. According to one explanation in The Silmarillion,

Men were more frail, more easily slain by weapon or mischance, and less easily healed; subject to sickness and many ills; and they grew old and died. What may befall their spirits after death the Elves know not. Some say that they too go to the halls of Mandos; but their place of waiting there is not that of the Elves, and Mandos under Ilúvatar alone save Manwë knows whither they go after the time of recollection in those silent halls beside the Outer Sea.3

What is interesting about Tolkien’s presentation of Men’s morality is that he does not depict it as a negative thing. In the letter to Waldman, he described death as a “Doom” or “Gift.” To our ears, those words seem contradictory, but they would not have seemed so to Tolkien, for he had in mind the type of doom spoken of in the old Northern European sagas. A hero’s doom was to achieve great deeds, die gloriously, and pass into a realm of eternal fame. It was only with the coming of Christianity into the lands of the North that death began to be seen as an unambiguous curse, the result of the Fall into sin.

While Tolkien’s fiction is often thought of as Christian, or at least Christian-inspired, things are a bit more complicated. Like the early medieval world Tolkien studied academically, his fictional world is somewhat syncretistic and can therefore create moments that jar us, such as the claim that death is a gift.4

But think back to Tolkien’s words to C. Ouboter. He differentiated between “true ‘immortality’” and “limitless serial longevity,” and between “freedom from Time” and “clinging to Time.” Tolkien argues that confusing these concepts is “the work of the Enemy, and one of the chief causes of human disaster.” Here the best example is the men of Númenor (also known as the Dúnedain), whose tale is related in The Silmarillion. They were given a beautiful island as their home and even granted extended lifespans in recognition of their valor in battle against the evil lord Morgoth. For a time, these blessings were enough: the Númenóreans laid down their lives voluntarily before suffering bodily decline. But over time, they began to fear death and longed to set foot in the Undying Lands of Valinor, mistakenly believing that by doing so they would gain immortality.

Now this yearning grew ever greater with the years; and the Númenóreans began to hunger for the undying city that they saw from afar, and the desire of everlasting life, to escape from death and the ending of delight, grew strong upon them; and ever as their power and glory grew greater their unquiet increased…And the Númenóreans began to murmur, at first in their hearts, and then in open words, against the doom of Men, and most of all against the Ban which forbade them to sail into the West.5

The assumption behind the Númenóreans’ longing for the Undying Lands was that death would mean “the ending of delight.” They had grown so rich and powerful in their earthly realm, so assured of their place among the spheres, that they were unwilling to depart, even as their bodies grew old and sick. But according to Tolkien, this would be only a “limitless serial longevity” rather than true “freedom from Time.”6

Interestingly, in our own world people will sometimes attempt to remove the sting of death by describing it as part of the natural cycle of life. (This despite the long-held Christian belief that death is not a part of life, but its antithesis.) But modern people are just as likely to be pursuing all sorts of lifestyle changes intended to increase their health and extend their lives. Modern medicine has conquered many of the old killers—tuberculosis, malaria, dysentery, birth-related infections—so we tend to die from conditions typical of older age: heart failure, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases. Most deaths occur in medical institutions rather than at home. Thus, death becomes less familiar and less frightening. We have pushed it out of our frame of vision and declared ourselves immortal.

Consider this: In 2020, the world faced its most deadly pandemic since the so-called Spanish Influenza of 1918. Over the course of four years, more than a million Americans have died from the Covid virus or Covid-related complications. A million people! Yet, much of the hand wringing among Americans has been over issues of public policy and personal freedom, not the reality of human mortality. Those who died of Covid were typically hidden away in institutions and buried quietly. Had the bodies been piled in mass graves as in days of old, might we have responded differently?

We modern people are similar to the Númenóreans. Our lives are so comfortable and our mastery over the earth so total that we cannot see departure as anything but a curse. Either we are attempting to deny the reality of death, or we are going to extreme measures to avoid it. Tolkien’s presentation of death as a gift could hardly be more counter-cultural. Hatred and fear of death is one thing that tends to bring our polarized nation together, and perhaps rightly so, for death is certainly portrayed as an enemy in the Christian Scriptures. “The last enemy that will be abolished is death,” wrote St. Paul.7

Here it is instructive to examine another of Tolkien’s letters. This one was never sent: it was a draft continuation of a letter to Rhona Beare. In this unsent draft, Tolkien gives a different interpretation of the gift of death to Men:.

Mortality, that is a short life-span having no relation to the life of Arda, is spoken of as the given nature of Men: the Elves called it the Gift of Ilúvatar (God). But it must be remembered that mythically these tales are Elf-centered, not anthropocentric, and Men only appear in them, at what must be a point long after their Coming. This is therefore an ‘Elvish’ view, and does not necessarily have anything to say for or against such beliefs as the Christian that ‘death’ is not part of human nature, but a punishment for sin (rebellion), a result of the ‘Fall’. It should be regarded as an Elvish perception of what death – not being tied to the ‘circles of the world’ – should now become for Men, however it arose. A divine ‘punishment’ is also a divine ‘gift’, if accepted, since its object is ultimate blessing, and the supreme inventiveness of the Creator will make ‘punishments’ (that is changes of design) produce a good not otherwise to be attained: a ‘mortal’ Man has probably (an Elf would say) a higher if unrevealed destiny than a longeval one.8

Tolkien makes two helpful points here. First, the explanations of Men’s mortality given in The Silmarillion and elsewhere are from the Elvish perspective and do not necessarily represent the full truth of the situation. Second, what seem to be divine punishments can also be divine blessings, for the Creator works his will in history through such things. The destiny of Men is higher and greater than limitless serial longevity. To cling to Time, as Tolkien put it elsewhere, is therefore a chief folly, not because Time is an evil, but because it is not man’s ultimate destiny. There is something better waiting beyond the circles of the world.

I believe this squares with the Christian understanding of death, for the ultimate goal of a Christian is not to remain tied forever to this present existence, where our bodies are subject to the effects of evil. The ultimate goal of the Christian is resurrection. Yes, death is a real enemy. It is part of the curse: a punishment of sorts. But divine punishments can be turned into divine blessings when they are used to change us into something more glorious. Death must precede a resurrection in which our bodies will be restored and glorified, no longer subject to the curse of sin.

We will not be tied forever to linear time but raised into a boundless eternity. The earth will be renewed, yes, but we will not be confined to it alone. We will also walk in the New Heavens.

So, when considering Tolkien’s depiction of death, it is important to remember the context. Is death a doom or a gift? For those of us in the real world, it is a curse, but one that has been overcome. It is an enemy, but one that will be defeated. And after death comes resurrection life, in which our wounds will be healed and our spirits renewed.

Thank you for reading Jokien with Tolkien. If you enjoyed Amy’s guest post, please share it with someone you know would enjoy it as well.

Amy's Substack