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b2memB2MeM Prompt and Path: Worldbuilding (orange/nonfiction path)
Format: essay
Genre: meta/nonfiction
Rating: General
Warnings: none
Characters: House of Finwë, Valar
Pairings: none
Summary: Fantasy writers, including creators of Tolkien-based fanworks, have long struggled to depict the "otherness" of realms like Aman. In the past, the Tolkien fan fiction community showed a preference for an idealistic portrayal of Aman that left little room for imperfection. My work has long taken the opposite approach, and in this essay, I argue for the artistic need and canonical basis for grounding stories set in Aman in a more recognizable reality of human experience.
"In Valinor, all the days are beautiful."
This was the very first line I wrote in my very first serious Silmarillion fan fiction, Another Man's Cage. But I don't believe it. (Which is okay--those were Celegorm's words, not mine.) In fact, the twelve years of writing Silmarillion-based fiction could be seen as an exercise in proving Celegorm's sentiment here wrong.
Early feedback on the first draft of AMC largely focused on this point. A comment by JunoMagic (now SatisMagic) sums this up nicely:
The challenge of writing not-wholly-human beings is hardly new to the fantasy genre. Ursula LeGuin's essay From Elfland to Poughkeepsie addresses it. "But the point about Elfland," she writes, "is that you are not at home there. It's not Poughkeepsie. It's different" (145). Most of LeGuin's essay focuses on style and the precarious process of achieving a style that sounds otherworldly without being distancing. But she takes jabs as well at fantasists who veer to close to the human and the our-worldly in their work:
So while LeGuin's essay is ostensibly about style, she also argues for characters of a "kind that do not exist on this earth," which is a profoundly different thing. This gets back to the early criticism of AMC: readers' unease with elements of the story that felt too "human" or "not Aman enough," like weapons and predators and Elves who pee. I think this unease is far less common now than it was ten years ago; I like to think that my generation of Silmfic writers had something to do with that, as did the shift away from Tolkien fan fiction as largely a practice by fans already deeply committed to the books (and the orthodoxy of mainstream Tolkien fandom) and toward participation by fans who came to the fandom through one of the film trilogies (as indeed I did). These fans bring practices common to Fanworks as a Whole but not necessarily the Tolkien fanworks community as it existed in its original online form, practices which seem to allow for an easier break with fanon and orthodox interpretive approaches to the texts. But the issue still remains: How does one worldbuild a place like Aman?
Juno's comment on AMC hints at this: The Elves of Aman are different and more difficult to write than Elves in general (who also pose their difficulties). Or: Aman is more of the rarefied, not-of-this-earth Elfland that LeGuin places at the heart of a successful fantasy story. I don't want to say that this is wrong--I admire both women as writers and thoughtful critics of fiction--but I also see this view as posing difficulties that LeGuin does not acknowledge in her essay. (Juno does, in her discussion with me back when.)
Successful fiction, for most people, requires a connection to something real, something they can relate to. (I know some people would disagree with this. But for most of us, reading a story that carries no connection to anything recognizable to us is not a pleasurable experience.) Tolkien recognized this. In his essay On Fairy-stories, he spoke of the necessity of an "inner consistency of reality" and noted, "The keener and clearer the reason, the better fantasy will it make," i.e., one must understand the rules of the world before remaking them (section "Fantasy"). The best of authors are, in many ways, the builders of bridges: They take recognizable human experiences or components of our familiar world and use them to bear us unwittingly across the chasm to an unfamiliar world or existence. Suddenly, sometimes without knowing how we arrived there, we look up to find ourselves existing (fictionally) as a person we detest or inhabiting an experience we knew nothing about--or living in a world not our own: an alien planet, an underworld, an Elfland.
The risk comes when that bridge is so tenuous, so frail that the crossing becomes difficult or even impossible, and we stand on the other side, looking into a world or existence as a character that we cannot really connect to. It isn't quite believable or real. Some might argue that is part of the point--LeGuin makes the case for escapism in her essay, which was a major component of Tolkien's theory of fantasy as well1--but escapism is far from the sole reason for reading or writing fantasy. In fact one could--and I would--make the claim that fantasy functions just as easily as a test environment for ideas that would perhaps stretch the bounds of belief if grounded in our world. Fantasy as a genre, after all, is defined primarily by the author's ability to bend the rules "just because." That allows for the stereotypical sorcery and dragons, of course, but it also allows authors to add gender equality or benevolent monarchs or immortality, or to explore the darker elements of what it means to be human--genocide, colonialism, and slavery are all present in The Silmarillion, for example--without exploiting or misrepresenting the experiences of actual victims of those things in our real world. Adding such elements provokes interesting questions about what it means to be human in our world without becoming so entangled in the complexities of real-world history and modern society and the emotions these things incite.
Which brings me back to the question of Aman and how best to write stories set in this otherworldly place. A good deal of it depends on your purpose for writing about Aman: Is it an escape? Or are you situating a recognizable human experience inside an otherworldly setting to see what comes of it?
For me, it is the latter, and not just because I find this the most meaningful type of fiction to write but because the material Tolkien gave me to work with suggests this approach. Earlier, I emphasized LeGuin's quote that "[t]he Lords of Elfland are true lords, the only true lords, the kind that do not exist on this earth: their lordship is the outward sign or symbol of real inward greatness" (148). If the magic of Elfland comes from language and style, then LeGuin is correct to hold up Tolkien as a master of "the genuine Elfland accent," but what she says here is a whole 'nuther animal, and had LeGuin had access to The Silmarillion--she wrote "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" in 1973--then she might have been less confident in this assertion about the "true lords" of Elfland (148).
As a nascent Tolkien fan, I fell in love first with The Lord of the Rings and, when I reread it now, love it anew for reasons I need articulate to no fan of Tolkien. But what seized my heart and transported me fully to Middle-earth was The Silmarillion. I've spent thirteen years now writing stories about The Silmarillion, motivated largely by a desire to understand the flawed world and characters it presents. Most of my stories are set in Aman. This possibly seems contradictory: If I love flaws, then why would I set most of my work in "Elfland," in a place described as "blessed, for the Deathless dwelt there, and there naught faded nor withered, neither was there any stain upon flower or leaf in that land, nor any corruption or sickness in anything that lived; for the very stones and waters were hallowed" (Silmarillion, "Of the Beginning of Days")?
One doesn't have to look far to realize that this description is idealized. There is first of all Míriel Serindë, who not only sickened but died, right there in Valinor, in the most exalted of acts: giving birth to her child. Ungoliant dwelled "there in Avathar, secret and unknown," where "beneath the sheer walls of the mountains and the cold dark sea, the shadows were deepest and thickest in the world," in sight of Valmar and the Two Trees (Silmarillion, "Of the Darkening of Valinor"). Of course, Melkor lived there for many ages; the Silmarils, also described as "hallowed" ("Of the Silmarils"), burned his hand when he touched them, but he could abide the also (supposedly) "hallowed" Aman?
Aman isn't a flawless realm but a realm that carries a convincing veneer of flawlessness. This has been essential in my worldbuilding within the bounds of Aman. Over the years, I have given Aman universities, hunger, seaside resorts, a redlight district, and most recently, democracy. One of my favorite Tolkien resources of all time is Darth Fingon's Twenty-Two Words You Never Thought Tolkien Would Provide because it gives us a look beneath the veneer of Aman.
I believe this veneer takes strength to maintain that is not possible to sustain over the long term, even for the Ainur. We see this again and again in Tolkien's world--Doriath, Gondolin, Nargothrond, Númenor, Imladris, Lothlórien, all isolated and protected places that eventually fall or wither with time--but Aman is rarely included as such a place. We assume Aman had genuine sublimity--not least of all because many of the realms on the list above imitate Aman; not least of all because it is the creation of the divine and eternal Ainur--but I'm not sure that the land that harbored Ungoliant can be labeled as ideal. The illusion is tattered, and reality is bound to enter in.
In my stories, the effort to keep up the veneer of perfection means that the further one is from Valinor proper--from the part of the realm most carefully constructed and maintained by the Valar--the more ordinary the realm appears. This is based in the fact that Ungoliant's unnoticed occupancy of Avathar--which including weaving vast, black, light-sucking webs among the mountains there--seems at least partially predicated on the fact that it is "far south of great Taniquetil" where the "Valar were not vigilant" (Silmarillion, "Of the Darkening of Valinor"). However, in the same passage, both Melkor and Ungoliant are described as able to descry the Light of the Trees and other features of Valinor; they don't seem to be that far away. The power of the Valar may be more limited than the idealist description of Valinor in the text would suppose and doesn't seem to extend across the extent of Aman. I have used this same idea in my stories about Aman: As one journeys further from the epicenter, the veneer of perfection thins and then disappears altogether. Formenos in the north, in my stories, is set in a part of the land with seasons, including winter, and predators that residents warn their children against. These elements of my depiction of Aman were among those questioned by early readers of my work.
Likewise, some of the residents of Aman were born in Middle-earth and their personalities shaped in the crucible of the early conflicts with Melkor. Aman, therefore, could hardly guarantee an edenic existence for the Eldar, innocent of the knowledge of grief, violence, and death; rather, the Elves who came to Aman doubtlessly brought with them both survival skills and trauma from their tenure in darkened Middle-earth. This is an idea that is frequently explored by Silmarillion writers (including me) in the context of sexuality: Before the laws of the Valar were imposed upon them, the Elves would have had a more naturalistic and lenient view of sex. Without delving beyond its title, Laws and Customs among the Eldar is just that: among the Eldar, and this choice of wording from the semantically fastidious Tolkien feels deliberate and laden with potential meaning. But the presence of Elves from Middle-earth--including all of the leaders of the Eldar in Aman--presents significance beyond sex. Weapons are an issue I wrote about as early as AMC--proposing, somewhat in defiance of canon, that Elves in Aman possessed swords as historical artifacts and also for athletic pursuits--that drew criticism then, at least in part because what use have the people of Aman for weapons? I say that allowing swords to certain groups of Eldar in Aman is "somewhat" in defiance of canon because Tolkien himself waffled on this issue, seeing the question of weapons as a potential plot hole.2 He concluded that it was unreasonable to expect that they didn't possess weapons on the Great Journey. Consider this implications of this. Into the so-called Deathless Realm came Elves experienced in making and using weapons, whose minds most likely devised of instruments of death and violence on their own, possibly among their first creative acts. How is such a culture shaped by the of reality life in Middle-earth, illuminated only by the stars and under duress of an enemy too strong and cunning even for the Valar? How is that effect amplified when those who endured such an experience do not die, leaving their descendents to progress into a more pacific existence without them, but retain that formative mindset, those skills and those traumas, into the ages?
But trauma does not end with those born outside of Aman. Events within Aman wreak havoc upon those likewise born within its borders: In fact, that they occur in Aman seems an inescapable component of the trauma.
Perhaps the most salient example of this is Fëanor. Fëanor lost his mother and watched the Valar bend the rules to allow his father to remarry, ensuring in the process that Míriel could never be reborn. These events alone would have been potentially traumatic. But consider how their occurrence in Aman of all places compounds that trauma, adding a sort of insult to injury, as Fëanor doubtlessly progressed through his life hearing how fortunate the Elves were to live in the safety of the "deathless realm." His own experience would have been very different, and it must have been painful or galling to hear Aman celebrated while understanding that ideal was only a veneer--a concept doubtlessly controversial, if not impossible, to articulate.
Likewise, the conflict in the House of Finwë is worsened by its happening in Aman. When Fëanor draws his sword on Fingolfin, he is accused primarily of having "broken the peace of Valinor and drawn his sword upon his kinsman"; almost as an afterthought, Námo Mandos adds that the "deed was unlawful, whether in Aman or not in Aman," but it is hard to imagine Fëanor would have received a penalty so severe anywhere else (Silmarillion, "Of the Silmarils"). The primary transgression seems to be manifesting an emotion--expressed through the powerful symbolism of the drawn sword--that belies the illusion of a land without corruption. The cauldron of circumstances that produced this rash act are not examined in any meaningful way; instead, the rash actor is hidden away in the name of restoring peace--or at least the illusion of it.
Taken together, I believe that worldbuilding Aman as an "Elfland" as LeGuin understands it is a fundamental flaw. The lords of Aman are the very ones we see on earth: They are idealistic to the point of naïveté (the Valar); they want what they don't have (Finwë); they are jealous, vulnerable, angry, in pain (Fëanor). One can extrapolate outward from these supposedly greatest of the residents of Aman to assume that the land is not as impeccable as the rhapsodizing of the narrator of The Silmarillion would have us believe. To look no further than the dust of diamonds upon one's shoes in walking there, to never glimpse the faces of those who dwell there and what hides behind their eyes, is to be so dazzled by a beautiful illusion as to miss what matters.
Notes
1. On escapism as a motive for fantasy see Tolkien's essay On Fairy-stories, in the section "Recovery, Escape, Consolation":
2. On the question of weapons in Aman, see The History of Middle-earth, Vol. X: Morgoth's Ring, The Annals of Aman, note on §97 (page 106 in the hardcover edition). Tolkien originally stated that "Melkor spoke to the Eldar concerning weapons, which they had not before possessed or known," then emphatically argued with himself in a marginal note: "No! They must have had weapons on the Great Journey," concluding that they had "weapons of the chase, spears and bows and arrows." Swords may be a step too far for some people--although Tolkien's own inconclusiveness on this issue leaves me feeling it is far from carved in stone--but weapons in Aman certainly were not.
Format: essay
Genre: meta/nonfiction
Rating: General
Warnings: none
Characters: House of Finwë, Valar
Pairings: none
Summary: Fantasy writers, including creators of Tolkien-based fanworks, have long struggled to depict the "otherness" of realms like Aman. In the past, the Tolkien fan fiction community showed a preference for an idealistic portrayal of Aman that left little room for imperfection. My work has long taken the opposite approach, and in this essay, I argue for the artistic need and canonical basis for grounding stories set in Aman in a more recognizable reality of human experience.
On Writing Aman, or the Balance between the Mythic and the Real
"In Valinor, all the days are beautiful."
This was the very first line I wrote in my very first serious Silmarillion fan fiction, Another Man's Cage. But I don't believe it. (Which is okay--those were Celegorm's words, not mine.) In fact, the twelve years of writing Silmarillion-based fiction could be seen as an exercise in proving Celegorm's sentiment here wrong.
Early feedback on the first draft of AMC largely focused on this point. A comment by JunoMagic (now SatisMagic) sums this up nicely:
What I think is most difficult about stories that are primarily concerned with Elves and Elves in Aman at that, is how to keep their inherent elvishness alive and present throughout the story, a feeling that this is not a story about another kind of men, but about a different kind of beings, however closely related they might be. (emphasis mine)
The challenge of writing not-wholly-human beings is hardly new to the fantasy genre. Ursula LeGuin's essay From Elfland to Poughkeepsie addresses it. "But the point about Elfland," she writes, "is that you are not at home there. It's not Poughkeepsie. It's different" (145). Most of LeGuin's essay focuses on style and the precarious process of achieving a style that sounds otherworldly without being distancing. But she takes jabs as well at fantasists who veer to close to the human and the our-worldly in their work:
The Lords of Elfland are true lords, the only true lords, the kind that do not exist on this earth: their lordship is the outward sign or symbol of real inward greatness. And greatness of soul shows when a man speaks. At least, it does in books. In life we expect lapses. In naturalistic fiction, too, we expect lapses, and laugh at an "overheroic" hero. But in fantasy, which, instead of imitating the perceived confusion and complexity of existence, tries to hint at an order and clarity underlying existence--in fantasy, we need not compromise. (148, emphasis mine)
So while LeGuin's essay is ostensibly about style, she also argues for characters of a "kind that do not exist on this earth," which is a profoundly different thing. This gets back to the early criticism of AMC: readers' unease with elements of the story that felt too "human" or "not Aman enough," like weapons and predators and Elves who pee. I think this unease is far less common now than it was ten years ago; I like to think that my generation of Silmfic writers had something to do with that, as did the shift away from Tolkien fan fiction as largely a practice by fans already deeply committed to the books (and the orthodoxy of mainstream Tolkien fandom) and toward participation by fans who came to the fandom through one of the film trilogies (as indeed I did). These fans bring practices common to Fanworks as a Whole but not necessarily the Tolkien fanworks community as it existed in its original online form, practices which seem to allow for an easier break with fanon and orthodox interpretive approaches to the texts. But the issue still remains: How does one worldbuild a place like Aman?
Juno's comment on AMC hints at this: The Elves of Aman are different and more difficult to write than Elves in general (who also pose their difficulties). Or: Aman is more of the rarefied, not-of-this-earth Elfland that LeGuin places at the heart of a successful fantasy story. I don't want to say that this is wrong--I admire both women as writers and thoughtful critics of fiction--but I also see this view as posing difficulties that LeGuin does not acknowledge in her essay. (Juno does, in her discussion with me back when.)
Successful fiction, for most people, requires a connection to something real, something they can relate to. (I know some people would disagree with this. But for most of us, reading a story that carries no connection to anything recognizable to us is not a pleasurable experience.) Tolkien recognized this. In his essay On Fairy-stories, he spoke of the necessity of an "inner consistency of reality" and noted, "The keener and clearer the reason, the better fantasy will it make," i.e., one must understand the rules of the world before remaking them (section "Fantasy"). The best of authors are, in many ways, the builders of bridges: They take recognizable human experiences or components of our familiar world and use them to bear us unwittingly across the chasm to an unfamiliar world or existence. Suddenly, sometimes without knowing how we arrived there, we look up to find ourselves existing (fictionally) as a person we detest or inhabiting an experience we knew nothing about--or living in a world not our own: an alien planet, an underworld, an Elfland.
The risk comes when that bridge is so tenuous, so frail that the crossing becomes difficult or even impossible, and we stand on the other side, looking into a world or existence as a character that we cannot really connect to. It isn't quite believable or real. Some might argue that is part of the point--LeGuin makes the case for escapism in her essay, which was a major component of Tolkien's theory of fantasy as well1--but escapism is far from the sole reason for reading or writing fantasy. In fact one could--and I would--make the claim that fantasy functions just as easily as a test environment for ideas that would perhaps stretch the bounds of belief if grounded in our world. Fantasy as a genre, after all, is defined primarily by the author's ability to bend the rules "just because." That allows for the stereotypical sorcery and dragons, of course, but it also allows authors to add gender equality or benevolent monarchs or immortality, or to explore the darker elements of what it means to be human--genocide, colonialism, and slavery are all present in The Silmarillion, for example--without exploiting or misrepresenting the experiences of actual victims of those things in our real world. Adding such elements provokes interesting questions about what it means to be human in our world without becoming so entangled in the complexities of real-world history and modern society and the emotions these things incite.
Which brings me back to the question of Aman and how best to write stories set in this otherworldly place. A good deal of it depends on your purpose for writing about Aman: Is it an escape? Or are you situating a recognizable human experience inside an otherworldly setting to see what comes of it?
For me, it is the latter, and not just because I find this the most meaningful type of fiction to write but because the material Tolkien gave me to work with suggests this approach. Earlier, I emphasized LeGuin's quote that "[t]he Lords of Elfland are true lords, the only true lords, the kind that do not exist on this earth: their lordship is the outward sign or symbol of real inward greatness" (148). If the magic of Elfland comes from language and style, then LeGuin is correct to hold up Tolkien as a master of "the genuine Elfland accent," but what she says here is a whole 'nuther animal, and had LeGuin had access to The Silmarillion--she wrote "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" in 1973--then she might have been less confident in this assertion about the "true lords" of Elfland (148).
As a nascent Tolkien fan, I fell in love first with The Lord of the Rings and, when I reread it now, love it anew for reasons I need articulate to no fan of Tolkien. But what seized my heart and transported me fully to Middle-earth was The Silmarillion. I've spent thirteen years now writing stories about The Silmarillion, motivated largely by a desire to understand the flawed world and characters it presents. Most of my stories are set in Aman. This possibly seems contradictory: If I love flaws, then why would I set most of my work in "Elfland," in a place described as "blessed, for the Deathless dwelt there, and there naught faded nor withered, neither was there any stain upon flower or leaf in that land, nor any corruption or sickness in anything that lived; for the very stones and waters were hallowed" (Silmarillion, "Of the Beginning of Days")?
One doesn't have to look far to realize that this description is idealized. There is first of all Míriel Serindë, who not only sickened but died, right there in Valinor, in the most exalted of acts: giving birth to her child. Ungoliant dwelled "there in Avathar, secret and unknown," where "beneath the sheer walls of the mountains and the cold dark sea, the shadows were deepest and thickest in the world," in sight of Valmar and the Two Trees (Silmarillion, "Of the Darkening of Valinor"). Of course, Melkor lived there for many ages; the Silmarils, also described as "hallowed" ("Of the Silmarils"), burned his hand when he touched them, but he could abide the also (supposedly) "hallowed" Aman?
Aman isn't a flawless realm but a realm that carries a convincing veneer of flawlessness. This has been essential in my worldbuilding within the bounds of Aman. Over the years, I have given Aman universities, hunger, seaside resorts, a redlight district, and most recently, democracy. One of my favorite Tolkien resources of all time is Darth Fingon's Twenty-Two Words You Never Thought Tolkien Would Provide because it gives us a look beneath the veneer of Aman.
I believe this veneer takes strength to maintain that is not possible to sustain over the long term, even for the Ainur. We see this again and again in Tolkien's world--Doriath, Gondolin, Nargothrond, Númenor, Imladris, Lothlórien, all isolated and protected places that eventually fall or wither with time--but Aman is rarely included as such a place. We assume Aman had genuine sublimity--not least of all because many of the realms on the list above imitate Aman; not least of all because it is the creation of the divine and eternal Ainur--but I'm not sure that the land that harbored Ungoliant can be labeled as ideal. The illusion is tattered, and reality is bound to enter in.
In my stories, the effort to keep up the veneer of perfection means that the further one is from Valinor proper--from the part of the realm most carefully constructed and maintained by the Valar--the more ordinary the realm appears. This is based in the fact that Ungoliant's unnoticed occupancy of Avathar--which including weaving vast, black, light-sucking webs among the mountains there--seems at least partially predicated on the fact that it is "far south of great Taniquetil" where the "Valar were not vigilant" (Silmarillion, "Of the Darkening of Valinor"). However, in the same passage, both Melkor and Ungoliant are described as able to descry the Light of the Trees and other features of Valinor; they don't seem to be that far away. The power of the Valar may be more limited than the idealist description of Valinor in the text would suppose and doesn't seem to extend across the extent of Aman. I have used this same idea in my stories about Aman: As one journeys further from the epicenter, the veneer of perfection thins and then disappears altogether. Formenos in the north, in my stories, is set in a part of the land with seasons, including winter, and predators that residents warn their children against. These elements of my depiction of Aman were among those questioned by early readers of my work.
Likewise, some of the residents of Aman were born in Middle-earth and their personalities shaped in the crucible of the early conflicts with Melkor. Aman, therefore, could hardly guarantee an edenic existence for the Eldar, innocent of the knowledge of grief, violence, and death; rather, the Elves who came to Aman doubtlessly brought with them both survival skills and trauma from their tenure in darkened Middle-earth. This is an idea that is frequently explored by Silmarillion writers (including me) in the context of sexuality: Before the laws of the Valar were imposed upon them, the Elves would have had a more naturalistic and lenient view of sex. Without delving beyond its title, Laws and Customs among the Eldar is just that: among the Eldar, and this choice of wording from the semantically fastidious Tolkien feels deliberate and laden with potential meaning. But the presence of Elves from Middle-earth--including all of the leaders of the Eldar in Aman--presents significance beyond sex. Weapons are an issue I wrote about as early as AMC--proposing, somewhat in defiance of canon, that Elves in Aman possessed swords as historical artifacts and also for athletic pursuits--that drew criticism then, at least in part because what use have the people of Aman for weapons? I say that allowing swords to certain groups of Eldar in Aman is "somewhat" in defiance of canon because Tolkien himself waffled on this issue, seeing the question of weapons as a potential plot hole.2 He concluded that it was unreasonable to expect that they didn't possess weapons on the Great Journey. Consider this implications of this. Into the so-called Deathless Realm came Elves experienced in making and using weapons, whose minds most likely devised of instruments of death and violence on their own, possibly among their first creative acts. How is such a culture shaped by the of reality life in Middle-earth, illuminated only by the stars and under duress of an enemy too strong and cunning even for the Valar? How is that effect amplified when those who endured such an experience do not die, leaving their descendents to progress into a more pacific existence without them, but retain that formative mindset, those skills and those traumas, into the ages?
But trauma does not end with those born outside of Aman. Events within Aman wreak havoc upon those likewise born within its borders: In fact, that they occur in Aman seems an inescapable component of the trauma.
Perhaps the most salient example of this is Fëanor. Fëanor lost his mother and watched the Valar bend the rules to allow his father to remarry, ensuring in the process that Míriel could never be reborn. These events alone would have been potentially traumatic. But consider how their occurrence in Aman of all places compounds that trauma, adding a sort of insult to injury, as Fëanor doubtlessly progressed through his life hearing how fortunate the Elves were to live in the safety of the "deathless realm." His own experience would have been very different, and it must have been painful or galling to hear Aman celebrated while understanding that ideal was only a veneer--a concept doubtlessly controversial, if not impossible, to articulate.
Likewise, the conflict in the House of Finwë is worsened by its happening in Aman. When Fëanor draws his sword on Fingolfin, he is accused primarily of having "broken the peace of Valinor and drawn his sword upon his kinsman"; almost as an afterthought, Námo Mandos adds that the "deed was unlawful, whether in Aman or not in Aman," but it is hard to imagine Fëanor would have received a penalty so severe anywhere else (Silmarillion, "Of the Silmarils"). The primary transgression seems to be manifesting an emotion--expressed through the powerful symbolism of the drawn sword--that belies the illusion of a land without corruption. The cauldron of circumstances that produced this rash act are not examined in any meaningful way; instead, the rash actor is hidden away in the name of restoring peace--or at least the illusion of it.
Taken together, I believe that worldbuilding Aman as an "Elfland" as LeGuin understands it is a fundamental flaw. The lords of Aman are the very ones we see on earth: They are idealistic to the point of naïveté (the Valar); they want what they don't have (Finwë); they are jealous, vulnerable, angry, in pain (Fëanor). One can extrapolate outward from these supposedly greatest of the residents of Aman to assume that the land is not as impeccable as the rhapsodizing of the narrator of The Silmarillion would have us believe. To look no further than the dust of diamonds upon one's shoes in walking there, to never glimpse the faces of those who dwell there and what hides behind their eyes, is to be so dazzled by a beautiful illusion as to miss what matters.
Notes
1. On escapism as a motive for fantasy see Tolkien's essay On Fairy-stories, in the section "Recovery, Escape, Consolation":
I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which "Escape" is now so often used … Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?
2. On the question of weapons in Aman, see The History of Middle-earth, Vol. X: Morgoth's Ring, The Annals of Aman, note on §97 (page 106 in the hardcover edition). Tolkien originally stated that "Melkor spoke to the Eldar concerning weapons, which they had not before possessed or known," then emphatically argued with himself in a marginal note: "No! They must have had weapons on the Great Journey," concluding that they had "weapons of the chase, spears and bows and arrows." Swords may be a step too far for some people--although Tolkien's own inconclusiveness on this issue leaves me feeling it is far from carved in stone--but weapons in Aman certainly were not.
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Date: 2017-03-03 02:25 am (UTC)Aside from that, I agree with you that Aman has an illusion of perfectness. Maybe it's because I grew up hearing all about how idle life was supposed to be, while being poor and surrounded by rich people, but from the time I read the books I just saw it as a land of elves and Valar who didn't want to admit that life isn't that perfect for everybody, because facing problems is hard and upsetting (I am deeply cynical, obviously).
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Date: 2017-03-03 03:00 pm (UTC)I don't think it's cynical to recognize that there are flaws in Aman and that they tend to parallel what we see in the real world. (You know the drill: We live in one of the richest countries in the world, and one in five children lives in poverty. The iconic imagery of "America" is not reality for most of our citizens.) I do think it's interesting that many of us who are most outspoken about alternative views of Valinor are those who have either experienced poverty firsthand, done work in impoverished communities, or both.
I think Tolkien dropped hints enough that he wanted Aman to be seen at least somewhat critically (maybe not as critically as we see it ;), although he'd probably say things like "Arda Marred" and "an unfallen vision isn't possible for a fallen mind," but I don't think he meant it to be seen as a paradise.
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Date: 2017-03-14 03:01 am (UTC)My Cuivienen elves only don't have metalworking because my geography for them resulted in a lack of good areas to find metals, but a handy volcano a bit away that provides nice obsidian to make weapons with, and I therefore bent the general path most civilizations take in terms of progress.
I agree entirely about the seeming link between having either experienced or done work with impoverished communities and alternate views of Valinor. :D
Personally, if Tolkien actually saw Valinor as a complete paradise, I'd be terrified as to what he'd do with hell. :P
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Date: 2017-03-03 03:45 am (UTC)It took fanfiction of both the traditional type and the more realistic type to help me come to terms with a place so very contradictory.
Valinor was supposed to be close to heaven on earth, and yet from the beginning it was darker and less benevolent a place to me than the world of LotR (not all of that unease was due to the lack of hobbits, either, ;-))
For one thing, Elves were supposed to be "good guys", and too many of the Elves in the Silm were not. It took a long time for me to come to grips with the dichotomy.
I now appreciate the stories in which we are shown both the otherworldliness of Elves and also their worldliness as well.
You and other fanfic writers have helped me to appreciate the subtle differences and similarities between the Elves of the Silm who are actually more three dimensional, and those of LotR who only show their surface to the mortals who encounter them.
This essay is also very helpful as well. You bring up a number of points I had never before thought of (such as swords).
Thank you!
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Date: 2017-03-03 03:07 pm (UTC)too many of the Elves in the Silm were not.
They definitely seem a whole other order of beings from the ones we see in LotR.
Back in the day, I could always tell the Tolkien fans who hadn't read the Silm because they'd go on about the perfection of the Elves, or critique fanfic that wrote Elves as imperfect on that basis.
They're also in decline in LotR, versus at the peak of their activity. They're happy to do what they need to do to settle down into retirement and let someone else take care of the world for a while. ;) And we see them through the eyes of Hobbits, who view them as mythic beings, not as fellow humans.
Thank YOU for reading and commenting on my essay! :)
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Date: 2017-03-03 09:14 am (UTC)The classic Elfland is often viewed from the perspective of an outsider and in contrast with a world more like ours and so it is in some versions of Tolkien: Eriol and Tol Eressea, the hobbits and Lorien, and so on. It also has a tendency to timelessness, leaving history outside.
When history enters the realm and the main POV changes from an outsider's to one of the inhabitants, things are going to change. And Tolkien himself turned timelessness and the desire for it into a problem, where Lorien was concerned. He may not have meant to do so with Aman, too, but the issue is sort of there, now.
I have hints in some of my own fic that the ideal Aman is the one that is remembered in Middle-earth, from a distance, by elves who are in varying degrees of danger, defeat and despair, coloured by nostalgia.
That said, some fan fic writers writers manage to write idyllic Aman astonishingly interestingly at astonishing length. Some of your fics set in Aman have startled me with the darkness of some of their scenes--and of course some others have written Valinor even darker than that.
It's all very interesting. Thank you for such a thought-provoking essay. I will continue to mull over this...
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Date: 2017-03-03 03:20 pm (UTC)The attitudes in the essay, whether hers anymore or not, certainly remain in the Tolkien community, though. I think they've faded A LOT in the fanfic community (or maybe have been overwhelmed by the number of fans brought in by the Hobbit films who don't bring in that old-guard orthodoxy that even LotR film fans were often quick to adopt) ... but at the same time, I had "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" quoted at me only a few years ago in a discussion of this issue on the Heretic Loremaster, and outside the fanfic world, I'm pretty confident that I'd hear strident opposition to my vision of Aman along similar lines.
the ideal Aman is the one that is remembered in Middle-earth, from a distance, by elves who are in varying degrees of danger, defeat and despair, coloured by nostalgia.
Yes! I think this is so important. Kind of like how so many people fondly remember high school when it was often a miserable experience. ;)
Idealizing Aman also seems a roundabout way to criticize the very decision to go to Middle-earth: "Look what we left behind! Look what we had and gave up because we followed Feanor!" Tainted as it was by the kinslaying, it doesn't seem like the most prudent course to admit, "Well, you know, we left for a good reason. It's called the Blessed Realm and all, but it had its problems, like the spiders in the basement." Losing Aman feels a just punishment for not just the kinslaying but for rebelling against what they were supposed to want and didn't.
Thank you for reading and commenting! :)
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Date: 2017-03-03 11:01 am (UTC)Any claim to perfection always makes me suspicious - who is defining what this perfection is, and would everybody really agree to it? Will dissenters be silenced to not destroy the image of perfection?
Denmark is sometimes descibed as being the happiest country in the world, and when talking about our country to outsiders I see that Danes will often confirm this and emphasize the traits that are positive and would lead to general happiness. But if you scratch the surface it is more complex. (of course!). So maybe the description of Aman that you would find in the Silmarillion is also a product of this behaviour: rosetinting the image to outsiders, and also selective memory of how it actually was?
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Date: 2017-03-03 03:28 pm (UTC)Any claim to perfection always makes me suspicious - who is defining what this perfection is, and would everybody really agree to it? Will dissenters be silenced to not destroy the image of perfection?
It's interesting because I just remarked to Brooke that my experience has been that people who are especially cognizant of inequality--either through firsthand experience or through working with less-advantaged groups of people--tend in my experience to see it this way. Aman almost feels like propaganda.
So maybe the description of Aman that you would find in the Silmarillion is also a product of this behaviour: rosetinting the image to outsiders, and also selective memory of how it actually was?
I think it is a bit of both. Kind of like people often fondly remember their years in high school or university without remembering the bad things that sometimes feel overwhelming in those years. I wonder, too, how people who are struggling--and profoundly unhappy--in countries like Denmark react to such information as the World Happiness Report, like, "If I can't be happy here, there is literally no hope for me anywhere else in the world." Rather than Feanor's situation, of being doubtlessly told how lucky he was to live in the land where his mother died and his grief went at least partly unacknowledged.
And of course, if the Eldar are to proclaim their superiority, then Aman must be itself worthy of producing that superiority. Claiming, "We've spent ages cooling our heels and not doing much at all that's productive in the so-called 'Blessed Realm'" just doesn't have the same ring to it. ;)
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Date: 2017-03-03 01:05 pm (UTC)Well, now I'll have to go and re-order my thoughts!
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Date: 2017-03-03 03:35 pm (UTC)But write about it I did, and I remember having many "hey wait" moments as I did, e.g., assuming that the Elves of Aman were naive about Middle-earth, Orcs, weapons, etc. when they used to live there.
It might actually have taken some kind of Doublethink to deal with that on a day-to-day basis.
OMG! Before my thesis ate my life last year, I was planning a Silmarillion/1984 crossover. You just made me remember it. :D
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Date: 2017-03-03 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-03 04:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-03 08:50 pm (UTC)"They take recognizable human experiences or components of our familiar world and use them to bear us unwittingly across the chasm to an unfamiliar world or existence."
I love this; it's a great description of what a great author is able to do.
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Date: 2017-03-06 09:02 pm (UTC)I think working in a world that isn't idyllic is definitely more interesting
Me too. I can't write tra-la-la-lally Elves, even if I wanted to try. They are intense and very human! That's the only way their interesting to me; I ultimately write to understand people better, so people that don't act human have very little appeal.
And I like the idea that writers who came to Tolkien through the films and with experience in other fandoms may have added a unique perspective into the mix of Tolkien fanfiction.
I have major Theories-with-a-capital-T about this! :D Two years ago, I ran a survey about Tolkien fan fiction with hopes of understanding our fandom and its history better. Moving this past year and starting a new job has put most of my research on hold. This post, based on a presentation that
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Date: 2017-03-09 12:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-04 06:45 pm (UTC)One of the ways in which Tolkien was genius, IMO, is his ability to put forth not only an idea but also the opposite to that idea. Despite being religious and chaste (at least I think he was without knowing the man) he was able to show the other side of that as well in some of his characters, i.e. Morgoth, Sauron and their ability to create monsters.
On re-reading the Silm I could see that Aman was not perfect - that you mentioned Ungoliant (and Melkor) is affirming to me because I thought the same thing - that a place which harbored Ungoliant could simply not be ideal, and the fact that Melkor destroyed a lot of it confirmed that!
But then I read that Varda created a special place for the Valar alone called Valmar (was it high upon the mountain Taniquetil?) which seems pretty perfect. So I got the idea that within Aman itself (which was not perfect) the Valar had created a perfect place for themselves. Of course they are pretty much at the top of the hierarchy and elves are not as 'perfect' as these gods are.
That's what I loved about AMC and thought you had interpreted the part of the Silm that deals with the most flawed of the elves - the Noldor - in a most realistic way, because in a way they were forerunners of humans today. Some elves married 'human' men and women and because that was completely natural there is the proof for me that they were of the same species.
I like your arguments about the elves having weapons. I agree that they probably would have because of their technology and the need for them, thanks to Melkor. They weren't stupid people but it would have been pretty stupid to sit and watch Melkor build armies and demons, etc. and not do anything to fight against him.
Anyway, great essay, Dawn! Very provocative. There are many talking points but I can't cover them all in one comment - LOL
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Date: 2017-03-06 09:18 pm (UTC)the Valar had created a perfect place for themselves.
OMG I have ThoughtsTM on this! There is increasing consolidation/hoarding of light: Tolkien suggests (and early Silm drafts make explicit) that Light-with-a-capital-L originally flowed freely on the air, as a gift from Eru (not a subcreation of the Ainur). Then they made the Lamps, which illuminated the world. Then they made the Trees, which were not only more geographically limited (perhaps by necessity of the wasted Light from the Lamps) but then raised the Pelori to block what might have reached outside of Aman from ever having a chance, leaving Middle-earth in darkness, with Melkor still on the loose. It is hard to justify that, but it's a theme we see elsewhere: the consolidation of Light into the Silmarils (thus making them an object that can be kept, hoarded, stolen) and the various isolationist Elven communities, often built with Valinor as a model, that removed themselves from the struggle against Melkor in the First Age, essentially allowing other, less privileged people take that burden onto themselves. Someone wiser than me in political history/philosophy from the early 20th century can perhaps shed light (Light? ha!) on where Tolkien was going with this in the context of what was going on in the world at the time, but from my own perspective, it has always seemed to be a rather cutting commentary on how abundance and fear of an outside threat leads to greed and self-interest.
it would have been pretty stupid to sit and watch Melkor build armies and demons, etc. and not do anything to fight against him.
Yes, exactly! Tolkien's comments on the issue aside, I've always thought that the argument against the Elves having weapons is a harder one to make the argument in favor (including swords).
Thanks for reading and commenting, Jenni! Hot!AMC!Nelyo is for you. ;)
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Date: 2017-03-07 12:29 am (UTC)Tbh, though, I don't really think Tolkien saw some isolation as a bad thing anymore than he saw alliances as a bad thing - by which I mean, I think he saw sudden alliances and isolation without proper planning as a bad thing. Certainly, not every alliance in the books met a good end or went well. Which makes sense in the context of Britain having been burned by both during his lifetime.
Edit after thinking about it overnight: There was also the isolation of the US after WWI/prior to WWII. I'm definitely not an expert in how the US was covered in Britain at the time, but it's hard for me to imagine that it wouldn't have at least made the papers that the US Congress refused to support Wilson's League of Nations and later that the refused to become involved in WWII (officially) until after Pearl Harbor - after all, Britain was already requesting aid a few years prior to that, causing FDR to push through ways for him to sell/give weapons to Britain, but he wasn't able to get officially involved because of "America First" activists like Lindbergh (hey look, another slogan that didn't work out historically but for some reason is right back today).
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Date: 2017-03-07 12:21 pm (UTC)It's hard to say exactly what he was thinking of at the time because a lot of what was going on during WWII was not discovered until it was over. Perhaps it stemmed from the Great Depression of 1929? Maybe the plight of the miners in England from the 19th century onwards? (Of course it did not come to a head until the 1980's when Tolkien was no longer with us.) :(
And did he mean actual light? Or is it a metaphor for something else, i.e. evaporation of wealth with resultant accumulation of treasures (art, gold) by those greedy bastards at the top of the food chain?
To segue, it scares me now that Trump wants to resuscitate coal mining! Does he not know or care about the problems it causes???
However, Tolkien's obsession (if it's fair to say that) or preoccupation with light, the losing and finding of it, is one of hundreds of subjects in his works that is fascinating and worthy of lengthy discussion, isn't it?
And yes, of course the Elves would have made weapons! They had the means and the wherewithal so it makes no sense that they wouldn't have put that expertise to work! (And I also think it was inevitable that there would have been war at some point no matter what the cause.)
I love all your Meta pieces! More, please!
Thanks for reading and commenting, Jenni! Hot!AMC!Nelyo is for you. ;)
I am trying to do more - B2MEM always provides such good inspiration. :)
Hot!AMC!Nelyo is for you.
You do not know how honored I am by that. ;P ♥
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Date: 2017-03-11 11:16 pm (UTC)Everything else on top of that is just fluff to me. It's fun to read about weird genitals or extreme talents or other 'alien' things but the more a story focuses on those things, for me, the more it loses what I most love.
As a side note, you were talking about how to read The Silmarillion in the comments, and comparing it to The Odyssey: I actually first read The Odyssey at the age of six, I went to a private Christian school and so have read and reread more of the Bible than most people I know who claim to be Christians, and so I wonder if perhaps I was simply primed to be able to read the Silm, and not just the Silm, but also all the Histories of Middle-earth? (I think I was about fourteen when I first read the Silm, having read LOTR at about thirteen and essentially devouring it whole as soon as I could get my hands on the books -- ironically I read TTT before FOTR, which worked out fine.)
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Date: 2017-03-15 04:49 pm (UTC)