random but here is a recipe for cold peanut noodles that you can make during hot weather because i just ate this and had a fantastic time
2tbsp of peanut butter. a splash of rice vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, maple syrup. some chili flakes, some sesame seeds. a splash of water to thin it out. now you put in your noodles (cooled!!!! boiled and rinsed so they’re cold!!) and then some chopped up cucumber or carrot or avocado or cabbage or any crunchy vegetable. i just used cucumber
you can also put in lime juice or herbs or sriracha or grated garlic/ginger or anything like that; tofu/tempe/meat for more protein etc. noodle wise this can be ramen soba udon whatever, i used soba. enjoy homies
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““The best thing for being sad,“ replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.””
@glorfindelweek Day 6: Reawakening | Relationship with the Ainur | Returning to Middle-earth
I have been meaning to write a meta piece around Glorfindel, focusing on his nature and why it was that he was the one chosen to return to Middle-earth as emissary of the Valar. Part of this is also to help explain the kind of characterisation I go for when I write him in fanfiction, and so it was also to help lay down my character notes for him. Again, thanks to Glorfindel Week, I finally got to it. ☺️
Over the years, I often see the question around why Glorfindel—specifically and seemingly uniquely—was chosen to return to Middle-earth, and not other characters of equal or even greater valour.
What we can conclude is simple: the Valar did not look for the strongest warrior. They looked for something else, and here, I put together relevant parts of the lore to show the kind of person they ultimately chose.
A capable warrior
The Valar not choosing the strongest warrior does not mean they did not need someone capable. In the end, the job they tasked Glorfindel with was to aid Middle-earth in its battle against Sauron, and ultimately the legacy Morgoth left behind. This could not have been done by anyone who couldn’t hold their own against the forces of the enemy.
Glorfindel was one of Turgon’s most trusted, rivaled only by Ecthelion, who I would argue was in fact the greatest warrior among the lords of Gondolin, just by mentioned achievements alone. When Aredhel wanted to leave Gondolin, in early versions of the story, Turgon entrusted her to three captains: Ecthelion, Egalmoth, and Glorfindel. And when Gondolin came to aid in what later would be known as the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, Turgon was flanked by two captains: once again, Ecthelion and Glorfindel.
There are many reasons why a king would favour certain lords or knights, but in the case of these captains, it does seem as if skill plays a factor. During the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, for example, it was said:
Then Turgon took the counsel of Húrin and Huor, and summoning all that remained of the host of Gondolin and such of Fingon’s people as could be gathered he retreated towards the Pass of Sirion; and his captains Ecthelion and Glorfindel guarded the flanks to right and left, so that none of the enemy should pass them by. (The Silmarillion)
“None of the enemy should pass them by” speaks of the prowess of these two captains, and how skilled they were in the face of the forces of the enemy. Remember that by this point, they were already overwhelmed and losing; they were seeking to flee. Turgon had just become the High King of the Ñoldor, and so instantly had a target on his back. It was crucial he be brought to safety.
Further, in texts describing Glorfindel and the House of the Golden Flower, it is also mentioned that Glorfindel’s house made up a great number of warriors. Their prowess can also be gleaned from the fact that during the attack on Gondolin:
Glorfindel and his men guarded the Great Market, which was a prominent place in the city and would have been one of the larger common areas. Here, they were overwhelmed and Glorfindel called urgently for aid, but they were betrayed by Salgant so that help came very late. Despite this, they were able to salvage their numbers enough to rejoin Tuor and the others later on, strengthening their odds during the escape from the city. Glorfindel himself, with Tuor, cleared the square that let all their men withdraw from battle, and allowed people to escape the burning city.
Despite their losses in the Great Market, during the march through Cristhorn, the House of the Golden Flower remained among the great houses “the largest band of men battle-whole”, and so took up the rearmost end of the refugees, and protected them from the enemies pursuing them.
So Glorfindel himself is the lord of a great house of warriors. We also know from all the battles where he was mentioned, including his most famous one with the Balrog, that he himself is a strong warrior even before he was reincarnated in Aman.
Glorfindel as someone noble, humble, gentle and beloved
We have established that Glorfindel is a capable warrior, but there are many capable warriors throughout the history of Middle-earth. The Silmarillion, in fact, is an entire book of strong Elves. So why single him out?
What is best established about Glorfindel is how he is well beloved. Proof of this is scattered in the text:
[The Balrog] shrieked, and fell backward from the rock, and falling clutched Glorfindel’s yellow locks beneath his cap, and those twain fell into the abyss. Now this was a very grievous thing, for Glorfindel was most dearly beloved – and lo! the dint of their fall echoed about the hills, and the abyss of Thorn Sir rang. (The Fall of Gondolin)
Because of their love, despite the haste and their fear of the advent of new foes, Tuor let raise a great stone-cairn over Glorfindel just there beyond the perilous way by the precipice of Eagle-stream and Thorondor has let not yet any harm come thereto, but yellow flowers have fared thither and blow ever now about that mound in those unkindly places; but the folk of the Golden Flower wept at its building and might not dry their tears. (The Fall of Gondolin)
Not only was Glorfindel deeply mourned by his own house, who knew him best, but the entire people of Gondolin loved him and mourned him. He was even mourned up until the refugees reached the Vale of Sirion, already many miles away from Gondolin:
There they rested a while, and were healed of their hurts and weariness; but their sorrow could not be healed. And they made a feast in memory of Gondolin and of the Elves that had perished there, the maidens, and the wives, and the warriors of the King; and for Glorfindel the beloved many were the songs they sang, under the willows of Nan-tathren in the waning of the year. (The Silmarillion)
The mourning of Glorfindel is singled out from all the losses they incurred in Gondolin. One can argue that this can be because his battle and death was one that had many witnesses, and what saved them on that last stretch, as opposed to the other lords, but the text repeatedly qualifies Glorfindel as beloved even before these deeds. Such things can speak for the kind of person he was while still alive.
Another striking thing when it comes to the texts around Glorfindel is that his deeds in battle are always described matter of fact; these are things he does, but these are not what define him. Instead, it is in lines that describe how he is beloved, how he is mourned, the things he himself regrets and what he chooses to protect that are what define his character.
The Peoples of Middle-earth is the most definitive text that describes the nature of Glorfindel. Here, it is said:
Now Glorfindel of Gondolin was one of the exiled Ñoldor, rebels against the authority of Manwë, and they were all under a ban imposed by him: they could not return in bodily form to the Blessed Realm. Manwë, however, was not bound by his own ordinances, and being still the supreme ruler of the Kingdom of Arda could set them aside, when he saw fit. From what is said of Glorfindel in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings it is evident that he was an Elda of high and noble spirit: and it can be assumed that, though he left Valinor in the host of Turgon, and so incurred the ban, he did so reluctantly because of kinship with Turgon and allegiance to him, and had no part in the kinslaying of Alqualondë. (The Peoples of Middle-earth)
Kinslaying is the gravest of sins committed by the Ñoldor in Middle-earth, and which also most goes against their case in returning to Valinor. Tolkien, therefore, was particular about who among his characters did not take part in the kinslaying. Galadriel was one, and many from the host of Finarfin. Among the host of Fingolfin, only Glorfindel was mentioned to have not taken part in the kinslaying. Given Glorfindel’s closeness to Turgon and his loyalty to him, and knowing that Turgon did certainly participate in the kinslaying and was "one of the most determined and unrepentant supporters of Fëanor’s rebellion" (The Peoples of Middle-earth), that Glorfindel stayed his hand, perhaps even likely tried to stop them, was no easy feat.
Glorfindel had sacrificed his life in defending the fugitives from the wreck of Gondolin against a Demon out of Thangorodrim, and so enabling Tuor and Idril daughter of Turgon and their child Eärendil to escape, and seek refuge at the Mouths of Sirion. Though he cannot have known the importance of this (and would have defended them even had they been fugitives of any rank), this deed was of vital importance to the designs of the Valar. (The Peoples of Middle-earth)
I very much appreciate the line “and would have defended them even had they been fugitives of any rank”. We don’t often get lines like this in the text, and putting it there is a deliberate choice by Tolkien to drive home the kind of person Glorfindel is. Glorfindel is a lord of Gondolin, “an Elf-lord of a house of princes”, as Gandalf would later describe him, but he does not look at such things and would put his life on the line for anyone of any standing.
He even proves this still later on, two ages later, when Frodo and company meet him on the road. Fellowship of the Ring actually has some of my favourite quotes around Glorfindel; there is a reason why he became my favourite character very early on, even without having yet read The Silmarillion and the other histories at the time.
This part, hands down, is my favourite, and it came from Glorfindel himself when he was describing events of the past days before he found Frodo and the others:
‘They said that the Nine were abroad, and that you were astray bearing a great burden without guidance... There are few even in Rivendell that can ride openly against the Nine; but such as there were, Elrond sent out north, west, and south… It was my lot to take the Road, and I came to the Bridge of Mitheithel, and left a token there, nigh on seven days ago. Three of the servants of Sauron were upon the Bridge, but they withdrew and I pursued them westward. I came also upon two others, but they turned away southward. Since then I have searched for your trail.' (The Fellowship of the Ring)
Glorfindel said it so simply, but actually on hindsight, especially after learning everything that we know of the context of this world and its histories, there is so much to unpack! Let’s go through them one by one:
“There are few even in Rivendell that can ride openly against the Nine…” – The reason for this, as Gandalf later explains, is because the only ones who can ride openly against the Nazgûl would have only been Elves from Valinor, who “live at once in both worlds, and against both the Seen and Unseen they have great power”. We know there are very few of them remaining in Middle-earth by the Third Age, and even among these, likely they can only send warriors. This early, we get a clue that Frodo and company have met someone extraordinary.
“It was my lot to take the Road…” – By “Road”, Glorfindel meant the East Road, the great and ancient road that cuts across Eriador, from Rivendell to the Grey Havens. This would have been the most perilous of the roads because it would have been the most obvious path away from the Shire, and so would have been most guarded by the Enemy. Again, once one knows his history and achievements, it is no surprise that Glorfindel was assigned this road. But Glorfindel himself only says it in passing—as if taking the most perilous road is just a walk in the park and only to be expected.
“Three of the servants of Sauron were upon the Bridge, but they withdrew and I pursued them westward. I came also upon two others, but they turned away southward.” – Here already is the proof of what I said above: just by taking the East Road, Glorfindel encountered five of the Nazgûl. But here’s the funny thing: the enemy was running from him! Here was the terrible evil Frodo and his friends were afraid of and running from, but they turn away from Glorfindel. Glorfindel “pursued” them, and they escaped him; when he encountered more, they “turned southward”.
The Nazgûl have long had a history of trying to avoid Glorfindel. The Witch-king himself flees from him, as we have seen in the Battle of Fornost, where the Witch-king showed he was unafraid of Men, and even laughed at and mocked Prince Eärnur, but ran away when Glorfindel arrived. But you barely catch these things when Glorfindel describes them. He simply encounters them on the road like it’s nothing. This is once again one of those times when the text downplays Glorfindel’s prowess as a warrior—because again, this is not what is most striking about him. Instead, we get more of these:
‘My master is sick and wounded,’ said Sam angrily. ‘He can’t go on riding after nightfall. He needs rest.’
Glorfindel caught Frodo as he sank to the ground, and taking him gently in his arms he looked in his face with grave anxiety. [...] He searched the wound on Frodo’s shoulder with his fingers, and his face grew graver, as if what he learned disquieted him. But Frodo felt the chill lessen in his side and arm; a little warmth crept down from his shoulder to his hand, and the pain grew easier… (The Fellowship of the Ring)
From the beginning, Glorfindel was friendly and kind to the Hobbits and established himself as a friend to them. He grew concerned hearing about their story and showed visible anxiety over their plight. At the same time, his presence was a comfort to them, no doubt also influenced by Strider’s obvious relief that Glorfindel was now with them, but I daresay Glorfindel himself just naturally brings this feeling along with him wherever he goes, explaining why he is beloved wherever time he lands.
‘You shall ride my horse,’ said Glorfindel. ‘I will shorten the stirrups up to the saddle-skirts, and you must sit as tight as you can. But you need not fear: my horse will not let any rider fall that I command him to bear. His pace is light and smooth; and if danger presses too near, he will bear you away with a speed that even the black steeds of the enemy cannot rival.’ (The Fellowship of the Ring)
Even in the face of danger, Glorfindel is kind and thoughtful. He not only offers Frodo his horse, but he thinks about what a Hobbit would need to be comfortable on said horse. He also has thought about what worries Frodo might have, what he would be afraid of, and sought to allay them even before Frodo spoke about them.
An emissary of the Valar
One important thing in answering the question of “Why Glorfindel?” is to go back to the task at hand. What the Valar looked for was an emissary for them, someone who represented them and brought with them their good intentions.
Manwë, for all his faults and his inability to understand the nature of evil, and so actually was very poor adversary for it, still sought to help Middle-earth when he could. Glorfindel, in fact, was returned as an answer to prayers, from the very people of Middle-earth themselves:
[Glorfindel’s] return must have been for the purpose of strengthening Gil-galad and Elrond, when the growing evil of the intentions of Sauron were at last perceived by them… In 1600 it became clear to all the leaders of Elves and Men (and Dwarves) that war was inevitable against Sauron, now unmasked as a new Dark Lord. They therefore began to prepare for his assault; and no doubt urgent messages and prayers asking for help were received in Númenor (and in Valinor). (The Peoples of Middle-earth)
Prior to his return in 1600 S.A., Glorfindel has already been living in Valinor for many years, from near the end of the First Age (shortly after his death) and well into the Second Age. Within that time, he has grown to be an even better version of his old self, learning from the Ainur, and growing in strength and wisdom:
For long years [Glorfindel] remained in Valinor, in reunion with the Eldar who had not rebelled, and in the companionship of the Maiar. To these he had now become almost an equal, for though he was an incarnate (to whom a bodily form not made or chosen by himself was necessary) his spiritual power had been greatly enhanced by his self-sacrifice. At some time, probably early in his sojourn in Valinor, he became a follower, and a friend, of Olórin (Gandalf), who as is said in The Silmarillion had an especial love and concern for the Children of Eru. (The Peoples of Middle-earth)
This connection with Olórin is also a critical aspect of the case we’re making about Glorfindel here. Olórin is one the Ainur most sympathetic to the Children of Eru, and was even said to have learned mercy and patience from Nienna herself. Glorfindel already started out as somebody who would protect people. It is therefore not surprising that he would gravitate towards those who have similar sympathies. Likely, he was already known to Manwë before his being chosen as emissary.
One indulgent concept I often think about is how, given all of these, one can even argue for Glorfindel being in the same category as the Istari. The Istari, as we know, were Maiar who were tasked to come to Middle-earth’s aid. Glorfindel returned to Middle-earth around the same time that Morinehtar and Rómestámo came; they would have been the first wave, after which Gandalf, Saruman, and Radagast followed in the Third Age. Glorfindel was already compared to the Maiar in terms of strength; the only difference they have at this point is Glorfindel’s nature as someone incarnate. The timing also works, the similarities in mission striking. Likely, Glorfindel was returned within the same context that the Istari were formed in the first place.
Could anyone else have returned?
As far as the text is concerned, it is very likely that Glorfindel is the only Elf to have returned to Middle-earth. The circumstances surrounding his return is extraordinary. Tolkien was also seen to have considered others who shared the same names with people in the First Age (e.g., Galdor, Legolas), but these were scrapped and only Glorfindel remains. In fact, out of all the exiled Elves who fell in Middle-earth, only Glorfindel and Finrod are specifically mentioned to have been brought out of Mandos and reimbodied and returned to Valinor.
Certainly there is room for others in fanon. I am fond of ideas where other lords of Gondolin also return at the very least in Valinor, but this likely happened much later, well after the First Age. It was written:
Glorfindel remained in the Blessed Realm, no doubt at first by his own choice: Gondolin was destroyed, and all his kin had perished, and were still in the Halls of Waiting unapproachable by the living. But his long sojourn during the last years of the First Age, and at least far into the Second Age, no doubt was also in accord with the wishes and designs of Manwë. (The Peoples of Middle-earth)
“Kin” or "kindred" here can be understood to be the people of Gondolin, primarily. Glorfindel reads as somebody who identifies with people with whom he belongs; “kindred” therefore would have been “his people”, such as a clan or a large group. In fact, he used the same word in The Fellowship of the Ring, this time to refer to the people of Gildor whom Frodo met on the road, since Glorfindel’s people now are, of course, those Elves from Rivendell:
‘Elrond received news that troubled him. Some of my kindred, journeying in your land beyond the Baranduin, learned that things were amiss, and sent messages as swiftly as they could.’ (The Fellowship of the Ring)
None of the people of Gondolin were reimbodied, at least not as early as Glorfindel. Glorfindel is someone truly extraordinary. While it is true that this grand story of him was a product of Tolkien using his name twice in two important stories, I love that he elected to have them be the same person, and weave a story as to how this can be. We therefore now have a Glorfindel who is larger than life, but most importantly, someone immensely good and kind and enduring, someone who feels keenly his place in the world, and his nature, before his death but especially after it, is naturally inclined to service.
Even after so many years in Middle-earth, the way he associated with Frodo and company still shows someone who is deeply concerned with the worries of the world and its people, who is pushed to haste when someone is in danger, and this vitality he brings with him even at the end of the Age of Elves.
So, even with all the great warriors in The Silmarillion and in the First Age, looked at it in this view, on the question of “Why Glorfindel?”, the choice actually was not that difficult. The Valar chose the warrior whose history, innate nature and sympathies made him the one most likely to protect all the free peoples of Middle-earth, and to put this task consistently above himself.
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My favorite headcannon I have going for LOTR right now is that the elves that are still around by the time Frodo gets on the scene are the elvish equivalent of doomsday preppers.
I forget where I read it, but I'm pretty sure that at some point there were millions of elves on Middle-earth, and by the end of the third age, it's down to a few thousand, aka a very small portion. These are the elves that got told way back in the first age, "Hey, just so you guys know, you're totally welcome to come back and live in heaven now without any worries" and responded, "No thanks, we're good!" and then proceeded to not only hold to that but survived the next 7.000 years of bullshit including but not limited to:
Multiple continents sinking into the sea
orcs
dragons
balrogs
multiple wars with Sauron, a literal divine being
The rise and fall of several human empires
more orcs
wargs
a bunch of their territory being overtaken and burned to the ground
And all of their loved ones either dying or sailing, even though we know that grief can and will kill an elf
Like, you can't tell me that third age elves start showing up in the undying lands, where everyone has spent the last few thousand years basking in the magical equivilant of free therapy and probably have as many defence measures as a suburban coldesac, and aren't viewed as the most feral, twitchy, paranoid mother fuckers; held together by suspicion, stubornness, and at least 25 contingencies for every situation they've collectively encountered during their time in Middle-earth.
My favorite examples of feral, hyper-vigilant behavior include:
Elrond: Security clearance; sure, Turgon may have threatened to kill anyone who tried to leave his hidden city, but he also took an entire army out of and back to the city at once, and then also didn't realize that his own nephew snitched on where the city was. His security protocols sucked. Meanwhile, Elrond had hundreds of strangers coming in and out of Rivendell for over 3,000 years, at one point completely surrounded by enemies and full of nothing but a bunch of refugees, and Sauron still never found it. You can't tell me that he didn't have at least 25 security checkpoints on the way into his city(sorry, house-that means it's private property, right?), even if you didn't know they were there.
Galadriel: Paranoia; This woman was magically keeping track of everyone she knew and even did it often enought that she knew what to look for of those she couldn't directly track (gandalf) and looking into their minds and testing them. All while having Sauron constantly clawing at the walls of her mind, at least for a few years
Thranduil: Spite; it was basically only his sheer audacity holding his nuclear bunker- cough cough- sorry, I meant vast underground halls together, while his next-door neighbor was some cursed ruins, a dragon-infested dwarf kingdom, and evil, man-eating, car-sized spiders on his front lawn.
Haldir: he blindfolded the fellowship when they tried to enter his city (super secret hideout), need I say more?
Multiple examples of groups of elves jumping out of trees fully armed and ambushing anyone who wanders into their territory. And while the characters seem surprised to be ambushed, they don't seem surprised that elves ambush people in general, leading me to believe this is normal behavior.
In summary, while the elves in the LOTR and the Hobbit seem all chill and fun, I like to imagine them as the crazy raccoons of the elvish family trees that wandered in 5 hours late.
How Tolkien Presents Ordinary People in "The Silmarillion"
This essay was written for the Silmarillion Writers' Guild challenge Everyman. It was also posted on the SWG, Tolkien by the Numbers (Substack), and my website. I welcome comments in all locations!
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"... without the simple and ordinary the noble and heroic is meaningless."
~ Letter 131 to Milton Waldman
J.R.R. Tolkien described the arc of his three great tales—The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and finally The Lord of the Rings (LotR)—as descending from the high mythic mode to a more vulgar, earthly narrative. This occurred not just through plot but was a key theme of The Lord of the Rings as well: no less than the ability of the humble and powerless to change the world. It was not princes with their lengthy lineages and storied weapons who would overthrow Sauron but two Hobbits, one of the working class. In the same letter to Waldman, Tolkien described this theme as follows:
But as the earliest Tales are seen through Elvish eyes, as it were, this last great Tale, coming down from myth and legend to the earth, is seen mainly through the eyes of Hobbits: it thus becomes in fact anthropocentric. But through Hobbits, not Men so-called, because the last Tale is to exemplify most clearly a recurrent theme: the place in ‘world politics’ of the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts of will, and deeds of virtue of the apparently small, ungreat, forgotten in the places of the Wise and Great (good as well as evil).
But, as Tolkien himself states, if LotR depicts "the ennoblement … of the humble," then The Silmarillion is the opposite (Letter 181 to Michael Straight).
The Silmarillion Writers' Guild's Everyman challenge sought to elevate ordinary people, who are often obscured in the text. As the moderator who developed the prompt list for that challenge, I reread The Silmarillion, looking for the "small, ungreat, and forgotten" amid the bold speechification and sweeping swords of Tolkien's pre-Ring War heroes. (Perhaps the high mortality rate of those heroes—even the immortal ones—hint at the later ascendency of those whom we would assume are easily quashed.) The prompt collection didn't include every mention—and one particular quandary arose again and again that I will discuss below—but it included a lot and meant that, in the space of a few days, my brain was peppered with all of the different ways that "everyman" characters move, barely seen, through the text.
All the same, this is a very preliminary analysis of the topic. When I study "instances of x in The Silmarillion" for a more finished presentation or publication, I read one or two chapters per day, closely and carefully. In compiling the challenge prompts, I breezed through the entire book in a few days, skipping sections where I knew the story didn't even allude to the lowly. This essay is based on my work on the challenge, using the prompt collection I generated as the raw materials for my conclusions, so there are going to be gaps and omissions that a closer read will find.
Textual Ghosts, Revisited
Dwimordene's 2008 term "textual ghost"—actualized by Elleth into the Textual Ghosts Project—has become a well-known term in the Silmarillion fandom. It refers to "the women who litter the Tolkien histories as textual ghosts, artifacts deduced by the presence of offspring or perhaps a name." Elleth notes that "the lives and presences of the 'common people' are not often recorded or explored in detail," accounting for a lack of women outside of the noble ranks, an observation I recently corroborated in a paper currently in-press, which found that women permitted to speak in The Silmarillion are not only generally noble but divine.
The same concept underlying textual ghosts can be applied to common folk in The Silmarillion. There are many points in the text where people must have existed but go unnamed at best, left entirely to inference, or as I will discuss below in the "Taking Credit" section, their labor and skill subsumed by the whim of a named noble.
The word servant(s) is used sixty times in the pages of The Silmarillion. Only once is it used singularly to refer to a specific person (the "old servant" who tells Túrin that Morwen has fled), and only once does it refer to a named person (Sauron relative to Melkor). Aredhel once refers to herself not as a servant of her brother Turgon. Servant is a fitting example because it implies a hierarchy, but ordinary folk populate the text, gathered within nouns that can evade our notice:
130 times: host(s)
60 times: servant(s)
45 times: folk
40 times: messenger(s)
26 times: company/companies
24 times: mariner(s)
22 times: spy/spies
14 times: smith(s)
2 times: masons
1 time: workers
Nor are these unnamed folks always ordinary. In some cases, they are people who play pivotal roles in the history before the Ring War and likely should be named in a historical text: the messengers who delivered word of Finwë's death; the companions of Finrod and Beren, eaten alive by wolves; the mariners from Gondolin who perished, sent by their king to reach Valinor.
In fact, as I was collecting quotes to use as prompts for the Everyman challenge, I encountered a conundrum on multiple occasions that led, in part, to me wanting to write about this topic. I have probably read The Silmarillion two hundred times by now: not two hundred deep, immersive readings-for-enjoyment but gone through the text that many times for various research purposes. Point being, I know the book well, and when I started collecting prompts for the challenge, I knew places where "everymen" would be located and anticipated adding those whom I thought might provide particularly interesting perspectives.
Except that I found that, when I reached of those passages, the common people were often so ancillary to a named, noble character that the sentence or passage became hard to justify as a prompt because it seemed that the prompt was inviting fanworks about the named character. While we don't "check work" on the SWG challenges and keep things loose and would not have disbarred such a work, it still felt like it didn't set creators up for success—or did set them up for confusion.
Take this sentence, which was one that I was eager to include—until I read it, that is: "Maedhros was ambushed, and all his company were slain; but he himself was taken alive by the command of Morgoth, and brought to Angband" ("Of the Return of the Noldor"). "All his company," who did not return home to their loved ones that night, are buried in a sentence that is about Maedhros. Syntactically, they are rendered as an aside. Even the ambush is directed toward Maedhros alone, even though everyone present bore the brunt of it.
Taking Credit
Along similar lines is a common structure in The Silmarillion, where a named, noble character "causes" something to be built that in fact would have required the skill and labor of hundreds if not thousands of engineers, craftspeople, and laborers (and probably resulted in the injury and death of at least some of them). Yet credit for the achievement is located entirely upon the noble character whose primary contribution seems to have been thinking a thought and then giving an order. An example:
But Sauron caused to be built upon the hill in the midst of the city of the Númenóreans, Armenelos the Golden, a mighty temple; and it was in the form of a circle at the base, and there the walls were fifty feet in thickness, and the width of the base was five hundred feet across the centre, and the walls rose from the ground five hundred feet, and they were crowned with a mighty dome. (Akallabêth)
This passage is particularly apt because it negates the possible counterargument that those dozens/hundreds/thousands of workers would take up too many words, given the lush description of Armenolos that follow. The gold appointments matter more than the minds and hands that devised them.
And lest one claim that we should expect nothing less of Sauron, who of course doesn't see his workers as contributors to his glory, even saintly Finrod Felagund is credited similarly: "And after three days’ journeying they came to Amon Ethir, the Hill of Spies, that long ago Felagund had caused to be raised with great labour, a league before the doors of Nargothrond" ("Of Túrin Turambar"). Thingol, Turgon, and the kings of Gondor also claim credit for, respectively, the house of Lúthien, the sealing of Gondolin, and Minas Anor using the "caused to" construction.
Subject-Object
Common people in The Silmarillion are frequently identified in the genitive case: the watchers of Morgoth, the people of Celegorm, the mariners of Círdan (among many, many others). Like the word servant, this construction emphasizes a hierarchy where a single person is permitted at the top, with a vast, unnamed rabble of subjects underneath.
In other instances, the unnamed people belonging to a leader are discussed using language that portrays them as … well, belongings or objects that can be used and manipulated as needed. "[Thingol] gave [Finrod] guides to lead him to that place of which few yet knew," we are told, as Finrod seeks to establish his own Menegrothesque realm ("Of the Return of the Noldor"). In the Akallabêth, "[Amandil] took with him three servants, dear to his heart, and never again were they heard of by word or sign in this world, nor is there any tale or guess of their fate."
It is possible that the people in these passages being "given" and "taken" had some choice as to their fates, but the use of verbs that serve equally well when describing the handling of objects reinforces the power differential between he who uproots and the one who is uprooted.
A Murmuration of Servants
In my presentation for Oxonmoot 2024, Death, Grief, and the Other in the Quenta Silmarillion, I noticed a tendency in The Silmarillion for Orcs to be described as moving in herd-like, driven masses:
In scenes involving Orcs or other enemies, they are often driven to their deaths, again evoking a brutish mob incapable of individual action or resistance. This also positions the driver as superior to the driven: a person effortlessly shepherding a horde of the enemy unto death. Note also that these scenes often involve the enemy being driven into an environment that is hostile to life, such as a desert or a river. This negates even the drama of battle, implied in other scenes where characters aligned with the forces of good are driven forth from their homes, and simply sends these Orcs en masse, in a terrified clamor before a superior foe, to be quietly gulped up by the landscape.
Everyday people in groups in The Silmarillion aren't as blatantly dehumanized—nor would we expect them to be—but they do have a singularness, a herd-like aspect, moving in concert with each other like birds in murmuration. Decisions seem to be arrived at unanimously and without dispute. The verb debate is used only once where it might imply disagreement among a group of ordinary people: "Therefore Fëanor halted and the Noldor debated what course they should now take" ("Of the Flight of the Noldor"). Debate and argu* are otherwise used only for disagreements among named characters; discuss does not occur in the text at all.
Perhaps no passage illustrates this better than the scene where the people of Nargothrond banish Celegorm and Curufin: "Therefore the hearts of the people of Nargothrond were released from their dominion, and turned again to the house of Finarfin; and they obeyed Orodreth" ("Of Beren and Luthien"). As one, they were swayed by the brothers to abandon their king. Now, like a wheeling flock of starlings, they are "released" en masse and "turned again" to their previous overlords. There is a lot of motion in this sentence, which does indeed wheel and flow like a murmuration; there is no (in the entire arc of this episode) discussion or debate among these people who seemingly move as a single entity.
Views contrary to those of the named authority are represented in the text almost always as murmurs or whispers. The words cried out never refer to groups of characters, and the words protest, outcr*, and complain do not appear. Again, we have a monolithic group of people who muster, at most, a murmur or whisper conveying forbidden information that rarely ends to their glory. These murmurs and whispers, we understand, show the folly of the common person compared to the wise authority. It hints at their power—these murmurs and whispers have the power to overthrow the wisest of kings—but that power is understood to be undermining, conniving, and often foolish.
We know that the systems of government in The Silmarillion are authoritarian with varying degrees of benevolence. The actions permitted to ordinary people underscores the deep lack of democratization, not just in governance but in the history of pre-Ring War peoples. Democracy is loud, messy, and contentious. In not allowing the voices of the peoples of Arda to rise above a whisper, the text indicates that they don't have much that's worth saying.
Conclusion
None of this is a critique of Tolkien. I can hear the critics now—who have attacked other "woke" scholars for writing about gender and race and disability and sexuality—using words like "man of his times" and "21st century ideals" and clutching their pearls that I think Tolkien has done something wrong and that I will somehow rewrite the texts to banish his Christian white guy sentiments. (I don't and I won't.)
In reality, I do this work because I think it shows a few important things. First, whenever I do textual analysis and close reading, I am blown away by the subtlety in Tolkien's work: grand ideas communicated at the word level or syntactically. This makes sense given his profession, but it still never ceases to amaze me to watch the layers of meaning emerge. He clearly had the larger arc in mind: a microcosm of the movement of our own history through monarchy and into democracy—the doomed king Fingolfin through to the democratically elected gardener-mayor Samwise Gamgee. Yet that overarching idea, traversing three books, is fractalized, the "immeasurable vastness" of that three-book arc distilled to "more bitter than a needle," to borrow from the Ainulindalë, into single phrases and words.
As a fanworks creator, of course, it is this sense of the missing or unspoken that makes The Silmarillion such a rich text to create transformative works about. This was the entire point of the Everyman challenge: to draw attention to those unnamed characters subsumed in the tales of noble and famed.
Most importantly is the meaning of the whole arc, which as a Silmarillion fan and scholar, I rarely consider in its entirety. The Silmarillion has its nobility and beauty, but it is the Northern aesthetic, the same beauty found in autumn leaves that pour forth their full splendor in order to die. I could speak of our ability to admire such stories—with their glorification of leaders whose only qualification was being born to the right father in the right order—and the fact that most of us barely notice the everymen of The Silmarillion as our own weaknesses, but that misses the point of the full arc. The Silmarillion is so spectacularly disastrous that it is hard to read it as anything but a critique of its underlying system—where full authority is narrowly bestowed—especially when it is held up alongside the story of Samwise Gamgee.
"... help came from the hands of the weak when the Wise faltered."
~ Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age
What do you mean “chat” is now referring to ChatGPT and not twitch chat? What? What? What the fuck? No?
When I address chat I am speaking to a presumed Greek chorus of real human people shitposting on their lunch break, not a machine that devours lakes to covert electricity into slop.
the ‘is eru evil’ debate is boring. The ‘are the valar evil’ debate is also boring. Let them breathe. Let them be nuanced. Let them be the immortal gods with no understanding of human morals that they are more interesting as.
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In the future, children will think our ways are strange. "Why do old people always grow so much milkweed in their gardens?" they'll say. "Why do old people always write down when the first bees and butterflies show up? Why do old people hate lawn grass so much? Why do old people like to sit outside and watch bees?"
We will try to explain to them that when we were young, most people's yards were almost entirely short grass with barely any flowers at all, and it was so commonplace to spray poisons to kill insects and weeds that it was feared monarch butterflies and American bumblebees would soon go extinct. We will show them pictures of sidewalks, shops, and houses surrounded by empty grass without any flowers or vegetables and they will stare at them like we stared at pictures of grimy children working in coal mines
We will be feeding our grandchildren strawberries and raspberries we grew in our gardens, dragging them along to the farmers' markets for tomatoes and eggs and goats milk and pickles and pecans and salsa and sunflower seed butter and jars of honey, as they complain and drag their feet because Gramma always stands around talking to people for like an HOUR
and we will say "When I was YOUR age, fruits and vegetables came from a supermarket and they were bred to get shipped 1000 miles in a truck and sit on shelves for weeks, and they tasted so sour and watery it was like eating paper compared to these ones. It wasn't even legal in some places to grow your own food"
and they will roll their eyes like yeah yeah just because everything was miserable in the 20s doesn't mean I have to have a smile on my face standing in the hot sun while you listen to that one guy talk about his bees FOREVER
But they will go, because there might be baby goats.
Since I made this post, dozens and dozens of people have left tags telling me that it was the first thing today that made them want to continue living, that it was the first thing that made them consider that they might be okay years in the future, that they might grow old, that it was the first and only post of its kind they'd ever seen—the first post that boldly predicts a future where we make it.
And many other people have been just spitting, foaming at the mouth fucking FURIOUS. How dare I have the audacity to imagine a future where things get better?
Don't I know how BAD things are? Am I not aware of the TERROR and DEVASTATION of climate change and fascism and biodiversity loss? How dare someone be so bold, so callous, as to imagine something other than misery and suicide. How dare someone suggest it will get better. How dare a person propose that there is a future where we will be okay, in the face of so much terror. Hasn't she seen the abyss opening its jaws before us?
the idea that there is hope for the future is the only way we have this kind of future.
there were kids who stayed inside because of the black plague and went on to help cure it.
there were women who sat at home and cleaned the house and dreamt up a world where they could vote and have jobs.
there were kids in the mines who thought up a life outside of it.
there were children who hid in annexes and wrote a diary where they prayed for a future without a terrible man in control
there were slaves who wanted freedom so badly and had hope that it would get better
there were gay people who hid in the corners of clubs and fought back for a future where they could walk down the street together
do you know what all of that has in common? they had hope that things would get better and they made that change. they looked at the world in its cruel ways and fought back.
so now, there are kids and teenagers and young adults and new adults who dream of a world so beautiful and the only amazon their grandchildren know is the rainforest
and it is in everything we do that we find this hope. wishing on dandelions, counting the stars, making our own clothes out of crochet or knit or sewing it, watching the sunset, going to the farmer’s market, feeding the birds, planting seeds.
step by step, we dream up, like our ancestors before us, a beautiful world
Hot Take: Loving characters for being kind, compassionate, caring, and good is just as full of nuance and depth as anything else. Loving characters for relentlessly doing their best and celebrating the heroism of those characters is not less realistic than fixating on their flaws to criticize them. Loving characters for being kind people who never waver in their dedication to choosing the best option they see is not a more shallow take. Loving characters for being good is just as valid and profound as anything else.
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