A Dialogue With Tolkien

[elfshadow]

At Voronwë's and Hobby's kind request, I'm posting one of my philosophy papers here. The assignment was to write a 1500-word dialogue between any two or more people based on the Platonic dialogue style. My philosophy class is (or was, I'm finished with it now) solely about the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, with the majority of the class devoted to the dialogues of Plato leading up to The Republic.

This particular paper dealt with Plato's dialogue the Phaedo, which for those who haven't read it deals with the concept of death and the meaning that it holds. Phaedo is set in the final hours of Socrates' life, and it is the last discussion that he has before he dies--although we must keep in mind that it is Plato writing through Socrates, and this dialogue was not the culmination of Plato's dialogues, Socrates' death just happened to be the topic. Plato, through Socrates, discussed the immortality of the soul as a temporal metaphor for the transcendence. He believed that there are two different value systems in the universe, that of the body (the tangible, material, external) and that of the soul (the internal, immaterial, spiritual). The soul, he concluded through Phaedo, is eternal and "lives on" after the body dies. Death, therefore, is the final release of the soul from the constraints of the body--or at least that's a way that you could look at it.

Our task for the paper was to briefly explain our own views of death, which is pretty hard in only 1500 words, I found out. I created the dialogue as a discussion between myself and Tolkien, and I used Tolkien's explanation of death as the "Gift to Men" from The Silmarillion. Keep in mind as you're reading this a couple of things: 1. I am only a college freshman and my writing skills are far less than they could be. 2. Our goal of the paper was to explain our views of death, so I used Tolkien only as a platform for my own beliefs. Therefore, although I tried to represent Tolkien as accurately as I could, I took a lot of leeway with his character because I was trying to ultimately explain my views of death, not his views. 3. As I said before, the paper was only supposed to be 1500 words and there is no way anyone could fully explain their philosophical beliefs in such a short number of words! There were a lot of things that I could have explained better, but I just didn't have room for them.

And without further ado, here it is! (Anna is my name, by the way, since most of you I think don't know that.)

Anna: Last night I had the strangest dream.
Friend: Really? What was it about?
Anna: I’ve been reading a lot of J.R.R. Tolkien lately. You know, the author of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I dreamed that I had a philosophical discussion with Tolkien himself.
Friend: The Lord of the Rings? The fantasy novels? It’s called fantasy for a reason, Anna; it’s not supposed to have anything to do with real life. I don’t see how it could possibly be philosophical.
Anna: I can certainly see how you would look at it that way. I doubt that anyone would consider Tolkien to be a philosopher as Nietzsche or Kierkegaard or Plato were philosophers, but his novels certainly contained philosophy. Let me tell you of the dream.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Anna: I recognize your face. I know I’ve seen it before. Can you tell me your name?
Tolkien: I am Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien who wrote the Lord of the Rings.
Anna: Tolkien! Of course, that’s why I recognized you. But how did you come to be here in front of me? You passed away some thirty years ago!
Tolkien: It’s a funny thing about death, you know. No one truly understands it until they have experienced it for themselves. And, of course, by then it’s nearly too late.
Anna: Nearly? What do you mean by nearly? I would say that it’s certainly too late!
Tolkien: I’m standing here in front of you, aren’t I? Things aren’t always as black and tragic as they appear to be. I suppose you are afraid of death, just as most people your age are.
Anna: Well, I suppose I am. I just don’t see what reason I have not to be afraid of death. I never put any faith into the stories of places like Heaven or Paradise. They always seemed to me to be only that—stories. A way of comforting people in the face of an inescapable end. But I can’t bring myself to believe in them. The only thing I can foresee after death is emptiness. Only void. What hope have I in encountering that? I know what life is. I may not know what it means, but I know what it is. As long as I have life, I have hope. I don’t know death, and I see no hope in death. That’s why I am afraid.
Tolkien: That is a powerful despair. But I believe that death is not as hopeless as you see it. I presume you have read The Silmarillion, the prequel to the Trilogy?
Anna: Of course I have. That’s my favorite of all the books!
Tolkien: I’m glad to hear it. You know the difference between Men and Elves, then?
Anna: Why, their mortality. Men die of age, while Elves do not. Elves only die if their life is taken by another, but Men cannot escape death.
Tolkien: You are right, of course. I can see that you have read The Silmarillion well. You must know, then, why exactly it is that Men die while Elves do not.
Anna: Ilúvatar, the creator of all, gave death to Men. He called it a gift. That was the one thing in the novels that I never understood. How can death be considered a gift? I would much rather be one of the Elves, knowing that I could live forever without fear of an inevitable end.
Tolkien: Let me quote to you one passage from The Silmarillion, the one that I believes demonstrates Ilúvatar’s meaning most clearly.

"And the Doom of Men, that they should depart, was at first a gift of Ilúvatar. It became a grief to them only because coming under the shadow of Morgoth it seemed to them that they were surrounded by a great darkness, of which they were afraid; and some grew willful and proud and would not yield, until life was reft from them." (Tolkien 317)

It seems to me that this darkness is not the certainty of death, but ignorance. Morgoth is the dark antithesis to Ilúvatar, and he represents the unknown and the feared. It is only Morgoth that keeps humans from truly realizing the gift that is death. We are clouded by that which we do not know and do not understand, and the only thing that fills the gap is fear. I believe that we do not need fear to replace the unknown, but rather strong beliefs.
Anna: I see what you mean. I suppose I understand now why I am afraid, and I’m beginning to understand why I shouldn’t be. It just seems as though there must be some meaning connected to death in order that our lives are worth anything at all. What was the meaning of Men in The Silmarillion? Why did Men exist in the first place only to die in the end? I don’t see any purpose to it. The Elves never understood the unavoidable end to the life of Men. Elves didn’t have that boundary, so they could make their own meaning of life. Men are limited, so they must also be limited in the meaning that their lives hold.
Tolkien: Limited, yes. But chained? I don’t believe that Men are chained to their fate. Let me ask you a question, and please answer it as honestly as you can. Do you think that my life was meaningful?
Anna: I don’t know that I would feel right answering otherwise, and not just because you’re standing in front of me. Yes, I believe your life was meaningful.
Tolkien: And could you tell me why you believe that?
Anna: Your work and the world that you created have touched so many people since it was published. It defined an entire genre of writing, and has influenced innumerable writers and novels since. That, to me, is the meaning of your life.
Tolkien: Now that you have described a meaning in one particular life, can you do the same with death?
Anna: Yes, I think I can. I think I’m beginning to understand. You are dead, yet you are still here before me. You mean enough to me to be here. I just described the meaning of your life in terms of the effects that it had on other people, including myself. Clearly there is meaning in your life not only because of what you accomplished, but because of how you are remembered in the lives of others. Maybe that’s what death is for. Men may not be immortal like the Elves were, but individual Men are not forgotten. We live on after death through the lives of anyone who remembers us. In a way, that makes us immortal too—immortal in the sense that dying does not equate to the complete erasure of our existence. Human society can progress because of our remembrance of the past, and death is the ultimate path to remembrance. That’s what Ilúvatar meant when he described death as a gift. It gives Men a constant reminder that we do not have unlimited time to shape how we will be remembered. Death only becomes a curse in the face of fear and ignorance. Even though we do not know for certain what meaning our lives have, or even whether or not life has a literal meaning, the only way we can attempt to discover any meaning is through the work and thought of many, many different people. That discovery can only come through death and the acceptance of one’s own boundaries.
Tolkien: I think you have it. You understand Ilúvatar’s gift. We cannot do anything about death, but we can do something about our lives. Death is the reminder of the potential of our lives, as paradoxical as that may sound. To put it in other terms, it is only through the inevitability of death that we can create value for life. Death is a limit but it is also a freedom.“Thus you escape, and leave the world, and are not bound to it, in hope or in weariness.” (Tolkien 316)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

No time now, but thank you so much for posting that, Elsa!

[Primula Baggins]

I will be back to read this, Elsha! Thanks!

[MithLuin]

And I have read it!

That is well done, Elsha. The temptation is always to put words in people's mouths, but I think you've done a good job of using Tolkien's words as a jumping off point for your own ideas. That is difficult!

(In other words, I don't think he's spinning in his grave )

I do think that dialoguing with a dead person who can say, "I'm here, aren't I?" puts a very unique spin on things! You've focused in on the fear of death, and that is certainly something that Tolkien considered common to all people. (When saying his story was about death, he qualified that by saying, "which is to say, it is a story told by a Man.")

It reminded me of the Athrabeth, in a way - discussing death from the perspective of elves and mortals. But as you say, 1500 words is a bit short to get into that, really.

[Old_Tom_Bombadil]

You know, the author of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

I am personally not in favor of putting words in real person's mouth, alive or dead, but I won't discuss that as that's my own personal conviction. I will, however, display my membership in the Society of Tolkien Geeks by mentioning that The Lord of the Rings is not a trilogy, rather, it is a single work published in three volumes. (You'll find that in the foreward to LOTR itself, I believe.)

[truehobbit]

Wow, I loved that! Thanks for posting it elsha!

It evoked a lot of thoughts and associations in my mind, and it'll be hard to find some coherence, so this'll probably be a chaotic post.

But first in reply to Tom:

I am personally not in favor of putting words in real person's mouth, alive or dead

But that's what all authors of historical novels do.
And authors of historical books and biography sometimes, too. (Though not exactly scientific, it is certainly accepted if you want it to appeal to a general readership.)
And it's what Plato, on whose work this is based, did, too!


I don't like it in the second of these examples, I often dislike it in the first (it's so easy to get it wrong, which makes many historical novels so weak), but in the third, where it's merely an academic exercise, like here, I think it's a good idea. And I think elsha did a great job of making Tolkien say things he really might have said.
My favourite is: We are clouded by that which we do not know and do not understand, and the only thing that fills the gap is fear. I believe that we do not need fear to replace the unknown, but rather strong beliefs.

Elsha, I loved how you got from the idea that because of death we must be limited, to the insight that the temporal limit of our lives removes other limitations that an immortal life would put on us.

I think that for the first time I'm beginning to understand Tolkien's idea of death as a "gift to Men"! (I've had ideas about it before, but they were vaguer and the fact that I couldn't grasp them myself showed me that they were not clear to my own mind.)

There were two different and yet related things that your text reminded me of:

I think it's a deep thought that even though we die physically, the memory of our lives that we leave behind is a kind of perpetuation of our lives.

(There's a little popular song in local dialect here, written at the death of a popular entertainer, called "One never leaves entirely" - about how memory lives on.)

Hoever, this thought triggered two other thoughts, that are also related:

If we live on by the memories we leave behind in others, then what if we are forgotten? Not all of us are geniuses that leave great works behind. We may live on in the memory of our families for a bit, but a few generations later at the latest we'll be forgotten.

There's this poem by Keats, in which he talked about his fear of dying before having been able to produce something that would outlast him:

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face, 5
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more, 10
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink

Shouldn't it give us even worse fears to think that our living on after death is dependent on our achieving something in life?
I know that it freaks me out to think of this.

The other thought I had was to be reminded of a book I read recently, about death and about - Keats.
It was called "The Invention of Dr Cake" and it explored the question of whether it would not be better to die at the height of one's achievements, as Keats did, than to continue and turn into someone who doesn't have any creative energies left (as could be said of the ageing Wordsworth).

This kind of brought me to the second thing that I found remarkable in your text (although it's really so related that it's not a deduction but all there at the same time, in a way... I did say this was chaotic, didn't I? ) :

This second aspect is the idea that our power to create something to outlive us is somehow linked to our mortality.
As you put it:
Human society can progress because of our remembrance of the past, and death is the ultimate path to remembrance.
...
it is only through the inevitability of death that we can create value for life. Death is a limit but it is also a freedom
(I think that's bloody brilliant, btw. )

This is why the Elvish society is so static - there is nothing there to encourage them to do something.

One could say that in "The Invention of Dr Cake" (by current poet laureate Andrew Motion, btw), this is similar (although put the other way round, so to speak): geniuses, who have a long life, stop being creative when they have achieved what makes them immortal - the continuing of their physical life isn't really necessary for their immortal life anymore and hence becomes more of an embarrassment for them than an opportunity.

So, on the one hand, it's the existence of death that spurs us on to become better than we would be without it, even though we don't realise that.

But on the other hand, if we have to fear to fail in that task, this is terrible.
And that is where other thoughts could come in - religious thoughts that tell us that in the eyes of God we cannot fail (unless maybe we don't even try - but even a failed try would be enough).
This might be going back to what you had Tolkien say at the beginning about having strong beliefs, but as it's not really part of the argument of the text, I won't go into it further.

[elfshadow]

Thank you to all for reading it!

Mith, the fear of death was definitely something I was trying to convey through the dialogue. The reason I first got the idea to use Tolkien, actually, was because of Socrates' initial argument in the Phaedo--he didn't believe that people should be afraid of death. It reminded me of the Gift of Man from the Silmarillion, so that's how it actually got started.

Tom, your concerns are understood. But like Hobby said (and thanks, Hobby, for explaining this for me), Plato himself used the character of Socrates much like I used the character of Tolkien. It was not my intention so much to represent Tolkien's thoughts but to represent my own through him as a character. I wanted to use his work as a foundation, and since the paper was supposed to be a dialogue, it only made sense for me to use him. And I know that it was technically not a trilogy, but since I wasn't writing it for people who necessarily know much about LotR, I figured it wasn't a huge issue.

Hobby, I'm really glad you liked it!! Memory is one of the things that I think it most important about our life, which is why I talked about it so much in the dialogue, and I'm very glad to hear that it made an impact with you! I think that because of our own limited lifetime, all we really can do is ensure that our contributions won't be forgotten, to the best of our abilities. And I absolutely loved the Keats poem. I think the question of when it's better to die is a very potent one, and if I had had more room in this paper I would have loved to address that. I don't think I could say that either Keats' or Wordsworth's lives were more or less worthwhile, but it is certainly interesting to consider how we remember them. When someone extremely talented dies very young, for example Schubert, we generally lament the fact that death erased the potential for great works. However, for some people who accomplished much during their lifetime, we agree that their time to go was their time to go. But I certainly do believe that without death, we would not have nearly as much of a reason to live. The immortality of the Elves always seemed a bit mournful to me. Although they generally accomplished much more than the Men did because they had so much more time to do so, it sometimes seemed to me that life was more of a task than a gift for them. That's why, I think, Tolkien refers to death as the gift of Men--by giving them death, he is giving value to their life.

Now that went a little bit rambly at the end but thank you again so much to everyone who read it or who will read it when they have time!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Elsha, I finally got some time to sit down and read through it. I like it alot. I really like that you were able to use this as a devise to develop your own ideas about what the gift of death means.

A couple of rambling thoughts of my own. I think there is very much a "Christian" aspect to the idea of the death as the gift of Men where the idea that Men leave the circles of the world is very much related to the idea of ascending to heaven. This is in contrast to the Elves, who are bound to the circles of the world, and who over the ages feel ever more caged by that boundage.

[superwizard]

Well I just finished my finals!!!
I think your dialogue was wonderful Elsha! I especially liked it when Tolkien asked you if you thought his life was meaningful!

[Old_Tom_Bombadil]

Tom, your concerns are understood. But like Hobby said (and thanks, Hobby, for explaining this for me), Plato himself used the character of Socrates much like I used the character of Tolkien. It was not my intention so much to represent Tolkien's thoughts but to represent my own through him as a character. I wanted to use his work as a foundation, and since the paper was supposed to be a dialogue, it only made sense for me to use him. And I know that it was technically not a trilogy, but since I wasn't writing it for people who necessarily know much about LotR, I figured it wasn't a huge issue.

My principle comes from the point that I wouldn't want anyone putting words in my mouth, I'm pretty particular about such things, so I don't feel that I have the right to put words in anyone else's mouth. Like I said, it's a personal thing. I'm sure you carried out this dialogue with the utmost respect for Professor Tolkien, and that's the most important thing.

[Old_Tom_Bombadil]

It's déjà vu all over again.

[MithLuin]

Well, Tom, I agree with you - but sometimes, it works. And sometimes it's necessary. I put plenty of words in Luthy's mouth during MoME, and she didn't complain at all .

As long as the reader knows this is Elsha-writitng-as-Tolkien, I don't see any problem with it.

But Tom, I suggest you avoid the new novel "Here there be Dragons," since the characters are... John, Jack and Charles .

[Tyrhael]

But Tom, I suggest you avoid the new novel "Here there be Dragons," since the characters are... John, Jack and Charles .

Not to mention that they should call JRRT "Ronald" or "Tollers", not "John"! Jack for C.S. Lewis works, but John does NOT work for JRRT! *off topic*

[Old_Tom_Bombadil]

Not to mention that they should call JRRT "Ronald" or "Tollers", not "John"! Jack for C.S. Lewis works, but John does NOT work for JRRT! *off topic*

*welcomes Tyrhael to The Society of Tolkien Geeks*

[Tyrhael]

Not to mention that they should call JRRT "Ronald" or "Tollers", not "John"! Jack for C.S. Lewis works, but John does NOT work for JRRT! *off topic*

I take back that statement, having now come across this in Letter 309:

Ronald was for my near kin. My friends at school, Oxford and later have called me John (or occasionally John Ronald or J.Rsquared)...

[MithLuin]

I haven't read the book, but it is my understanding that it takes place during WWI - the idea basically being, what if these guys met earlier than they really did? So, "Tollers" (if that was an Inkling coining) wouldn't have happened yet. From what I understand, the author of the book is a Charles Williams fan, and thus not likely to be a huge Tolkien fan (though he likes all of them, of course).