The Gift of Death

[Christiana]

What is Morogoths Ring?

[Sister Golden Hair]

Originally posted by Christiana
What is Morogoths Ring?

Morgoth's Ring is volume 10 of the Histories of Middle-earth series. There are a total of 12 volumes in the series. Volume 10 (Morgoth's Ring) and volume 11 (War of the Jewels) are part 1 and 2 of the Later Quenta Silmarillion.

[Christiana]

thanks.whats the first volume?

[Sister Golden Hair]

Volumes 1 and 2 are the Book of Lost Tale parts 1 and 2. This is the old mythology.

[Christiana]

ok.

[Wayfarer]

I think flies come from Morgoth.

But morgoth can't create, can he?

[Ñólendil]

No O Insufferable One, but he can make and he can corrupt. As the Dragons and the Trolls find their origins, as themselves anyway, in Moriñgotho, so may the flies. They're just dreadful creatures.

[Wayfarer]

Gotcha.

So... what do you think flies were originally?

[Christiana]

butterflies?

[Ñólendil]

Perhaps they were simply good-natured, but after being tampered with by Moriñgotho they came to like stink, and enjoyed irritating people and sometimes biting them. Tolkien once said that Melkor was so engrossed with his own works that he was probably unaware of many things that were not actually his own. He said Melkor was better at dealing with a volcano than a flower. And, Tolkien added, if such things were forced upon his attention, he was filled with hate, jealousy and loathing, that such a thing could be. Perhaps flies were one of those things -- say that entered via the thought of Orome in the Music -- that were forced upon the Dark Lord's attention. In his wrathful madness he may have made a point of making them tiresome and disgusting.

Actually I was only half-serious when I mentioned it, but I think it's also possible.

In Of the Beginning of Days, this just came to me, flies are actually mentioned in conjunction with Melkor:

Now Melkor began the delving and building of a vast fortress, deep under Earth, beneath dark mountains where the beams of Illuin were cold and dim. That stronghold was named Utumno. And though the Valar knew naught of it as yet, nonetheless the evil of Melkor and the blight of his hatred flowed out thence, and the Spring of Arda was marred. Green things fell sick and rotted, and rivers were choked with weeds and slim, and fens were made, rank and poisonous, the breeding place of flies; and forests grew dark and perilous, the haunts of fear; and beasts became monsters of horn and ivory and dyed the earth with blood. Then the Valar knew indeed that Melkor was at work again, ...

[Lefty Scaevola]

Recall that the gift to men has two part. The other part is that men are free from the presdestination or fate of the music of the Aniur. It is slightly implied, but not clearly so, that that the two parts of the gift are necessarily tied together. They are further connected by the statement that men are free to seek their fate (after death) beyond the confines of Arda.

[Sister Golden Hair]

Originally posted by Lefty Scaevola
Recall that the gift to men has two part. The other part is that men are free from the presdestination or fate of the music of the Aniur. It is slightly implied, but not clearly so, that that the two parts of the gift are necessarily tied together. They are further connected by the statement that men are free to seek their fate (after death) beyond the confines of Arda.

Read the Athrabeth. Then it is not so cut and dry. You'll walk away wondering what really was meant to be.

[Lefty Scaevola]

No doubt that part of being the children of Illuvatar was to be in doubt about the afterlife.

[Ælfwine]

I much prefer being a Man. I don't know if I could endure being bound to Arda as long as it excists. And maybe it reallt is a gift to shape ones own destiny and not be bound by the music, and after death to pass outside the circles of the world. Do not forget that Death was given as a gift. I think that it is very well explained in The Music of the Ainur as written in The Book of Lost Tales:

Thou Melko shalt see that no theme can be played save it come in the end of Ilúvatar's self, nor can any alter the music in Ilúvatar's despite. He that attempts this finds himself in the endbut aiding me in devising a thing of still greater grandeur and more complex wonder: - for lo! through Melkohave terror as fire, and sorrow like dark waters, wrath like thunder, and evil as far from my light as the depths of the uttermost of the dark places, come into the design that I laid before you. Through him has pain and misery been made in the clash of overwhelming musics; and with confusion of sound have cruelty, and ravening, and darkness, loathly mire and all putresence of thought or thing, foul mists and violent flame, cold without mercy, been borne, and death without hope.

Rather more telling that the version in The Published Silmarillion, if you ask me.