Posted: December 08, 1999 at 10:16:53: by Martin Read
I have often lamented Tolkien's choice of having the elves as (for practical purposes) immortal beings. It creates uncomfortable paradoxes. For a start an immortal people would have very different motivations from humans, though in most cases elves are given the same sort of strivings and desires as men. For a start there would be very little pressure on elves to reproduce, and friendships of centuries or millenia would be more central to elf society than human. Production of clans, or even extended families would be almost interminably long winded affairs, and changes in language (which drift across generations in humans) would not be likely. Why would an elf who spoke proto-Quenya when he awoke want to change language to Sindarin later?There is also the strange paradox of the events of the Silmarillion, which Tolkien wanted to present as a sort of invented mythology. This is how they are presented in LOTR, as events of a mythical past. Though to some of the characters of LOTR such as Galadriel, Celeborn, Cirdan etc these events were those of their own memories and therefore most definitely non-mythical. Tolkien would have been better advised to have made his elves long-lived compared to humans but certainly not immortal.
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