Posted: December 10, 1999 at 06:50:36: by Martin Read
: : I for one do not treat Tolkien's work as sacred writ. I think criticism, even of something one likes, is a valid exercise. Tolkien's use of immortality for his elves (and I know all about them "Fading" like old soldiers) does raise difficulties in his portrayal of their society and history. Just to take one example, an immortal race which has little need to reproduce would be unlikely to have anything approaching a human type of sexual/romantic love, though this is central to the whole Beren-Luthien cycle. Sexual and romantic love exist in human society because of the need to form stable pair-bonding to give offspring which have a long dependency time a stable nurturing upbringing, this would seem to be redundant or at least not imperative for an immortal race. Following from this sexual jealousy would be unlikely, so out would go the whole Maeglin-Tuor thing - and the fall of Gondolin. This would make Tolkien rather boring reading admittedly, though would the converse, having Elves merely long-lived materially affect the quality of the stories?: >>Interesting thought. One problem is that you are basing the motivations of the beings on evolutionary drives (procreation, in this case). But Tolkien's Elves are not evolutionary beings. For that matter, neither are his Men - unless somebody wants to make an argument for evolutionary-creationism. The motivations, desires, needs, etc. of the Elves can be as completely like or unlike real-world humans as Tolkein wants them to be without creating any paradoxes. : Bye the way, I'm not saying these beings don't "evolve" (i.e. change). I'm saying they didn't evolve in the sense that they came from a common mamalian ancestor. They were created by Eru. Yes I am using an evolutionary approach, though it might be seen as being merely that of having an organism as being as fit for its environment as possible. Even creationists would admit that God or Eru would create his beings to be as efficient in their environment as possible. That said I'll give another example, David Freitag mentioned that Galadriel and Celeborn seem to have been together for about 7,000 years, in which time they produced 1 undisputed offspring. What is the point in having a pair bond lasting 7,000 years if it was effective for say the 40 years while Celebrian grew to maturity? I'm just guessing how long it might take an elf to mature physically, but I don't think it is stated that it was a matter of centuries. It would be much more efficient if elves lived communal lives but when cued by environmental factors such as low population density (for example) then went into a procreative mode, forming a bond which then lasted for the time of the physical maturation of the offspring. Having said this it isn't really the illogicality of certain aspects of Elven society in regard to their immortality that irks me, it is the basic difficulty I have with the creation of a mythological past whilst some of its participants are still hanging around.
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