Топик: Корни персонажей Д.Р.Р.Толкиена
The elves
The elves in their appearance, whom we can see in the books of Tolkien were also mostly created by him. The roots of these characters are very ramified. Professor read a lot of information about all kinds of elves and finding something general tried to create something new. Finally he got immortal creatures, who can be killed only with a sword or they can pine away to death. They are tall, have perfect eyesight, bright hair and brave harts. They are wise, because of the memory they keep in their immortal mind. But elves themselves estimate their immortality as end-around infinity of analogical events, which exhaust and oppress them. But they have a dream to return to Valinor, country, where their immortality wont be so hard and difficult.
Lutien
Lutien Tinuviel (“Tinuviel” could be translated from Quenya as “nightingale”) is the most beautiful elven virgo in the whole Arda (The Earth). One day she was singing the hymn to Varda in the forest:
Ir Ithil ammen Eruchin (When the Moon is for us, the children of Eru,
Menel-vir sila diriel Like sky precious stone shines and saves,
Si loth a galadh lasto din! Let the flower and the tree listen in silence!
A hir Annun gilthoniel Oh, queen of the West, which light the stars,
Le linnon im Tinuviel! I sing to you, it’s me, Tinuviel.)
Beren, the bravest warrior herd this sounds and loved Lutirn in a moment. But he was mortal and she was an elf. That is why they could not be together. But their love was so strong, that Lutien managed to ask the goddess Varda to help them. And Varda helped them, so Lutien became mortal and shared the destiny of her sweetheart.
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Shelob
Shelob is a brainchild of Ungoliant, a jumbo spider with a beak, pincers and bottomless stomach. Ungoliant is the evil and concentrated darkness. She terminated the Two Great Trees Telperion and Laurelin and deprived the world frome the light that give life.
Shelob is smaller then her mother, but she is even more cruel and always hungry. This creature lives in a lair on the border of Mordor (the Dark Land). She has a poison in her stinger, using which she kills and devours her victims.
In his early childhood, being in South Africa, Tolkien stumbled on a tarantula. It bit him, and he ran in terror across the garden until the nurse snatched him up and sucked out the poison. Since that time he began to afraid spiders. Maybe this made him to create such a creature.
“She”+”lob” is a quite wide-spread model of forming words, like female animals. For example “she-goat” or “she-wolf”. In this case words should be written with hyphen. Tolkien took hyphen away and used the received word as the name of his creature. It looks rather horribly, isn’t it?
Tolkiens view on some events from
The Bible and archaic history
The crash of the Lamps
In the beginning of ages in “The spring of Arda” (“Arda ” means “The Earth”) there was no light at all. The Earth was bare: no trees, no plants, no animals. The Valar saw, that there was a need of the light. And then “Aule at the prayer of Yavanna wrought two mighty lamps for the lighting of the Middle-earth which he had built amid the encircling seas. Then Varda filled the lamps and Manwe hallowed them, and the Valar set them upon high pillars, more lofty far than are any mountains of the later days. One lamp they raised near to the north of Middle-earth, and it was named Illuin; and the other was raised in the south, and it was named Ormal; and the light of the Lamps of the Valar flowed out over the Earth, so that all was lit as it were in a changeless day.” And then plants and trees began to grow. And Arda filled with different animals and creatures. But when Morgoth (the lord of darkness and evil) saw the fragrance of Arda in his anger he decided to destroy this all. He built an unshakable citadel in Utumno and concentrated all his dark forces there. His power grew and he started the war. He made his stroke when the Valar where not prepared. “H e assailed the lights of Illuin and Ormal, and cast down their pillars and broke their lamps. In the overthrow of the mighty pillars lands were broken and seas arose in tumult; and when the lamps were spilled destroying flame was poured out over the Earth. And the shape of Arda and the symmetry of its waters and its lands was marred in that time, so that the first designs of the Valar were never after restored.”
See, how gracefully professor Tolkien handled the legend of the ruin of dinosaurs and the fall of a giant asteroid which destroyed everything on earth! Isn’t he a genius?
The fall of Beleriand
It was the end of the first age of Arda. The forth battle of Beleriand against Morgoth and Sauron (the “right arm” of Morgoth) finished with a defeat of the forces of the light, the armies of men, elves and dwarves. And the only hope of the light was Earendel , the man, who dared to try to find Valinor and ask the Valar for help (men never were in Valinor and they where forbidden to go there). He sailed so 
long, and he was so tired, that he thought to turn back. But suddenly he saw a big white bird like a white cloud under the see. There was a shining silmarill on her bosom. The bird flew on Earendels ship and he saw, that it was his wife, Elwing. Together they continued their sail and the silmarill lighted their way to 
Valinor. When the Valar saw the bravery of this man and his wife (by the way, she was an elf), the understood, there is something in Middle-Earth, they must save. That is how the fifth and the final battle for Beleriand started.
This battle was named The War of Wrath. The Valar, with the power of their fire of anger terminated Angband (the citadel of Morgoth), they knocked Morgoth down and numbed him with the chain of Angoinor . Sauron was forgiven and turned into light, he became Majar again, as he was before Morgoth tempted him.
But in their destructive anger, the Valar didn’t even noticed, that they had destroyed the Beleriand. Many of Elves where save and settled in Imladrise , Lothlorien and Mirkwood . But Beleriand was swallowed by the See and no one could ever see its beauty: “Thus an end was made of the power of Angband in the North, and' the evil realm was brought to naught; and out of the deep prisons a multitude of slaves came forth beyond all hope into the light of day, and they looked upon a world that was changed. For so great was the fury of those adversaries that the northern regions of the western world were rent asunder, and the sea roared in through many chasms, and there was confusion and great noise; and rivers perished or found new paths, and the valleys were upheaved and the hills trod down…”
Critics say, that this story is the Tolkiens view on the legend about Atlantis. Who knows, maybe it was really so…
The fall of Numenor
In the end of the second age of Arda after the War of Wrath and the fall of Beleriand the Valar opened a new land for elected genders of men. It was an island. And it didn’t belong neither to Middle-Earth nor to Valinor (the country of the Valar). The Valar decorated it with gardens, fountains and flowers from Valinor. And this land was named Numenor (The Western Land).
The life of the inhabitants of Numenor was very long – near 300 years. But they still stayed mortal men. Hundreds of years passed and their discontent about their mortality grew. They began to murmur on the Valar: “Why didn’t they give us eternity, if they love us so much? They told us, they could not. Maybe, they just don’t want to?” But the Valar really couldn’t deprive men from death, the Eru ’s gift (Eru – the one, who create the Valar and Arda, elves and men and everything), just because they couldn’t understand it.
And exactly in this moment, when the faith of men staggered, Sauron, who betrayed the Valar and turned in the Darkness again, made his stroke. He tempted men and directed them against the Valar. Finally the king of men concentrated all his forces and threw his giant army against the Valar. Eru saw this and made abyss to swallow this army and the isle of Numenor and men and Sauron: “But Iluvatar (the other name of Eru) showed forth his power, and he changed the fashion of the world; and a great chasm opened in the sea between Numenor and the Deathless Lands, and the waters flowed down into it, and the noise and smoke of the cataracts went up to heaven, and the world was shaken. And all the fleets of the Numenoreans were drawn down into the abyss, and they were drowned and swallowed up for ever.”
“ There came a mighty wind and a tumult of the earth, and the sky reeled, and the hills slid, and Numenor went down into the sea, with all its children and its wives and its maidens and its ladies proud; and all its gardens and its balls and its towers, its tombs and its riches, and its jewels and its webs and its things painted and carven, and its lore: they vanished for ever. And last of all the mounting wave, green and cold and plumed with foam, climbing over the land…” And the world has changed.