The Silmarillion - Tolkien's Greatest Work

The Silmarillion – Spiders, Dragons and everything else

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, better known as J.R.R. Tolkien has enriched the fantasy genre to an extent beyond capturing. His dearest fans –among which I count myself- might even go so far as to say that he created or at least reinvented this genre. It is by this time a known fact that he didn’t just write a couple of fantasy books, featuring among others a ring and little hobbits, but embedded all of them in a whole world, a whole saga of his creation including numerous specifically devised languages and scripts, a vast background story and a massive amount of characters and events. All in all, he’s just a genius; I can’t put it in other words and I dare not go too much into detail otherwise you and I would end up completely confused and that’s not the general idea isn’t it?

What am I writing this for, some of you might wonder therefore. Well, in my opinion Tolkien is all too often limited to the Lord of the Rings and the The Hobbit books which doesn’t do justice to him. Even if these might be the more screenable stories (according to producers and screenwriters I guess), the tale doesn’t start nor end here. I therefore want to introduce you to a world beyond Frodo and Sam’s #no-homo companionship. 

You can’t read or watch the LotR trilogy without stumbling across narratives, poems and songs about happenings of the older ages and ancient times. A good example are the Elves who often refer to Eärendel, the carrier of the morning star. Well, all these characters and all these telling actually have a complete story of their own. Eärendel for example isn’t only some kind of goddess or angel, no mere background character that Tolkien has invented just in order to create someone that the Elves admire or worship.
Take for example Joanne K. Rowling and her Harry Potter books in which the reader is introduced to the four houses of Hogwarts: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Slytherin and Ravenclaw. You also learn that these houses are named after the four founding fathers (and mothers) of Hogwarts like Salazar Slytherin and Godric Gryffindor and every now and then they appear in the storyline. However, none of them is really developed or let alone has his complete story told in another book by Rowling.

 

This is not the fact with Tolkien characters; on the contrary, nearly every one of them is fully developed and has a whole narrative spun around his life and his relevance for the entire world that Tolkien has created. There is only one exception from that, an intended exception though, and this is the character Tom Bombadil (he appears in the Lord of the Rings, but only in the books) whose background story will forever remain unknown according to Tolkien himself (he wanted to let one mystery persist – or simply tease his fans; who knows). 

In short, if you stumble across a character or an event, while reading a Tolkien book, who/which is mentioned only casually, then you can be almost a hundred percent sure that he has his own developed story in another of Tolkien’s works. Isn’t this fascinating? 

You might wonder now which books that might be, as the majority of you probably only knows The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit as yet. Well, just to name a few:  

        The Children of Húrin 

       The Horns of Ulmo 

         The Lay of Eärendel

         The Book of Lost Tales

And last but definitely not least, The Silmarillion. It is the greatest book of Tolkien in which he describes among others how Middle Earth was created, who Sauron was and where he came from, how the Elves were “made” and so on and so forth. It’s like the bible for Tolkien fans since it tells alpha to omega of the created world. However, it really is ONLY for devoted Tolkien fans since the number of names, dates and events mentioned in this book is just massive and makes your head smoke quite quickly. 

There is even a Middle Earth Lexicon, to have all these characters and battles etc. in one book so that you can look it up if quickly if you are in the middle of reading – isn’t this hilarious?

Just to show you one thing that you can learn from The Silmarillion: Do you know Smaug the dragon from the Hobbit? Quite impressive and terrifying, isn’t he? Well, still looks like a grass stalk compared to the greatest dragon that appears in Tolkien’s world.

Or you might know Kankra, the hideous, a-little-bit-more-than-average-sized spider from The Lord of the Rings, do you? What if I told you that she’s just one of the offspring of Ungolianth, which is described in the books as “ginormous” that in turn is a linguistic combination of “gigantic” and “enormous”. 

Now throw away your Twilight, or Fifty Shades of Grey book and get some real literature (nah I’m just kidding)...

... or not? ;)