Tolkien (and other loves of my life)
An earlier version of this essay was written and posted on Tumblr in response to Some excellent thoughts by warrioreowynofrohan. The Ainur are the only beings (that we know of) inside Eä during the Ages recorded in the Legendarium who have also seen Eä from the “outside.” From the Timeless Halls, the Ainur first experienced…
Earlier this year, as I was trolling The Lord of the Rings for a paper I was writing, I came across this moment in “The Taming of Smeagol.” It reminded me of how deeply frightening I found the novel, and what a capable horror writer Tolkien would have made. It’s a subtle type of horror,…
Speculations on my favorite baddie: part 1 Some say also that Morgoth at whiles secretly as a cloud that cannot be seen or felt, and yet is, and the poison is, creeps back surmounting the Walls and visiteth the world; but others say that this is the black shadow of Thû [Sauron], whom Morgoth made,…
Within The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien had a particular love for the paragraph in The Return of the King when the horns of the Rohirrim sound, announcing what may be the second most famous eucatastrophic moment in the story. My favorite line, however, has always been the paragraph that precedes it—cock crow: “And in that very moment,…