The parallel to our era is whats most unsettling here. Tolkien saw clearly that evil wouldnt return as another Sauron but as bored teenagers playing at orcs and comfort breeding contempt for virtue. The fragment about Gondorian boys doing damage for fun reads like he glimpsed somthing essential about prosperity rot that took sociologists decades to articulate.
Well, the main reason Silmarillion was not finished by JRRT himself was because he - self-admittedly - was always distracted by things in the passages already written; sitting down to do some work on the story, finding an older sheet of paper and starting to re-write parts of what had been written earlier... He too easily dived into these opportunities to explore previous segments in new detail or because he no longer accepted his previous linguistic elements and started to correct them. And then also because he was easily distracted by mundane aspects of life, among them letters.
But I do not agree with what is written in the "Age of Men" segment above. The fall of men was at the heart of JRRT's entire work. It is not about it only happening after Aragorn's death - it started long before and the exceptions like Aragorn were too few for mankind to resist. Númenor is probably the most prominent example of how even the best of mankind could (and inevitably would) fall without connection to Eru and to the Valar and their guidance.
However, it did not start with Númenor, either. The Akallabêth is merely the Atlantis of Arda, fuelled by the fall of men. But from the very beginning when the Edain (men) awoke, there were some who more readily listened to Melkor's words. He turned the Gift of Men (death) against mankind and Eru's design, by corrupting what initially had been their special destiny, unknown to anyone but Ilúvatar himself and only granted to the second-born; and because of this, they were not shackled to Arda like the Eldar, but offered something more and not of the mortal world. Melkor twisted and darkened this unique gift and since then, men dreaded it.
So the fall of men was there from the very first moments, it was just that they at first had sufficient strength and number of faithful to resist the civilisational decline. But over time, their strength began to wane and after Aragorn, the heroic faithful were history.
If anything, the continuation would have been about the gradual corruption through mundane everyday mechanics, through unremarkable processes, the endless insidious inflow of poison, unnoticed by any but the most observant - and the obstinate refusal of the masses to see what's happening to them. That's not much of an epic story material, even if it is closer to how these forces operate in our world...
Tolkien seems to have sensed that the Fourth Age was not distant myth, but an uncomfortably clear mirror... an age where evil returns not as a Dark Lord, but through forgetfulness, resentment, and the quiet revivification of what was once defeated. Some myths are left untold not because they lack power, but because they speak too directly to the patterns of our own time....
Tolkien was wise enough to realize that not every story needs a sequel--if only modern Hollywood could learn from his example...
The parallel to our era is whats most unsettling here. Tolkien saw clearly that evil wouldnt return as another Sauron but as bored teenagers playing at orcs and comfort breeding contempt for virtue. The fragment about Gondorian boys doing damage for fun reads like he glimpsed somthing essential about prosperity rot that took sociologists decades to articulate.
Well, the main reason Silmarillion was not finished by JRRT himself was because he - self-admittedly - was always distracted by things in the passages already written; sitting down to do some work on the story, finding an older sheet of paper and starting to re-write parts of what had been written earlier... He too easily dived into these opportunities to explore previous segments in new detail or because he no longer accepted his previous linguistic elements and started to correct them. And then also because he was easily distracted by mundane aspects of life, among them letters.
But I do not agree with what is written in the "Age of Men" segment above. The fall of men was at the heart of JRRT's entire work. It is not about it only happening after Aragorn's death - it started long before and the exceptions like Aragorn were too few for mankind to resist. Númenor is probably the most prominent example of how even the best of mankind could (and inevitably would) fall without connection to Eru and to the Valar and their guidance.
However, it did not start with Númenor, either. The Akallabêth is merely the Atlantis of Arda, fuelled by the fall of men. But from the very beginning when the Edain (men) awoke, there were some who more readily listened to Melkor's words. He turned the Gift of Men (death) against mankind and Eru's design, by corrupting what initially had been their special destiny, unknown to anyone but Ilúvatar himself and only granted to the second-born; and because of this, they were not shackled to Arda like the Eldar, but offered something more and not of the mortal world. Melkor twisted and darkened this unique gift and since then, men dreaded it.
So the fall of men was there from the very first moments, it was just that they at first had sufficient strength and number of faithful to resist the civilisational decline. But over time, their strength began to wane and after Aragorn, the heroic faithful were history.
If anything, the continuation would have been about the gradual corruption through mundane everyday mechanics, through unremarkable processes, the endless insidious inflow of poison, unnoticed by any but the most observant - and the obstinate refusal of the masses to see what's happening to them. That's not much of an epic story material, even if it is closer to how these forces operate in our world...
Tolkien seems to have sensed that the Fourth Age was not distant myth, but an uncomfortably clear mirror... an age where evil returns not as a Dark Lord, but through forgetfulness, resentment, and the quiet revivification of what was once defeated. Some myths are left untold not because they lack power, but because they speak too directly to the patterns of our own time....
A great author knows which stories matter. And which don’t.
Which is another reason why GRRM is a competent author but not a great one.