Decline and fall in Middle-earth

The pattern is expressed in several ways, including the splintering of the light provided by the Creator, Eru Iluvatar, into progressively smaller parts; the fragmentation of languages and peoples, especially the Elves, who are split into many groups; the successive falls, starting with that of the angelic spirit Melkor, and followed by the destruction of the two Lamps of Middle-earth and then of the Two Trees of Valinor, the destruction of Gondolin, and the cataclysmic fall of Númenor.

The Dark Lord Sauron may be defeated, but that will entail the fading and departure of the Elves, leaving the world to Men, to industrialise and to pollute, however much Tolkien regretted the fact.

[9][T 2] Angelic beings, the Valar, live in the centre of Arda, lit by two enormous lamps, Illuin and Ormal, atop mountainous pillars of rock.

[9] The Vala Yavanna, goddess of plants, does her best to recreate the light, in the form of the Two Trees of Valinor, the silver Telperion and the gold Laurelin; they alternately brighten and dim, overlapping to create periods of "dawn" and "dusk".

[10][T 5] The making of the Silmarils is timely, as Melkor returns, bringing the insatiable giant spider Ungoliant to devour the Two Trees and absorb all their light into her darkness.

Eventually all are lost: one ends up in the sea, one is buried in the Earth, and one is sent into the sky: by the grace of Elbereth, it is carried by Eärendil the mariner, forever sailing his ship across the heavens, appearing as the Morning and Evening Star (the planet Venus).

The Phial enables Frodo and Sam to defeat the giant spider Shelob, descendant of Ungoliant, on their way to Mordor to destroy the Ring.

Shippey writes that the heroic Norse response to such a gloomy picture was defiance, a pagan Northern courage, appearing in The Lord of the Rings as a consistent good cheer, a willingness to keep going and to keep smiling, even in the face of apparent disaster.

The Tolkien scholar Marjorie Burns notes in Mythlore that the "sense of inevitable disintegration"[18] in The Lord of the Rings is borrowed from the Nordic world view which emphasises "imminent or threatening destruction".

[18] She writes that in Norse mythology, this process seemed to have started during the creation: in the realm of fire, Muspell, the jötunn Surt was even then awaiting the end of the world.

Burns comments that "Here is a mythology where even the gods can die, and it leaves the reader with a vivid sense of life's cycles, with an awareness that everything comes to an end, that, though [the evil] Sauron may go, the elves will fade as well.

"[18] Patrice Hannon, also in Mythlore, states that: The Lord of the Rings is a story of loss and longing, punctuated by moments of humor and terror and heroic action but on the whole a lament for a world—albeit a fictional world—that has passed even as we seem to catch a last glimpse of it flickering and fading...[19]In Hannon's view, Tolkien meant to show that beauty and joy fail and disappear before the passage of time and the onslaught of the powers of evil; victory is possible but only temporary.

[19] Even the last line of the final appendix, she notes, has this tone: "The dominion passed long ago, and [the Elves] dwell now beyond the circles of the world, and do not return.

"[19] Hannon compares this continual emphasis on the elegiac to Tolkien's praise for the Old English poem Beowulf, on which he was an expert, in Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, suggesting that he was seeking to produce something of the same effect:[19] For it is now to us itself ancient; and yet its maker was telling of things already old and weighted with regret, and he expended his art in making keen that touch upon the heart which sorrows have that are both poignant and remote.

[T 13]The Lord of the Rings ends with the evident dwindling or fading away of all non-human peoples in Middle-earth - the Ents have no Entwives and so are childless; the Dwarves are few and live in dispersed, isolated clusters; the monstrous Orcs and Trolls that survived the Battle of the Morannon are scattered; the last of the Elves have sailed beyond the Uttermost West to Valinor, leaving Middle-earth forever; the Hobbits are few and might easily be overlooked; the Men of Gondor have a renewal of Elvish blood, one last time, through the marriage of Arwen to their King, Aragorn.

Valinor was once lit by the Two Trees ; when they are destroyed, their last flower and fruit become the Moon and the Sun. A descendant of one of the trees is the White Tree of Gondor ; it has been compared to the Dry Tree of medieval legend, a symbol of new life. [ 7 ] Medieval manuscript illustration of the Dry Tree (centre), flanked by Trees of Sun and Moon. Rouen 1444-1445 [ 8 ]
Diagrammatic map of the sundering of the Elves in the First Age , as they migrated and divided into separate clans with their own languages and dialects
The history of Middle-earth mirrors the biblical fall of man . [ T 11 ] Fresco by Michelangelo
Urnes stave church depicts snakes and dragons of Ragnarök , where the Norse gods are defeated and the world is drowned.
Tolkien imagined Arda as the Earth in the distant past. [ T 12 ] [ 20 ] With the loss of all its peoples except Man , and the reshaping of the continents, all that is left of Middle-earth is a dim memory in folklore , legend , and old words . [ 21 ] Shapes of continents are purely schematic.