Abstract
Tolkien asserted on multiple occasions that death was a primary theme of his work, and there are over ninety deaths of named characters in the Quenta Silmarillion alone. In reading the Quenta Silmarillion as historiography, the universality and psychologically powerful experience of death, grief, and mourning allows the narrators of the Quenta Silmarillion to shape how readers perceive characters, events, and themes in the text. Assuming Pengolodh as the primary narrator, this paper investigates how Tolkien used a limited, flawed, and biased narrative point of view as a strategy to shape reader responses and theme. Characters who die in the Quenta Silmarillion vary in whether they are grieved and how they are mourned such that some characters are aggrandized and their negative deeds deemphasized, while others conspicuously lack any mention of grief or mourning, drawing attention to their negative actions and essentially dehumanizing them as people capable of being loved and grieved (or in some cases, capable of the normal human emotions of love and grief). The biased treatment of death by the Quenta Silmarillion narrator not only uses psychology to shape readers' perceptions but stands as moral guideposts to the fictional audience of later ages in the legendarium and creates the sense of untold stories that Tolkien used to create the impression historical depth in his work.
Recommended Citation
Walls-Thumma, Dawn M.
(2025)
"Grief, Grieving, and Permission to Mourn in the Quenta Silmarillion,"
Journal of Tolkien Research: Vol. 21:
Iss.
2, Article 9.
Available at:
https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol21/iss2/9
