Healthy Creation and Fecund Procreation in Middle-Earth:

The Relationship Between "the Birds and the Bees" and the Eldest of Trees

Steven Wissler
(This is a revised text of a presentation given at Mythcon 44 on 7/15/13)

ABSTRACT
Middle Earth is a fallen creation. Fetid marshland, deforestation, desertification, despoliation -- all
point to disruption of the natural order. But what -- or who -- caused these assorted ecological crises? It
is easy to fault the multitude of Middle-Earth-rending battles, Sauron's and Saruman's twisted
technologies, Orc overpopulation, unsustainable slash-and-burn food-gathering techniques, etc. And
looking into the backstory, it's easy to blame Melkor's alteration of the Great Music of the Ainur for
bringing evil into the cosmos.

But Tolkien's resorts neither to deep-ecology or cosmic-evil explanations for the ecological fall of
Middle Earth. Rather, he assigns the entrance of disruption to the natural balance of creation to
distortion in the procreational integrity of two of its creatures, Finwe and Muriel. In the "Laws and
Customs Among the Eldar" (Morgoth's Ring, vol. 12, History of Middle Earth), Tolkien shows that
Middle Earth was placed in jeopardy when these two High Elves fell short of their procreational
potential. Digging deeper into this narrative unlocks Tolkien's counter-intuitive idea that the fecundity
of rational creatures and the health of creation are dependent, suggesting that a flourishing humanity is
a blessing to natural ecology -- a theme that, except for C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength, is rare if not
completely absent in any other modern or post-modern work of mythopoeic or science fiction
literature.

***

In his famous 1973 introduction to LotR, Peter Beagle said Middle-earth is “a green alternative to
each day’s madness here in a poisoned world.” Perhaps Beagle was overcome by a “California
Feeling,” because his comment reflects a hazy view of Middle-earth typical of the Flower Power era.
Because Middle-earth is obviously not a pristine Garden of Eden—with fetid marshland,
deforestation, desertification. Orcs are multiplying and defoliating the countryside. Humankind is
losing population. Elvenkind has stopped reproducing and are out-migrating.
It’s evident that Middle-earth’s ecology is out of balance. There are a few green spots — the Shire,
Rivendell, Lothlorien — but they are threatened.
For readers, the panorama of Middle-earth in environmental peril creates excitement: Will the
Shire be saved? Will it become a poisoned world subject to Sauron and his pillaging Orc hordes?
The Elves want to go to the Undying Lands; they’re leaving Middle-earth in droves.
Meanwhile, Saruman the Wise has become an exploiter and is deforesting Fangorn Forest.
Between Sauron and Saruman, it appears that Middle-earth is caught, in Joni Mitchell’s words, in
“the devil’s bargain.” How are Frodo, Sam, and company going to “get back to the garden”?
We as readers are so caught up in the conflict, we don’t ask the obvious question: “With all the
Valar and Istari on the job, how did this milieu become so messed up in the first place? “
 One answer is to blame Sauron and his devilish machinery — and Orcs, propagating like hyped-
up cockroaches in Sauron’s and Saruman’s mutant breeding programs.
If we settle for this answer, however, then LoTR reads like a crypto-Luddite manifesto urging a
halt to technological progress and population growth. Indeed, one Internet blogger has said that “both
J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were (qualifiedly) anti-natal, that is they saw small families as the ideal,
and viewed unchecked reproduction as in fact a sign of at best coarseness and crudity and sometimes
even evil." [http://threehierarchies.blogspot.com/2006/05/inklings-were-qualifiedly-anti-natal.html]

Now Tolkien and Lewis certainly weren’t blind to population issues. In their day, the rise of
Prussia and Nazi Germany exploited population growth (of the right kind of populations) to power their
war machines.

"The Orcs went forth to rape and war, and Balrog captains marched before," says Tolkien in The
Lay of Leithian in History of Middle-earth, Vol III, p. 281.

But this doesn’t justify the claim that Tolkien -- who, like a good Elf, was the father of four
children -- was anti-natal or anti-population growth per se.

For Tolkien, the root cause of Middle-earth’s environmental problems isn’t Sauron’s and
Saruman's twisted technologies, Orc overpopulation, pillaging, and slash-and-burn predilections. He
doesn’t even blame Melkor for twisting the Great Music of the Ainur.

Instead of these cosmic forces, this thesis holds that Tolkein locates the root cause of Middle-earth
ecological crises in a marital disagreement, specifically, to a procreational crisis between two Elves —
Finwe and Miriel. They planted the seed from which all of Middle-earth’s evil weeds grew. They failed
to exercise the full procreational capacity inherent in their Elven natures in "the begetting" of Feanor.
It is well known to the readers of the History of Middle-Earth how Finwe’s remarriage to Indis
filled Feanor with resentment, which spills over into the creation of the Simarils that Melkor exploits
with catastrophic consequences for Middle-earth.
So to speak, Middle-earth’s ecological power was lost because Finwe and Miriel failed to exercise
properly their procreational power.
Then this thesis digs into the backstory reveals an even deeper theme. Tolkien did not intend to
write a Hippie narrative embracing Mother Earth and free-love. Nor was he writing a cautionary moral
tale with a Catholic pro-family, pro-marriage message.
Instead, he develops a deep moral-ecology theme that shows Middle-earth has a hidden
supernatural bond with Elvenkind’s and Humankind’s procreational destiny. Tolkien develops, in fact, a
theme counter to modern and post-modern thinking about the environment, namely that a flourishing
humanity is a blessing to natural ecology — that the fecundity of rational creatures and the health of
creation are intertwined. Then he illustrates this them in an Apocalyptic event — showing how the
procreational power of Aragorn and Arwen’s marriage re-energizes the ecology of Middle-earth.
This theme — that flourishing humanity is a blessing to natural ecology -- is so rare that, except
for C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength, I’m not sure it appears in any other modern or post-modern
work of mythopoeic or science fiction literature.
In terms of characters in the story, this thesis will explore how Middle-earth’s ecological power
was blighted through the failure of Finwe and Miriel to exercise their procreational powers. Then we
will see how creation was renewed by the sacrificial exercise of the procreational powers of Finwe’s
descendants, Aragorn and Arwen.
This thesis draws primarily from two sources. First, on the “Laws and Customs Among the Eldar"
(LACE) in Morgoth's Ring, volume 12 of the History of Middle-earth. And secondly, on Roman
Catholic moral theology that informed Tolkien’s imaginary world.
To develop this thesis, I will begin by briefly considering Tolkien’s view of creation, then move to
the subject procreation by defining relevant terms, especially the nature of Elvish “begetting,” then
consider the influence of Catholic moral theology in Tolkien’s ideas of Elvish procreation and
marriage, then consider our these ideas work out in terms of characters — how Finwe’s and Miriel’s
procreational failure was redeemed by Aragorn and Arwen fruitful marriage, and then finally conclude
by seeing how their procreative integrity re-invigorated Middle-earth, the Shire, and perhaps even us by
considering Sam and Rosie Gamgee as countercultural icons to our ZPG “Earth First” ethic today.

CREATION IN LoTR: RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL NATURES

Today, we’re told that Zero Population Growth policies, planned parenthood, artificial
contraception, and even population decline are all vital to Earth’s survival. Deep ecology theory says
that "the flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human
population" and that "the flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.”
Deep ecology takes a nature-over-man view, which contrasts with the man-over-nature idea of
modern science and the Stoics of antiquity. It was held, for example, by Origen and Cicero who
articulated the anthropocentric view that the world was “invented for the enjoyment of people.” [Page
84, John Granger Cook, The Interpretation of the Old Testament in Greco-Roman Paganism, Mohr
Siebeck, Tubingen, Germany, 2004.] The anti-Christian and Epicurean polytheist Celsus took the
contrary position, arguing that:
1 “All things were created for each other and that humans are a little fragment in the whole. The
course of mortal things is the same from beginning to end, and the same things must always, according
to the appointed cycles, recur in the past, present, and future.”
2. “All things, accordingly, were not made for man, any more than they were made for lions, or
eagles, or dolphins, but that this world, as being God’s work, might be perfect and entire and complete
in all respects. For this reason all things have been adjusted, not with reference to each other, but with
regard to their bearing upon the whole.” [http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Celsus.html]
Today, we hear that warm and fuzzy cyclic view in Disney’s Lion King’s anthem “The Circle of
Life.”
Tolkien’s myth turns all these ideas — the ideas of nature-over-man, man-over-nature, and man-
as-nature — inside out. He purposefully plants the idea that rational and non-rational creation can
actually flourish together. Indeed in LoTR, good characters are distinguished by a proper love for
creation, protecting and cultivating its inherent goodness: Elves make Lothlorien flourish more than
Fangorn; Gimli makes the Glittering Caves grow rather than mine it; Hobbits cultivate the Shire into
an Entwife-worthy garden.
 And Nature reciprocates this love: Hollen’s stones cry out for Elves; the Ford of Bruinen rises up
against the Black Riders to protect Rivendell.
Furthermore as will be shown, he plants the idea that the greening of our world depends on
revitalizing our view of human fecundity and procreation.
Rarely is this pro-natalist reading of LoTR championed in fandom and academia. I am reminded
of the Elizabeth Anscombe, the Oxford analytic philosopher famous for correcting, C.S. Lewis, who
walked into the lecture room pregnant with her seventh child. On the chalkboard was scribbled the
epithet — “Anscombe breeds” — to which she cleverly added “—immortal beings.”
But if Tolkien’s intuitions as an artist are perceptive — if the integrity of creation is somehow
linked to the integrity of procreation — and if his Middle-earth shares the same moral space as our
Earth — then I think we should at least consider his inside out proposal that when procreation
flourishes so too will creation.

DEFINITIONS
Due to the literary and theological intersections in this discussion, several definitions are in order.
The term “procreation” is defined broadly as the process of generating children from the conjugal act
through early child rearing. “Fecundity,” “conception,” and “gestation” are used in their common
biological senses, respectively as the capacity for bearing young, the beginning of human life, and the
carrying of young in the womb.
There is another important term that Tolkien used in LACE. That term is "begetting."

Tolkien describes “begetting” as much more than what we understand by the terms “sexual
intercourse” or “conception.” That’s because for Elves, “begetting” is not merely a biological event of
an ovum being fertilized by a spermatozoan; and “pregnancy” is not merely implantation and gestation
of an embryo in the womb.
Elvish begetting as an intertwining act of spirit and matter, an intentional conjunction of being and
existence. This idea isn’t far from how Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman describes the unity of
body and soul in human beings, who participate “in a world of spirits, as well as in a world of sense,
and we hold communion with it, and take part in it, though we are not conscious of doing so.”
[http://www.thework-fso.org/english/?p=201]
When it comes to the act of begetting, Tolkien says: “For all the Eldar spoke of the passing of
much strength, both of mind and of body, into their children in bearing and begetting. Therefore they
hold that the fea [the unbodied pre-begotten spiritual being of the child] ... draws nourishment from the
parents before the birth of the child: directly from the fea of the mother while she nourishes the hrondo
[physical being], and mediately but equally from the father, whose fea is bound in union with the
mother's and supports it.
"It was for this reason that all [Elven] parents desired to dwell together during the year of bearing,
and regarded separation at that time as a grief and injury, depriving the child of some part of its
fathering.”
In other words, the need to nurture fea of spirit, not just the hrondo of body, requires Elvish
fathers to stick around during pregnancy. According to LACE: "... though the union of the fear of the
wedded is not broken by distance of place, yet in creatures that live as spirits embodied fea communes
with fea in full only when the bodies dwell together."
The spiritual bonding of fear is one dimension of Elvish procreation. What about the physical
dimension? Tolkien gives no description of physical agony when Elves give birth. He does say,
however, that the experience -- unlike the Hebrews in Egypt and the runner Joan Benoit who grew
stronger after giving birth — the begetting process weakens Elven women physically. In fact, in giving
birth to Feanor, Miriel is completely consumed. Giving up her physical body, as fea she exits Middle-
earth to dwell in Valinor.
Feanor’s birth causes Miriel’s death. Her passing from Middle-earth has momentous
consequences. Finwe remarries Indis and gives birth to Feanor’s step-brothers, Fingolfin and Finarifin,
which aggravates Feanor. In jealousy and rage, he makes the Silmarils that lead to Elvendom’s and
Middle-earth’s doom.
Before looking deeper into those consequences, it’s logical to ask:
If this is the way with Elvish marriage — that the begetting of children leads to inevitable
weakening and perhaps death — why marry? Why not contracept?
In LACE, Tolkien explains that for Elves marriage and begetting are simply the "natural course of
life for all the Eldar." Elven girls and boys choose each other in youth, which extends to the age of 50.
Upon agreement of the parents, they are betrothed for a period of at least one year, symbolized by the
exchange of rings. If the betrothal is broken, the rings are returned and melted.
Rarely does an engaged Elf get jilted, however. Tolkien says: “[T]he Eldar do not err lightly in
such a choice. They are not easily deceived by their own kind; and their spirits being masters of their
bodies, they are seldom swayed by the desires of the body only, but are by nature continent and
steadfast."
Nevertheless, the desire for marriage and procreation is not always fulfilled -- "love was not
always returned; and more than one might desire one other for spouse.” This occasional mismatch
causes the Valar to speculate: What causes Elves to break their betrothals? In LACE, the Valar
speculate that incompatibility might be due to the "marring of Aman, and from the Shadow under
which the Eldar awoke ... [or from] love itself, and of the freedom of each fea, and was a mystery of the
nature of the Children of Eru.”

INFLUENCE OF CATHOLIC MORAL THEOLOGY

Now lightbulbs should go off when reading phrases like "natural course of life” and “their spirits
being masters of their bodies, they are seldom swayed by the desires of the body only, but are by nature
continent and steadfast.”
These phrases point to hugely important Catholic doctrines regarding natural law, grace and
nature, body and spirit, vice and virtue. To keep this discussion focused, however, lets just look at the
doctrine on Original Sin as it pertains to human marriage and procreation and compare that with what
Tolkien says about Elvish marriage and procreation. It will show Tolkien wasn’t kidding when he said
“The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work.”
As a child under the tutelage of his guardian, Fr. Frances Morgan, Tolkien would have learned his
Catechism — including the Catholic doctrine on Original Sin. That doctrine says that the Fall of Adam
and Eve marked human nature with four wounds:
 1) The would of malice = In which the Will is deprived of being ordered to the good.
2) The wound of ignorance = In which Reason is deprived of being ordered to the true.
3) The wound of weakness = In which the Irascible Appetite, comprised of five passions — hope
and despair, courage, fear, and anger — is deprived of being ordered to resist danger or perform the
arduous under the moderation of Reason.
4) The wound of concupiscence = In which the Concupiscible Appetite, comprised of six passions
— love and hatred, desire and aversion, joy and sadness — is deprived of being ordered toward the
good or away from evil under the moderation of Reason.
But all of these are secondary effects. The primary problem is the loss of grace—not just God’s
blessing, but God’s life in the soul, the participation of the whole person in the divine nature and the
eternal love of the Trinity.

Note that in Catholic theology the powers of the human soul are wounded by Original Sin. They
are disordered and disrupted. Their integrity is lost; their harmony and proper orientation to God, man,
and self are misdirected, but they are not entirely corrupted.
This is important, because it means human nature is not so far gone as to make marriage
meaningless or arbitrary or futile — or child bearing an unnatural indignity. Indeed, the one line of
contempt for human children is voiced by Sauroman: “What is the house of Eorl, but a thatched barn
where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among the dogs?”
Marriage retains the natural good of generating and procreating human life. Thus, it is the basis of
the sacrament of Holy Matrimony, where nature is perfected by grace—the divine life of the Holy
Trinity.
About marriage and matrimony, Tolkien writes to his son Michael in March 1941: "It is a fallen
world, and there is no consonance between our bodies, minds, and souls. However, the essence of a
fallen world is that the best cannot be attained by free enjoyment, or by what is called 'self-realization'
(usually a nice name for self-indulgence, wholly inimical to the realization of other selves); but by
denial, by suffering. Faithfulness in Christian marriage entails that: great mortification. For a Christian
man there is no escape. Marriage may help to sanctify & direct to its proper object his sexual desires;
its grace may help him in the struggle; but the struggle remains. It will not satisfy him – as hunger may
be kept off by regular meals. It will offer as many difficulties to the purity proper to that state, as it
provides easements. No man, however truly he loved his betrothed and bride as a young man, has lived
faithful to her as a wife in mind and body without deliberate conscious exercise of the will, without
self-denial."
That passage sounds like something from C.S. Lewis — in which the sufferings and happinesses
of marital life are offered up to God as sacrifices and joys that produce an eternal weight of glory.

INTEGRITY OF ELVISH PROCREATION AND MARRIAGE

Now contrast the wounds of human nature and the situation of human marriage with Elven nature
and marriage.
First off, Elven nature does not bear the wounds of Original Sin. Their will is ordered to the good.
Their reason is ordered to the true. Their irascible appetite doesn’t shrink from the arduous. They
delight in the good and pleasurable in moderation, without excess, without binges or hangovers. And
the participate in the grace of Eru Ilúvatar, being illuminated by a vision of the “love that moves the
sun and the other stars.”
Elves are a picture of how the powers of the human soul could harmonize if Original Sin had not
disrupted the integrity of our nature.
Consequently, the conjugal act for Elves is not just an act of sexual intercourse between bodies.
In their natural state, there are no Elvish shotgun marriages. There is no elf-on-elf rape, no
fornication, no unwanted children, no childless marriages, no contraceptives.
Passion is steered by will, which is guided by reason.
Throughout Elvish life, the procreative power and the will operate together in cooperation with
desire. Later in life, however, "with the exercise of the power the desire soon ceases, and the [Elven]
mind turns to other things." Nevertheless, the "union of love is to them great delight and joy, and the
'days of the children,' as they call them, remain in the memory as the most merry in life, but they have
many other powers of body and mind which their nature urges them to fulfill."
That’s why Elven overpopulation is not a problem. A typical elvish household has four children;
Feanor was renowned for seven.
Tolkien’s portrait of Elven procreation is an icon of integrity — of the harmony of body and spirit,
will and desire, and love for spouse and children and community.
The wonderful harmonies of this portrait — layered in with the green tableau of the Shire and
Rivendell — made Peter Beagle’s generation think that LoTR was about Hippie love-ins and
communes.
Again, this is an understandable, but a profound misreading. In a fallen world, human nature and
human relationships must be perfected by grace through suffering. Elvish nature, on the other, has the
power to raise families and cultivate the land in complete integrity without suffering — unless they
freely choose to take it on.

FINWE’S AND MIRIEL’S PROCREATIONAL FAILURE

Now against that back drop, the procreative dysfunction between Finwe and Miriel stands out as a
very unusual event in Elvish history.
It is such a big deal that it starts an argument among the Valar.
Behind this debate, remember that Elves are immortal in the sense that if their body is lost for
whatever reason, their spirit goes to the Halls of Mandos, where after a time of cleansing life, they or
reincarnated or re-embodied to continue living in Valinor or wherever they are destined. In this case,
Miriel after her body was consumed in begetting Feanor, she was destined to return from the Halls of
Mandos and continue her married life with Finwe.
LACE records an intense discussion among the Valar about the breakdown in the marriage and
procreative relationship between Finwe and Miriel:
They ask: Who is to blame for Miriel not returning to Finwe to parent their wild son Feanor and
have more kids?
Was it Miriel’s fault? After she surrendered body and spirit in the begetting of Feanor?
for not wanting to return in her physical body and get back together with Finwe
Or was it Finwe’s fault? In his grief-stricken weakness, Finwe constantly bugs Miriel to come
back — and then when she doesn’t, he bugs the Valar to recognize Miriel's renunciation of a bodily
return as the basis for granting marriage to Indis. Could Feanor’s stubbornness been have tamed "if
Finwe had endured his loss [of Miriel] and been content with the fathering of his mighty son”? [p64
sim]
Or was it the Valar’s fault? They gave in to Finwe's entries and recognized that the bond with
Miriel was severed because she decided she would never again re-embody, allowing the Valar to permit
Finwe to marry Indis.
Tolkien does not take give a definitive answer to this debate.
All we know is that the Valar forsee in Finwe's and Miriel's mysterious breach Middle-earth’s
doom.

ARAGORN’S AND ARWEN’S FRUITFUL MARRIAGE

Nevertheless, their remains a hidden potency in human and Elven procreation that will renew
Middle-earth.
It is through the heirs of the dubious union between Indis and Finwe that the healing of Middle-
earth ultimately occurs. Indis begets Finarfin, who begets Galadariel, who begets Celbrian, who begets
Arwen, who is the bethrothed of Aragorn.
And Aragorn is a descendent of Elendil and Fingolfin, Finarfin’s only brother. So the marriage of
Aragorn and Arwen closes the circle of generations descending from Finwe’s sons by Indis, compared
to the broken line of sevens sons by Miriel ending with Celebrimbor, the one and only grandson.
Anticipating his wedding with Arwen, an anxious Aragon asks Gandalf: "The Tree in the Court of
the Fountain is still withered and barren. When shall I see a sign that it will ever be otherwise?" [p308
RotK]
When will Aragorn see the sign? In the immortal words of Rodgers and Hammerstein, “It’s June,
June, June! June is busting out all over.”
Gandalf points Aragorn to a stony slope at the edge of a skirt of snow. "There sprang a sapling
tree no more than three foot high. Already it had put forth young leaves long and shapely, dark above
and silver beneath, and upon its slender crown it bore one small cluster of flowers whose white petals
shown like the sunlit snow.
"Then Aragorn cried: ‘… I have found it! Lo! here is a scion of the Eldest of Trees! But how
comes it here? For it is not itself yet seven years old.'...
"And Aragon planted the new tree in the court by the fountain, and swiftly and gladly it began to
grow; and when the month of June entered in it was laden with blossom.
"'The sign has been given," said Aragorn, 'and the day is not far off.' And he set watchmen upon
the walls."
At this point in the narrative, the reader knows little of the backstory regarding the Two Trees of
Valinor, their destruction, the compensatory making of the White Tree of Galathilion and its
descendants in the Trees of Gondor. Nevertheless, the blossoming of this Fourth Tree of Gondor
doesn’t appear as an authorial trick, a slight-of-hand symbol pulled out of Tolkien’s hat to dramatize
Aragorn’s and Arwen’s wedding. That’s because earlier acquaintance with the sympathetic
communion of Galadriel with the enchanted Wood of Lothlorien and the sentient awareness of the trees
in the Old Forest and Old Man Willow — all prepare the reader to understand there is some mystical
link between rational beings and arational trees. Tolkien’s predilection for trees is well known
[http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2008/11/03/30350-essay-tolkiens-trees/]
Here the focus is the conjunction between blossoming and wedding. Although the reader as been
conditioned to accept it within the story frame, it is reasonable to ask: How is that possible? What is
the nature of this mystical link between creation and procreation? One possible explanation may be in
the backstory — the creation of all things through in the divine music of Ilúvatar. This metaphor
suggests that the life of arational and rational beings, of creation and procreation share the same divine
music. They are not competing notes in the discordant struggle of man-over-nature or nature-over-
man. They resound together as a complete chord.
And thus on Midsummer’s Day, Aragorn and Arwen are wedded. And all the stars in the Gondor
sky flower, while the Eldest of Trees grows and blossoms.
This is not just a romantic picture of a wedding. Tolkien is drawing a rich portrait from deep
ecology and deep theology — In Arwen’s sacrifice of immortality to wed Aragon, procreational power
and ecological power are now reunited in a supernatural way to renew the face of Middle-earth.
We see that same unity of ecological power and procreational power at work in the Shire. Sam
remembers the gift of Galadariel and in one season, its virtue makes "one year do for twenty" in
replenishing lost trees and growing a mallorn, "one of the finest in the world."
"Altogether 1420 in the Shire was a marvelous year. Not only was there wonderful sunshine and
delicious rain, in due times and perfect measure, but there seemed something more: an air of richness
and growth, and a gleam of a beauty beyond that of mortal summers that flicker and pass upon this
Middle-earth. All the children born or begotten in that year, and there were many, were fair to see and
strong, and most of them had a rich golden hair that had before been rare among hobbits. The fruit was
so plentiful ... no one was ill, and everyone was pleased, except those who had to mow the grass."
Sam returns home: "And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Elanor upon his
lap."
And in case it’s not absolutely crystal clear that flourishing procreation and creation are
intertwined in Middle-earth, Tolkien bequeaths to Sam and Rosie Cotton, a record thirteen children.
Count them:
Elanor the Fair, Frodo, Rose, Merry, Pippin, Goldilocks, Hamfast, Daisy, Primrose, Bilbo, Ruby,
Robin, and Tolman (Tom)
And Tolkien gives Sam a new name: Samwise Gardner (Appendix C, LoTR).
Of Sam’s and Rosie’s relationship, Tolkien writes:
"I think the simple 'rustic' love of Sam and his Rosie (nowhere elaborated) is absolutely essential
to the study of his (the chief hero's) character, and to the theme of the relation of ordinary life
(breathing, eating, working, begetting) and quests, sacrifice, causes, and the 'longing for Elves', and
sheer beauty."
What Tolkien has achieved at the climax of LoTR — the wedding of fecundity in human
procreation with fertility in natural creation is literarily very unusual.
The only equivalent I know of is the scene in C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength where, once
again, June is busting out all over. Mrs. Dimble opens the window and she says:
“What a delicious night!”
 “For as the curtain swelled and lifted over the open window, all the freshness of a midsummer
night seemed to be blowing into the room. At that moment, a little farther off, came a sound of
whinnying.
“Hullo!” said Denniston, “the old mare is excited, too.”
“That’s a different horse,” said Denniston.
“It’s a stallion,” said Camilla.
“This,” said MacPhee with great emphasis, “is becoming indecent!”
“On the contrary,” said Ransom, “decent, in the old sense, decent, fitting, is just what she is.
Venus herself is over St. Anne’s.” [P. 121]

REINVIGORATING IDEAS OF MIDDLE-EARTH — AND OUR EARTH

How are modern and post-modern readers to view this strange, pre-modern vision, which sees the
fecundity of human procreation intertwined with the flourishing of natural creation?
I suggest four perspectives — the first, literarily, the second, allegorically, third, practically and
finally, morally.
Literarily, this procreational theme reweaves the LoTR story into an even more beautiful
tapestry.
Consider Miriel’s failure to re-embody herself to avoid … what? Further suffering in the
begetting of more children? Subservience to Finwe? Forfeiting the company of the Valar and the
comforts of the Halls of Mandos? Her motive is unclear, but her actions, her stubborn rejection of the
divinely-ordained re-embodiment that is the lot of the Eldar presents a strong contrast to Arwen. For
Arwen, who is immortal, forsakes her immortality by remaining in Middle-earth to wed and bear
Aragorn’s children, and eventually share in his suffering of mortality.
Then contrast Finwe’s impatient entreaties and second marriage to Indis to Aragorn’s patient
endurance of the unsung privations of Ranger life, leadership of the Fellowship, and his long, perhaps
futile betrothal to Arwen.
Thus, the humility and long-suffering of Aragorn and Arwen — the descendants of a long line
— are a beautiful, poignant mirror reflection of the petulance and stubbornness of Finwe and Miriel —
whose line burned out in almost one generation. This contrast in family trees and the ensuing affect on
the trees of Middle-earth is worthy of mythopoeic meditation (and awestruck admiration by writers
struggling to integrate a backstory theme with foreground characters and the story setting).
Allegorically, we see the High Elven nature of Finwe and Miriel construct the conjugal act on
their own hedonistic and gnostic terms, respectively embracing desire and forsaking the body and
thereby bypassing the challenges of procreation together. This strongly contrasts with the simple
“rustic” Sam Gamgee, who embraces the flesh in charity — and like Christ — bears fruit abundantly
with his betrothed.
Morally, Tolkien said he wrote LoTR in the hope that “the elucidation of truth, and the
encouragement of good morals in this real world, by the ancient device of exemplifying them in
unfamiliar embodiments, that may tend to ‘bring them home’.”
[http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=15-01-033-f]
 But practically speaking, does Tolkein’s idea — that the health of natural creation is co-joined to
or cooperates with vigorous, healthy human procreation — work in the real world? All civilized people
know that 2.1 children (or less) is the maximum human reproduction rate that Mother Earth tolerates.
As I’ve considered Tolkien’s idea, I found that maybe his deep ecology isn’t as crazy as it sounds. At
least, it seems that artificially reconstructing human procreation to a ZPG perfect, DNA-scanned 2.1-
embryos (or less) may have negative environmental consequences — sometimes directly, sometimes
indirectly. As an example of the former: even the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals’
doesn’t deny that our drinking water is contaminated by contraceptive sex hormones.
http://www.arhp.org/publications-and-resources/contraception-journal/august-2011). Indirectly,
China’s one-child policy, which has been in effect for over 30 years and should have theoretically led to
conserving natural resources and less pollution has resulted in berserk industrialization, rampant
pollution, and unprecedented natural resource pillaging and depletion.
Why is that? Perhaps when we manipulate and deploy chemical agents against our own
procreational nature, that willful intention and disordered passion extends to creation itself.
Thus the fertile imagination of Ray Kurzweil, who has done so much good for differently abled
people and who was recently appointed Director of Engineering for Google, has concocted a gnostic
Transhuman vision of a technological singularity that in the year 2045 will transcend the "limitations of
our biological bodies and brain.” Our destiny, in his myth, is to saturate the universe with intelligence,
enlisting all matter and energy in a transhuman leap to the stars, leaving Earth behind as a strip-mined,
barren hulk spinning in the void.
Compare the gnostic elites of Silicon Valley to Sam and Rosie Gamgee of Hobbiton. Tolkein
portrays Sam as a simple soul — not endowed with brilliant intelligence, but with admiration of Elves
and faithful loyalties and rustic loves that fill him with more enlightenment than Sauroman with all his
knowledge. These simple souls elucidate a different vision — a procreational ideal that is proper to
human dignity and ecological sustainability— which embraces marriage and procreation with humble
courage without magic or machinery.
In this interpretation of LoTR, we readers are living the story. The Fourth Age of Middle-earth
and our Earth share the same moral space. LoTR is not a morality tale nor an allegory, but a high,
heroic vision handed on to us here and now to inform our own procreational participation within the
divine music of creation.
So in conclusion, as you listen to this talk about Peter Beagle’s Flower Power generation — the
greying Founders of this Society — nostalgically recall the time when the countercultural slogan —
“Frodo Lives” — was scribbled on campus chalkboards, perhaps Generation Text should consider
another slightly longer, slightly more radical slogan for our gnostic times. Such a slogan would express
the hope that Tolkien’s vision for the mutual flourishing of creation and procreation would take root in
today’s mad world.
And that slogan — which easily fits in a 140 character tweet — might go something like this:
“Sam and Rosie Gamgee breed immortal beings.”