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Is That an Orc in Your Pocket, Or Are You Just Happy to Be Evil? - Page 3

© Michael Martinez

The Belegostians, for their part, could have declined the invitation purely out of horror at the thought of Morgoth's enemies fighting among themselves. Enough blood would have been shed already. And what right would Dwarves have to claim a Silmaril anyway? Retrieving it from Thingol's victorious army would be costly, and then would not the surviving Noldor demand the jewel's return? The Nogrodians would only be able to justify their war (in Dwarven eyes) through a cry for vengeance. But would Dwarven custom agree with that cry where the underlying cause of the conflict was the theft of a holy artifact? The Nogrodians must therefore have succumbed to the curses laid upon the treasures. Mim's curse upon the Nauglamir and the Valar's curse upon the Silmaril ensured that no one could possess either for very long. Even Beren and Luthien did not live long after Beren acquired the necklace and Silmaril. No one may have touched them, but their possession of the forbidden treasure hastened their deaths. Was Beren right to keep the Silmaril, rather than return it to the Noldor? He certainly had no love for Celegorm and Curufin, but did he have the right to withhold the treasure which had been taken from their family? Elvish ambition is wrapped up with a peculiar pride, an ambient sin which focuses on the value of achievement rather than possession. That is, a King of Numenor or Gondor would look out upon Middle-earth and see slaves and tribute pouring into his realm. But a King of Elves would look out upon Middle-earth and see a diamond in the rough, a gemstone waiting to be shaped and enchanted. Empires are crude but artistic draperies laid across the face of the land. They might be a shadow of the effect which an Elven civilization could have upon the landscape. Gandalf said, in "The Ring Goes South", that "much evil must befall a country before it wholly forgets the Elves, if once they dwelt there." Legolas replied, "That is true. But the Elves of this land were of a race strange to us of the silvan folk, and the trees and grass do not now remember them. Only I hear the stones lament them: deep they delved us, fair they wrought us, high they builded us; but they are gone. They are gone. They sought the havens long ago." Legolas' words seem to imply that he, as a wood-elf, shares an affinity with the living plants of the landscape. But the Noldor shared an affinity with the very stones of the Earth. They shaped the world itself, or a part of it, and the land remembered the Elves even long after all else had forgotten them. So the expression of Elvish ambition was the ultimate imprimature of their will upon the land.

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