By the Waters of Anduin We Lay Down and Wept

Tolkien’s Akallabêth and the Prophetic Imagination

Abstract

A once-glorious civilization is laid low in a world-altering cataclysm; a mere handful of survivors escape from the wrack. Looking back from a distant land, the faithful remnant attempts to come to terms with the enormity of the catastrophe and answer the looming question: “How could God allow this to happen?” This synopsis could just as easily describe the Hebrew prophetic writings composed after the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, or J.R.R. Tolkien’s account of the Downfall of Númenor. This article teases out the parallels between these two myths of fidelity, apostasy, and catastrophe from a progressive Christian perspective, reading the exilic prophet Jeremiah in conversation with Tolkien’s Akallabêth and the figure to whom its authorship is attributed within Tolkien’s secondary world: Elendil the Faithful, leader of the Númenóreans in exile. Jeremiah and the Akallabêth both address the problem of theodicy, the question of how an all-powerful, all-loving God can permit suffering and evil. The author challenges the theodicy of blessings and curses which emerges from both texts, arguing that their twinned approaches to the "problem of pain" shed light on the religious and ideological dynamics at work in Tolkien's secondary as well as primary worlds. The article concludes by suggesting that the legendarium writ large can be read as a work of prophetic imagination, a mythopoetic reckoning with the irrevocable loss of a communal past and the challenge of living into a hopeful future in a broken world.