But this is not the aspect which makes the greatest impression on most readers. For many the Athrabeth is a puzzling and somewhat startling work, in which Tolkien seems to introduce radical changes to conceptions established in his earlier writings, and writes in more detail about matters either left untold or barely touched on previously.
In earlier writings Man’s mortal nature is considered a gift, not a punishment, little indication is given of Eru’s intentions for Man’s part in the history of Arda, and the Fall of Man is only hinted at, as having taken place long before Men arrived in Beleriand. In the summary of his legendarium that he sent to *Milton Waldman in ?late 1951 Tolkien wrote that ‘the Doom (or the Gift) of Man is mortality, freedom from the circles of the world’ and ‘the first fall of Man … nowhere appears – Men do not come on the stage until all that is long past, and there is only a rumour that for a while they fell under the domination of the Enemy and that some repented’ (Letters, pp. 147–8). In the same letter, he wrote that ‘myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary “real” world’; and he criticized Arthurian legend (*Arthur and the Matter of Britain) for explicitly containing the Christian religion (p. 144).
In other letters, from 1954, Tolkien said that in his legendarium ‘Men are essentially mortal and must not try to become “immortal” in the flesh’ and that ‘Mortality’ is ‘represented as a special gift of God’ to Men and not ‘a punishment for a Fall’; and ‘Death – the mere shortness of human life-span – is not a punishment for the Fall but a biologically (and therefore also spiritually, since body and spirit are integrated) inherent part of Man’s nature’ (Letters, pp. 189, 205).
In a draft letter written in April 1956 he said: ‘I do not think that even Power or Dominion is the real centre of my story. … The real theme for me is about something much more permanent and difficult: Death and Immortality: the mystery of the love of the world in the heart of a race “doomed” to leave and seemingly lose it; the anguish in the hearts of a race “doomed” not to leave it, until its whole evil-aroused story is complete’ (Letters, p. 246).
These statements were made of course in letters not intended for publication, and Tolkien therefore could have introduced any changes or new ideas that he wished into the still unpublished *Silmarillion. He would have to take into account, however, the statement made in Appendix A of *The Lord of the Rings that although the Númenóreans had a longer life, ‘they must remain mortal since the Valar were not permitted to take from them the Gift of Men (or the Doom of Men, as it was afterwards called)’. According to a note written on the wrapping in which it was preserved, Tolkien intended, at least at one time, to include the Athrabeth and associated commentary in ‘The Silmarillion’ as the last item in an appendix.
Another note shows that Tolkien hesitated to include an account of the Fall: ‘Is it not right to make Andreth refuse to discuss any traditions or legends of the “Fall”? Already it is (if inevitably) too like a parody of Christianity. Any legend of the Fall would make it completely so?’ (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 354). Nevertheless, he included the Tale of Adanel. Christopher Tolkien writes that these remarks ‘are evidence that [Tolkien] was in some way concerned about these new developments, these new directions, in the underlying “theology” of Arda, or at any rate their so explicit expression’, and he saw a ‘significant shift’ from his father’s earlier writings and from comments made in letters (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 354). But Christopher was unable to interpret exactly what his father meant by them. He wonders if his father was referring to the suggestion that Eru himself would enter Arda, probably in human form. This, he says,
surely is not parody, nor even parallel, but the extension – if only represented as vision, hope, or prophecy – of the ‘theology’ of Arda into specifically, and of course centrally, Christian belief; and a manifest challenge to my father’s view in his letter of 1951 [to Milton Waldman] on the necessary limitations of the expression of ‘moral and religious truth (or error)’ in a ‘Secondary World’. [p. 356]
Various interpretations have been made of the Athrabeth texts, influenced to some extent by how far the reader accepts the truth of what is said and written. In the debate, Finrod and Andreth report Elvish and Mannish traditions and beliefs and express their own opinions and deductions, but none of these is necessarily actual truth, and even what is said may not (in the context of the invented world) have been correctly transmitted into later Elvish and Mannish tradition. The protagonists and the reader are within Tolkien’s secondary world. Although the commentary and notes seem to have a greater authority, coming from the creator of the fiction, they confirm neither Adanel’s account of the Fall nor Finrod’s deductions concerning Eru’s intentions for Man, nor Eru’s future entry into Arda, leaving these as possibilities rather than facts.
Verlyn Flieger suggests in ‘Whose Myth Is It?’ in Between Faith and Fiction: Tolkien and the Powers of His World, ed. Nils Ivar Agøy (1998), that Tolkien wrote the Athrabeth to explain his statement that death is a gift, because to maintain an inner consistency of reality ‘Men had to come to terms with death and question the circumstance of their own mortality’. Tolkien handled ‘what was clearly an ethically difficult, theologically risky problem for his sub-created world’: he allowed ‘the competing voices to speak for themselves, each to make its own case’, but ‘made sure that none of these competing voices spoke with final authority’ (p. 35). He did not include the Tale of Adanel in the Athrabeth, only as an appendix to his commentary and presented as lore rather than fact.
Nils Ivar Agøy argues in ‘The Fall and Man’s Mortality: An Investigation of Some Theological Themes in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth”’, also in Between Faith and Fiction: Tolkien and the Powers of His World (1998), that in his later writings Tolkien was aiming ‘at “consonance” with Catholic theology in more and more contexts’ (p. 17). The Athrabeth ‘may have been intended as a kind of final statement’ on Death and the Fall ‘in the context of the legendarium, written at a time when the process of adjustment to Catholicism had gone so far that even the Revelation in Christ and the Incarnation were more than hinted at’ (p. 18). Agøy notes that ‘both Finrod and Andreth take for granted the view, essential in Christianity, that man is both body and soul. They reject the notion that the soul is the “real” human person, using the body only as a temporary habitation. … Their insistence that the soul cannot go on without the body is of course sound Catholic doctrine …’ (p. 19).
Agøy calls attention to Tolkien’s statement in a note to the commentary that mortals (such as Frodo) who passed ‘oversea’ did so by special grace, given ‘an opportunity for dying according to the original plan for the unfallen: they went to a state in which they could acquire greater knowledge and peace of mind, and being healed of all hurts both of mind and body, could at last surrender themselves: die of free will, and even of desire, in estel [hope]’ (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 341). Agøy points out that this supports the idea of ‘an afterlife for humans’, and that ‘God’s [Eru’s] “original plan for the unfallen” involved dying’ (p. 20). He considers that Tolkien in the Athrabeth and in various letters is making the point ‘that humanity had the wrong attitude towards Death’: it is indeed a Gift, and ‘accepting and welcoming death, giving up life voluntarily when the time was come, was a sign of “goodness” in Men’ (pp. 20–1). As the focus of Tolkien’s writings ‘shifted more and more from “stories” to working out in detail the philosophical and metaphysical framework in which they existed, explicit Christianity in Roman Catholic form simply could not be avoided. Its presence was