Images of Paradise: comparisons

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by lmp

#2: paradise as home of those who have passed from this life to the next

I am currently more interested in #2.

In that vein, my interest in Valinor would therefore be limited to the Halls of Mandos. What's Tolkien's description for it? I don't recall any really thoroughgoing description in The Silmarillion. Is there in HoME?

Now I come to think of it, it is interesting that in LotR there sems to be little said of the paradise which awaits mortals, yet they do seem to be secure in its very existence, which is a particularly Christian view. What does intrigue me is that mortals in Middle Earth are obviously aware of the existence of Valinor, so how would this affect a person's view on life after death? Would this add to the certainty of knowing there is 'somewhere else'? Or might it make a mortal feel jealousy of some kind? Surely this would give rise to a number of different beliefs, even if we looked at it in terms of the theology/cosmology of Middle Earth?

Originally Posted by Lathriel

After the dead are freed they become part of the earth,trees,grass etc. This has a peaceful feeling (for me). However, Tolkien's paradise (#2) is where people are actually still in a whole form whereas in Pullman's books they go back to the earth.

We can't possibly do much more than speculate on what the ancients believed happened after death, and at any one time they possibly held the multifarious beliefs that we hold today, but one possibility is that they believed human 'souls' were returned to the earth. There is some evidence of this with the practice of excarnation, where a body would be either deliberately stripped of flesh before burial, or more interestingly in terms of this discussion, it would be left for the elements and wild animals to deal with. This would not mean just dumping the body, on the contrary, it would be placed in a special place, often an enclosure. It is quite possible to infer from this that the intention was that the 'soul' would be returned to the living world in this way by providing nutrients in its turn. The practice is not allowed today, as it would be impractical to have bodies lying about our hillsides! But there is an echo of it in the popular 'green' burial where the body is not marked with an ornate stone but with a young tree.

To me, this is all incredibly peaceful and somehow 'correct' and I can see that it is this concept which Pullman was getting at. Looking at death with physics in mind, we do go on, as we are all made of matter and energy and you cannot destroy these. But can you destroy consciousness?

That is where the traditional ideas of paradise come in. In these, humans have constructed places where consciousness survives, and identity. Each different paradise though, has a 'code', and it is ruled by the God to which it corresponds, and entry is not generally possible without acceptance of that God (though even within Christianity there are exceptions to this where acceptance is not necessary). Is this what Pullman was getting at with his Republic of Heaven? His paradise could be a democratic paradise, which allows for all faiths and beliefs and non-beliefs. He was trying to make out that there could be a possibility that Paradise could be all things to everyone. But only a possibility, as the very fact that he showed the possibility of infinite worlds might mean that there could be infinite Heavens. The Heaven his characters were waging war against was one Heaven, a particular one which was dominant.

I agree that the book finally skipped over the important and quite maddening questions which we always seek to answer. And it did seem that to 'grow up' was to resign yourself to something. But what it served to do for me was to underline how thoroughly depressing I find absolute atheism. A famous quote, but not so famous that I can remember who penned it, mentions atheism as something like a 'bright and breezy highway'. Alas, I find it to be quite the opposite.

Having experienced what can only be described as a sense of deep disappointment as what seemed certain death reared up, I now know that it is important not to waste what life is made available to us, as we cannot bank on getting another life. I feel I can delineate between the things which are truly fulfilling and those pursuits which are mere time wasting (e.g. devoting precious hours to notions of status). I think that experiences of trauma bring that cold sense of realisation to a person, and Tolkien was one of these people.

Having been through horrors he could appreciate what was worthy and what was not, and this is why he painted grim pictures of people like Grima and Saruman and Gollum, all 'trapped' by some need, whether for status, power or an object of desire. In this he did not shirk from addressing the big questions. And I think that this is the difference between Tolkien and Pullman. The former experienced horror and came out of it ready to address ideas and accept some kind of belief, while the latter has not (to my knowledge) lived through that kind of experience so is 'safe' enough to cast off what might seem to be non-pragmatic ideals. This contrast in itself could apply to the world Tolkien admires, one where the past is respected, and our modern one where we feel change is all-important. I hope this makes any sort of sense, it's way past my bedtime!