I am happy to post this interview what is binary option with author Benita J. Prins, fellow lover of all things Tolkien and a great writer in her own right too! I read her fantasy, Sea of Crystal, Sea of Glass recently and recommend … Continue reading
Few objects in Tolkien’s mythology carry as much beauty and danger as the Silmarils. They are jewels, yet they are also vessels of memory, signs of creative genius, and the center of a catastrophe that reshapes the history of Middle-earth. Their making begins with an act of artistic wonder and ends by drawing Elves, Men, and other powers into violence.
Fëanor’s achievement is often described through the language of craft, but the jewels cannot be reduced to technical marvels. They embody a difficult question: what happens when a maker tries to preserve something that belongs to the world rather than to any individual? The Silmarils hold the light of the Two Trees, but their story is also about possession, inheritance, and the limits of ownership.
Reading this episode closely reveals Tolkien’s fascination with the moral weight of artistic creation. The jewels are radiant because they contain something sacred, but their radiance intensifies the desires of those who see them. Their beauty does not remain innocent once Fëanor treats it as an extension of his own will.
Fëanor is the supreme craftsman of the Noldor, and Tolkien presents his skill as both intellectual and physical. He works with metals, gems, language, and devices of thought. His achievement is not the result of passive inspiration. It depends on concentration, experiment, knowledge of materials, and a willingness to pursue a vision beyond anything previously attempted.
The Silmarils are therefore important as works of art. Fëanor does not merely discover a beautiful substance and place it in a setting. He creates something new, combining the light of Telperion and Laurelin with an unknown material of extraordinary hardness and clarity. The jewels are living symbols of transformation: natural radiance passes through the mind and hand of a maker and emerges in a permanent form.
Yet Tolkien gives this artistic triumph an unsettling dimension. Fëanor’s name means “Spirit of Fire,” and fire suggests both creative energy and destructive force. His imagination burns brightly, but it also consumes restraint. The same intensity that allows him to make the Silmarils makes him suspicious, possessive, and quick to interpret any threat as an attack on his identity.
The light of the Two Trees is among the most powerful images in Tolkien’s mythology. Laurelin and Telperion illuminate Valinor before the creation of the Sun and Moon, and their radiance belongs to a blessed order that precedes the world’s later sorrows. When Fëanor preserves that light in the Silmarils, he performs an act of conservation as well as invention.
The jewels do not simply contain brightness in a literal mechanical sense. They preserve the memory and presence of a vanished harmony. After Melkor destroys the Trees with Ungoliant, the Silmarils become the last physical witnesses to their light. This makes them precious to the Valar, but it also makes Fëanor’s refusal to surrender them morally complex. His refusal protects his creation, yet it leaves the world without an immediate means of restoration.
Tolkien often treats light as something that should be received, shared, and passed onward. Fëanor instead seeks to secure it inside objects that bear his personal stamp. The Silmarils thus dramatize the tension between stewardship and possession. Their brilliance is a gift to the world, but Fëanor’s relationship to them increasingly resembles ownership of a sacred relic that no one else may touch.
The Silmarils are not evil objects. Their danger comes from the desires they awaken. They reveal character by making hidden impulses visible. Fëanor’s pride, Melkor’s envy, the Valar’s political concerns, and the later claims of Elves and Men all gather around the jewels because each group sees something different in them.
Varda’s blessing protects the Silmarils from unclean hands. This quality gives the jewels a moral dimension that ordinary treasures do not possess. They cannot be treated as neutral property. They respond, in a symbolic sense, to the condition of those who seek them. The jewels are physically beautiful, but their deeper significance depends on the relationship between beauty and moral fitness.
Melkor understands this vulnerability. He does not make the Silmarils, yet he recognizes that their existence can divide the Noldor. His theft is an act of destruction as much as acquisition. By taking the jewels and killing Finwë, he turns Fëanor’s private attachment into a public crisis. The sacred work of craft becomes the cause of an oath, an exile, and a long history of bloodshed.
Fëanor’s oath changes the meaning of the Silmarils. Before the oath, they represent creative achievement and the lost light of Valinor. Afterward, they become the stated justification for actions that include rebellion against the Valar, the first Kinslaying at Alqualondë, and the abandonment of Fingolfin’s host. The jewels remain beautiful, but their story is now inseparable from violence.
The oath also transforms possession into inheritance. Fëanor and his sons claim the right to pursue the jewels wherever they may be found, even when those who hold them have legitimate reasons for doing so. This claim becomes especially tragic when the Silmarils pass into the hands of Beren and Lúthien, Dior, and Elwing. Each transfer complicates the idea that the jewels can belong to any one family or people.
Tolkien’s account refuses to grant Fëanor’s heirs a clean moral victory. Their courage and loyalty are real, but the oath narrows their vision until the jewels matter more than compassion, kinship, or prudence. Craft has become an inheritance of obsession. The sons of Fëanor do not make the Silmarils, but they allow their father’s possessive desire to govern their lives.
The making of the jewels can be read alongside Tolkien’s broader interest in sub-creation. Artists and makers imitate the creative activity of the divine, bringing forms into being from materials already present in the world. This work can be generous when it opens beauty to others, but it becomes dangerous when the maker treats creation as proof of personal supremacy.
Fëanor’s achievement is therefore both admirable and flawed. He gives the world something no one else could have made, and the Silmarils preserve an irreplaceable light. At the same time, he cannot separate the value of the jewels from his own status as their maker. Any request to surrender them feels like an attempt to erase his contribution.
The tragedy does not mean that great art should never be made or treasured. Tolkien’s concern is more precise: creation carries obligations. A beautiful work can outlast its maker, enter new relationships, and acquire meanings beyond the artist’s intention. The Silmarils become a test of whether their maker can release them into a larger history. Fëanor cannot do so, and the cost is borne by generations.
| Aspect of the Silmarils | Meaning in the legend | Effect on the story |
|---|---|---|
| Material brilliance | The preserved light of the Two Trees | Connects the jewels to memory, grace, and loss |
| Fëanor’s workmanship | The height of Elven craft and imagination | Establishes his greatness and intensifies his pride |
| Sacred protection | A response to moral corruption | Makes possession a question of worth, not only power |
| The oath | A demand for absolute ownership | Turns artistic inheritance into a cause of war |
| Later recoveries | A movement through different peoples and generations | Shows that no claimant can fully control their meaning |
| Final fate | The jewels return to fire, earth, and sea | Places them beyond ordinary possession and history |
After Morgoth steals the Silmarils, their history moves far beyond Fëanor’s workshop. Beren and Lúthien recover one from Morgoth’s crown, an act that joins the jewel to love, courage, and resistance rather than to dynastic entitlement. Their story suggests that the light can be reclaimed through humility and sacrifice, even though the recovery also creates new conflict.
The Silmaril carried by Dior passes into the tragic history of Doriath, while the jewel received by Elwing reaches the Havens of Sirion. When Elwing chooses to leap into the sea rather than surrender it, the jewel’s fate becomes linked to endurance and transformation. Her rescue by the power of Ulmo allows the Silmaril to reach Eärendil, who carries it into the heavens.
At that point, the jewel no longer serves a single maker or claimant. It becomes a star, a sign of hope visible across Middle-earth. Its light helps Eärendil plead for aid on behalf of the peoples of the world. The work of Fëanor has entered a purpose he could not have imagined, demonstrating that creation may find its truest meaning after it leaves the creator’s control.
The Silmarils belong to a larger pattern in Tolkien’s writing: precious objects often gather history around themselves, but their significance depends on choices. The One Ring is designed for domination, while the Silmarils are created from love of beauty and preservation. Even so, both objects show how attachment can become destructive when desire turns into possession.
Their story also complicates the familiar opposition between nature and technology. Fëanor’s craft does not simply corrupt what is natural. It saves a form of natural light that would otherwise be lost. The problem lies in the moral use of skill, not in skill itself. Tolkien allows craftsmanship to be magnificent while warning that mastery without humility can become a form of spiritual blindness.
Readers exploring Tolkien’s literary world can place the Silmarils beside other objects in his fiction: the phial of Galadriel, the leaves of Lórien, the Rings of Power, and even the humble materials carried by Samwise. These objects differ in power, but many of them raise the same question: does a treasure increase in value when it is guarded, or when it is given away at the right moment?
A thoughtful reading can keep the jewels’ wonder and danger in view at the same time. The following approaches help connect their making with Tolkien’s reflections on art, memory, and moral responsibility:
The most revealing contrast is between Fëanor’s desire to keep the light and the later acts that allow it to travel. Beren and Lúthien do not preserve the Silmaril by locking it away. Elwing does not treat it as a family possession at the cost of all else. Eärendil carries it outward, and its radiance becomes meaningful because it serves a world beyond one household.
This movement from guarded treasure to shared sign gives the legend its emotional depth. The Silmarils remain connected to Fëanor, but they are not finally explained by him. His craft begins their history; the choices of others determine what that history can become.
The making of the Silmarils is therefore a story about the beauty of creation and the danger of confusing creation with ownership. Fëanor captures the light of a lost paradise, yet his inability to relinquish the jewels helps deepen the darkness of the First Age. Their later journey offers a different model: beauty reaches its fullest purpose when it becomes a source of hope beyond the maker’s private claim.
For further reflections on Tolkien, Middle-earth, and the literary lives of treasured objects, explore the essays and book discussions on Anne Marie Gazzolo’s site. The Silmarils invite rereading because every return to their story reveals another connection between craft, memory, longing, and the difficult freedom of letting beauty go.
An essay I wrote about the desire of Tolkien and the TCBS to be a light to their darkening world. A century later, he still provides light. Thank you, Professor and God trade binary option bless! Art by Justin Gerard … Continue reading