'This isn't Hell,'
The Doctor assured her.
'It’s only A Sequel.'
Why Tolkien Abandoned His Sequel
“In the years following The release
Publication of The Lord of the Rings
and its massive Success, J.R.R Tolkien
considered The Idea of A Sequel —
This Idea was quickly abandoned
and His Vision of A Sequel never fulfilled.
The dozen or so pages he did write,
however, were finally published in 1996
as part of Christopher Tolkien’s
The Peoples of Middle Earth.
From this, in combination with private letters
that were released to The Public in 1981,
We can begin to Paint a Picture not only of
His Vision, but why he ultimately abandoned it.
The Story itself is a simple Dialogue
between two characters, Borlas, The Son of Berag
from The Lord of the Rings, and Saleon.
This conversation takes place well into the reign
of Aragorn's son, Elderon, over a hundred years
after the death of the great King —
The War of the Ring
is nothing but A Story.
Gondor is prosperous and peaceful.
The memory of Sauron almost forgotten.
The two men delve into
a philosophical discussion
regarding The Evil in Men's Hearts.
Its constant presence
regardless of Their Circumstances.
They contemplate The Nature
of this Evil, the so-called Dark Tree.
And at some point,
We hear of the term Herumour.
What this is, We don't really know.
What We Do Know is that
it was used by a secret cult
hidden within Gondor that had begun
worshiping The Dark Lord as A God.
The People, Salem claimed,
had grown discontent, and
there was increasing unrest.
He asks Borlas to join him
somewhere secret after nightfall
in order to explain further, after which
he leaves our protagonist alone to ponder.
Borlas returns home, but he feels uneasy
as if an ancient Evil was beginning to return.
With this, Tolken stopped
and never picked up The Pen to write
a sequel for The Lord of the Rings ever again.
The Question is, why?
Why did he abandon this specific sequel?
And also, why didn't he just write something different instead?
Thankfully, in his letters, he answers
the first question rather definitively.
In letter 256, written in 1964 to Colin Bailey, Tolken says,
"I did begin a story placed about a 100red years after the downfall, but it proved both sinister and depressing.
Since we are dealing with Men, it is inevitable that we should be concerned with the most regrettable feature of their nature, their quick satiety with Good. So that the people of Gondur in times of peace, justice, and prosperity would become discontent and restless, while the dynast descended from Aragorn would become just kings and governors like Denithor or worse.
I found that even so early, there was an outcrop of revolutionary plots about a center of secret satanistic religion while Gondorian boys were playing at being orcs and going around doing damage.
I could have written a thriller about the plot and its discovery
and overthrow, but it would have been just that, not worth doing.
A year before his death, he mentions the subject yet again with the main difference being changing the timeline of events. Instead of the sequel taking place a century after the fall of Baradur, this version occurs a century after Aragon's death.
In letter 338, he explains, "I have written nothing beyond the first few years of the fourth age, except the beginning of a tale supposed to refer to the end of the reign of Elderon about a 100 years after the death of Aragorn."
Then I of course discovered that the king's peace would contain no tales worth recounting and his wars would have little interest after the overthrow of Sauron, but that almost certainly a restlessness would appear about then owing to the it seems inevitable boredom of men with The Good. There would be secret societies practicing dark cults and orc cults among adolescents.
In his original conceptualization of a sequel, Tolken imagined a Gondor perhaps akin to Numor before its fall. The goodness and the legends of the past had been forgotten, perhaps abandoned in this new age of prosperity and safety. Why should anyone care about the struggles of the past when we have nothing to worry about today? In this environment, people simply do not understand how lucky they are, how protected and peaceful their lives have become due to the sacrifices of their ancestors, of our protagonists from the War of the Ring. In this age of wealth, they grow bored. They grow not to care for what forged their good living in the first place. Thus, they turn to alternatives. They even begin worshiping the same darkness that tried to enslave their fathers and mothers. What could be more depressing than that? Everything that our protagonist went through to defeat Sauron and destroy the ring. Every death, every drop of blood reduced to nothing within a few centuries. And perhaps worse than that, it was reduced to nothing from within, not due to some external enemy. Humanity itself is shown to bring about its own doom inevitably, like an endless cycle of misery. In short, a sequel that renders The Lord of the Rings redundant is no sequel at all, which is why it was abandoned. Even more so, it would have desecrated the primary theme of The Lord of the Rings. Hope. The book is all about hope, about beating the odds, doing what is right in the face of insurmountable odds. How could this hope be destroyed without The Lord of the Rings itself being rendered meaningless? The problem is that any type of sequel would have required some sort of antagonistic force. This version, as Tolken rightfully said, would have felt more like a thriller due to its psychological struggle with evil from within Gondo. But even an external enemy would have likely been a bad idea, as it would have either made Sauron redundant or the new enemy would not have been strong enough to compare. Either the sequel is disappointing or the Lord of the Rings is overshadowed. Moreover, another problem that would have affected any type of sequel has to do with Tolken's world building itself. As you know, the fantastical and the magical within Middle Earth is slowly on its way out. This is a major theme of the Lord of the Rings that the age of the elves is waning and the age of men is about to begin. After all, Tolken wanted Middle Earth and Arda to gradually transition into our own reality, a reality without magic and fantastical creatures. As this was already a big theme of The Lord of the Rings, it would have had to be a large theme of a sequel taking place many years after The Lord of the Rings 2. The issue is that without the fairy and mythological elements that Tolken adored so much, his new book would no longer really be a fairy story. It would not have the mystical elements that we have grown so used to with the Sylmerelion, the Hobbit, and the Lord of the Rings. Not unless he completely changed directions on this massive theme of this world. Something I do not think would have been wise. something that Tolken obviously agreed with considering we did in fact get no sequel. The last major reason why a sequel was abandoned had to do with the Sylmerelion. The Sylmerelion was the passion project of Tolken's entire life. He was in the process of writing and rewriting it for about 50 years, never being able to quite finish it and be satisfied. Therefore, understanding the issues with writing a sequel, he instead focused his efforts on other endeavors. And though they were not published in his lifetime, we can thank his son Christopher for editing and publishing them for the past 40 years. A massive thank you to my channel members, and thank you very much for watching.
