Slaying Dragons and Salvation

I wanted to use my wild card to come back to our discussion on jewels, dragons, and heaven because I think it’s very indicative of the type of myth The Lord of the Rings is, a fundamentally Christian one. I waited so long to go back and summarize my readings about jewels and dragons because I needed to meditate on further themes of evil, salvation, and love to get to this more polished conclusion. Dragons and jewels are not just core parts of fantasy as a genre, but they are the core story of the mythos of faery, Lord of the Rings, and Christianity.

So why do dragons guard treasure?

In our discussion regarding monsters and critics, we analyzed dragons from a meta-perspective, the gatekeepers of the treasure of literature, the faery; they are the guardians of the secondary reality. But how do dragons appear within Tolkien’s work itself? 

The history of Dragons that appear in the Silmarillion tell us that it was Morgoth who bred the dragons in the first age, and many of these dragons were used in the battles for the Silmarils, the War of the Jewels.  The connection between dragons and jewels, then, is not just a trope but their purpose. It is not that dragons happen to guard jewels, but they were made for guarding jewels. This purpose tells us a lot already about how they function within the world. As humans were created to be sub-creators, dragons were created to guard jewels, something they fundamentally did not make, something stolen.  

The most potent relationships we see regarding these dragons in the books are dragons and the Dwarves and dragons as the stead of the Witch King. The Dwarves and Smaug make for the most salient comparison where the Dragon hoards the treasure the Dwarves are after, and they are only able to get the arkenstone by defeating the dragon. The dragon the Witch king rides is also hoarding a jewel, the ring, seeking out this treasure in the books.  Here we see dragons fundamentally aligned with greed, but as discussed, they are not mere allegories or personifications of vices such as greed or pride.  

When greed is discussed, I want to remove it from the common conception of greed and focus on the form of greed or greedy-love we have discussed in relation to Feanor and the Silmarils.  To have dragons be representative of greed doesn’t answer the question of why Jesus is the dragon slayer, the hero, because Jesus does much more than slay greed in the Christian tradition; When discussing greed, more importantly greedy-loving, in Tolkiens work, it has been in relation to Feanor’s greedy love of the Silmarils which led to the war, Gollum’s greedy-love for the ring which led to his own demise, an most importantly the Numenoreans greedy-love for life which led to the fall of Numenor.  When we discuss this idea of greedy-love, we are discussing the idea of the origin of sin itself and the evil forces which lead to the fall in the first place.  Therefore, there is a fundamental connection between the dragons and jewels and the salvation of men in a larger sense than just getting the treasure.    

Dragons are greedy-lovers for only jewels, so then what’s up with these jewels? 

Well, I think there are two key aspects of jewels, and they both come together with the fused nature of how Tolkien conceptualizes Jewels as light and flesh while also being rock. This is evident in the literal creation of a jewel (a rock worked by human creativity and skill) but also the mythos of the jewel in Tolkien’s work.   

First, on the idea of the body.  We discussed how Christian tombs would often display bones covered in gems which mirrors two biblical concepts: 1.) the jeweled breastplate of Aaron in Exodus 28 and 2.) the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21.  For Aaron, the value of the jewels are not just in their beauty and skill, but also where it allows him to go, inside of the tabernacle, the house of Adonai and the place of worship for the Israelites.  The jewels allow Aaron’s body to connect with God.  In Revelation, the jewel is New Jerusalem itself, and this is particularly interesting. The jewel is the city which is also named The Bride of Christ, another body that is in communion with God.  Here, it is a city, so the body is collective, and it allows all who inhabit it to be in an eternal relationship with God.  

So to put it simply, dragons hoard jewels, and their greedy-love prevents us from connecting and being with God.  That is why Jesus is the dragon-slayer, he is the Way to God, and no one can get there except through him. This seems to take on the particular meaning for bodily salvation, where people are able to get to heaven and connect to God by means of their connection to jewels, Christ. They cannot find this bodily salvation themselves, but instead have Him slay their dragons for them. 

This is supported by the second idea of the jewel, the jewel as light, which has a really fascinating link into a larger form of salvation in both Tolkien’s work and for the Christian meaning.  Light, in Tolkien’s work is a form of warding off evil, particularly the Phial of Galadriel which carries the light of Earendil, Earendil who also slayed a dragon and is Tolkien’s creation of Christ in his mythology. Outside of Galadreil being akin to Mary, the elves in general are wise because they see the light, the light of the Eldar but also the inner consistency of the universe.  Outside of the bodily salvation, the access one has to the light or wisdom of creation is another, perhaps larger for of salvation that brings about the second coming of Christ. To slay the dragon then is not just to have individual bodily resurrection, but a much more powerful eternal resurrection and salvation for the whole of creation. I’m sure this is the light we might have seen when Jesus fought off Satan.  

This idea of slaying dragons for the eternal salvation of the world comes into conversation with our second day of Jewels and trees, how the living jewel trees are like the cross, and once that great jewel was shared with the world after the dragon was slain, mankind was able to access God fully and for all time.  

Perhaps we can see Melkor as a dragon-like character, the father of dragons, the one who captured light for the Silmarils and whose greedy-love reduced them to be hidden away from the world. This brings a much clearer stake to the battles to get the Silmarils back. What rests on slaying the dragon to retrieve the jewel is not just about restoring our bodies but also our connection to the creator and our purpose in creation, restoring what it originally meant to be sub-creators before the fall. The beauty of the jewels reaffirms our purpose of sub-creation, and our use of the jewels in non-greedy love, after getting them back from the dragon, reaffirms our relationship with the Creator Himself.  

-Gabby Bayness