The Second Age Read Along - Part 3 - Week 9: HoMe9: The Drowning of Anadûnê - The third version of The Fall of Númenor / The original text of The Drowning of Anadûnê

#What we’re reading today

Today we’re moving on to the third and final part of HoMe IX - Sauron Defeated, “The Drowning of Anadûnê”. We’ll be reading the first two texts in this part, titled “The third version of The Fall of Númenor” and “The original text of The Drowning of Anadûnê”

#Before you read

We’re reading two texts this week. The first one is the final phase of the The Fall of Númenor text, something we read back in Part 3 Week 1. It’s very similar to what we read before and the main reason Christopher gives this text here in full is to make comparison with the following text easier. That other text is The Drowning of Anadûnê, and it’s the first version of a new, but very different, manuscript tradition describing Númenor’s downfall.

#After you read

In “The Drowning of Anadûnê” we can see a new version of the Númenor story emerge, this one radically different and seemingly at odds with a lot of elements from The Silmarillion. The roles of the Elves and the Valar are now both attributed to a single race called the Balāi or Avalāi, the earth is round from the beginning, and a lot of the sequence of first age events seem to be off. Yet Christopher points out that a close examination will show that the final Akallabêth text in The Silmarillion was ultimately derived from this text, and not from “The Fall of Númenor”.

#Discussion questions

• The two texts we read today both tell the same (or at least similar) stories in different ways. Which mode do you prefer?
• Why do you think Tolkien made such drastic departures here from his long established Silmarillion mythos? Do you think it is possible to reconcile the two?
• In the “The Drowning of Anadûnê”, we start seeing Tolkien’s new Adûnaic language poke through. Does this alone give it a different flavor from “The Fall of Númenor”?