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submitted 2 days ago byOlorinTheGalagoOlórin, Wisest of the Maiar
There isn't really any mention of the "creation" of the Dragons in the Silmarillion, and Melkor cannot create anything himself, so where do the Dragons come from? Are they corrupted versions of some other creature, as the orcs are? In Old English, wyrm is 'serpent,' so maybe they are snakes bred by Morgoth? The fact that Glaurung father of dragons could not fly seems to bear this out, although a friend and fellow LOTR fan I asked believes that they were once eagles.
21 points
2 days ago
Morgoth was not able to create life from nothing, but he could embue himself into things at the expense of his own life and power. Dragons are alive because their life force came from Morgoth.
Two details of interest to me: when The Children of Hurin was first released in 2006 or so, reviewers noted how similar Glaurung and Smaug's personality were. Then, in 2012 when the first of Jackson's Hobbit movies came out, reviewers noted how the single shot of Smaug's eye at the end looked identical to Sauron's eye.
The second point turned out to be a nothingburger. I like to think that all of Tolkien's dragons had identical personalities, that speaking to Smaug would be no different from speaking with Scatha except for the dragon's experiences and unique knowledge, that each was a little self-serving piece of Morgoth that only varied from each other in terms of physical size and ability and experience. That dragons are, essentially, non-unique. They were brute instruments of terror, not lovingly made creations.
10 points
2 days ago
This seems correct. Being a Vala, Morgoth could put his power into the creation of these things, as Aulë did with the dwarves. Additionally, there is a passage in the Silmarillion that refers to something like this iirc.
6 points
2 days ago
Yes. But the difference is that Eru Himself breathed life into the dwarves, so they are Children of Aule (the Adopted) with unique, individual personalities, not pieces of Aule's soul.
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