Quendi & Atani - why?

[Confusticated]

What are your speculations about why Iluvatar created the first and second born, rather than just one or the other.

Wide open... go wherever you'd like.

 

[HelplessModAddi]

Because he wanted to. Really, that's the only thing one can actually say.

 

[Celebthôl]

i guess to add difference to Arda, so he could fulfill his "dreams" 1 to be with him etc (i.e. men) and 2 those that would stay with the Valar and look after Arda as it was supposed to be i.e. helping the Valar....

it is my opinion that Ilúvatar favoured men more though it seems like he favoured Elves more...but men go to him, elves dont....

Thol

 

[Ithrynluin]

Originally posted by Nóm
What are your speculations about why Iluvatar created the first and second born, rather than just one or the other.

Perhaps for the same reasons that some parents want to have a boy AND a girl - diversity, and the fact that they complement each other.

 

[gate7ole]

Or because his plan (which we don’t know) needed two dominant races. The first to rule the world during the first Ages and pass the knowledge acquired to the second that will rule the following Ages.
It always seemed to me that the Elves were destined to fail on their missions at ME and end up to Valinor. Look what is told in Letter #131:

The doom of the Elves is to be immortal, to love the beauty of the world, to bring it to full flower with their gifts of delicacy and perfection, to last while it lasts, never leaving it even when 'slain', but returning – and yet, when the Followers come, to teach them, and make way for them, to 'fade' as the Followers grow and absorb the life from which both proceed.

It was their doom to fade from the beginning. And not the result of their false actions. It seems to me that the Elves had to prepare the ground for the Followers. This might be their role on ME, and this might explain why the Creator would need two races instead of one.
Here is a quote from #153:

The entering into Men of the Elven-strain is indeed represented as part of a Divine Plan for the ennoblement of the Human Race, from the beginning destined to replace the Elves.

Finally considering the two races closely, they are not really different. Besides, they can marry and give birth, which means that biologically they are the same. Tolkien again in one of his letters (#181), explains their similarities and differencies:

Of course, in fact exterior to my story, Elves and Men are just different aspects of the Humane, and represent the problem of Death as seen by a finite but willing and self-conscious person. In this mythological world the Elves and Men are in their incarnate forms kindred, but in the relation of their 'spirits' to the world in time represent different 'experiments', each of which has its own natural trend, and weakness.

 

[jimmyboy]

it is my opinion that Ilúvatar favoured men more though it seems like he favoured Elves more...but men go to him, elves dont....

I disagree here, Celebthôl. I don't believe Eru favors any of his children any more than his others. We don't know (nobody does, including the Valar) what ultimately happens to Eru's children. Only Eru himself knows. I think all his children will be re-united with each other after the end of the world, and after the Enemy has been forever cast down. They will all have a part in the "second song" of Illuvatar, which makes me that that the Elves, Humans, Dwarves, etc, will all, somehow, be one big happy family, forever freed from death, paint, and fear.

 

[Celebthôl]

That is intreguing but it is most certain that men go to live with Ilúvatar, so who would you rather live with God himself or his deciples? (if that is what they can be called) i no i would want to live with god himself....
but it did occur to me and this thought is always playing on my mind..that is that Men when they die, they go and live in the place that they most loved in their life i.e. if they loved being a child more than any other point in their lives then when they died they went back to being a child, and they had all their old friends, this is all done by Ilúvatar's thought, as he wants his children to be happy (as does any parent)...views please

 

[Gothmog]

Why both the Quendi and the Atani?

Let us look at a quote from the Silmarillion.

For it is said that after the departure of the Valar there was silence, and for an age Ilúvatar sat alone in thought. Then he spoke and said: 'Behold I love the Earth, which shall be a mansion for the Quendi and the Atani! But the Quendi shall be the fairest of all earthly creatures, and they shall have and shall conceive and bring forth more beauty than all my Children; and they shall have the greater bliss in this world. But to the Atani I will give a new gift.' Therefore he willed that the hearts of Men should seek beyond the world and should find no rest therein; but they should have a virtue to shape their life, amid the powers and chances of the world, beyond the Music of the Ainur, which is as fate to all things else; and of their operation everything should be, in form and deed, completed, and the world fulfilled unto the last and smallest.
But Ilúvatar knew that Men, being set amid the turmoils of the powers of the world, would stray often, and would not use their gifts in harmony; and he said. 'These too in their time shall find that all that they do redounds at the end only to the glory of my work.

Chapter 1: Of the Beginning of Days.

It is clear from this that the Quendi had a purpose within Arda and that they had no freedom within this purpose. For the Atani however, there was a purpose that could not be covered by the Quendi. They were ment to be closer in what they did to the Ainur, they were to do things that were not in the Music to increase the Glory of the Work of Iluvatar!

This being the case there had to be two races, one to whom the Music was as Fate and one to whom the Music was a framework from which to build upon.