Summary
The Valar hold a council, because though they don’t know when exactly the Elves are going to awaken, they know it’s going to be soon, and they know that Melkor’s power in Middle-earth is unchallenged. Yavanna (with the enthusiastic support of Tulkas) advocates for an assault on Melkor and a restoration of light to Middle-earth. But Manwë commands Mandos to speak of what is to come, and Mando says that it is the fate of the Elves to awaken under starlight. Therefore Varda took the shining dew of Telperion and set about filling the sky with new stars and brighter, “the greatest of all the works of the Valar since their coming into Arda.”
The Firstborn Children of Ilúvatar awoke even as she finished her long labor, in the east of Middle-earth by the bay of Cuiviénen on the inland Sea of Helcar (which is no longer there). The stars of Varda were the first things they saw, and the Elves have loved starlight ever since. Melkor was aware of them from early on, and many of the Elves who wandered away from Cuiviénen disappeared. It was believed afterwards that they were taken to Utumno, and tortured and twisted to become the Orcs.
Some years after they awoke, Oromë stumbled on them while hunting. Thanks to Melkor they were afraid of things out in the darkness (as Melkor had intended, knowing Oromë was certainly the first of the Valar they would first encounter), but the noblest Elves were drawn to him. He brought the news to Valinor, and the Valar held council and resolved to resume the war with Melkor. They set a guard about Cuiviénen, and the Elves knew nothing of the war, but they saw the lights of great fires in the North and felt the earth shake beneath them. Eventually Utumno (along with much of Middle-earth) was broken, and Tulkas dragged Melkor back to Valinor in an unbreakable chain crafted by Aulë to be imprisoned for three Ages. But Sauron and many other evil things managed to hide from them.
The Valar again held council. Ulmo and others thought it best to leave the Elves to their own devices in Middle-earth, but the majority were afraid for them, and it was decided to summon them to Valinor and the light of the Trees and keep them safe. But the Elves were afraid, after witnessing the wrath of the Valar even at a distance, and Oromë was sent to bring three leaders of the Elves to Valinor as ambassadors: Ingwë of the Vanyar (the Fair Elves, beloved of Manwë), Finwë of the Noldor (the Deep Elves, beloved of Aulë), and Elwë Singollo of the Teleri (the Sea Elves, beloved of Ulmo). Those three kindreds departed for Valinor, though many others refused the journey and stayed in Middle-earth. They took a very long time to complete the journey, and many of them (mostly Teleri) abandoned the journey along the way. But eventually they all reached Beleriand, in the north-west of Middle-earth.
Commentary
Whew. That was a lot to try and summarize. Well, the next chapter is pretty dinky, so I guess that’s just how things go.
So there’s a lot of names in this chapter. The Elves call themselves the Quendi (“those who speak with voices”); Oromë called them the Eldar (“the people of the stars”), though this term later did not apply to the Avari (“the unwilling”); so the term Eldar refers more properly to the Calaquendi, the Elves who made it to Valinor (being the Noldor, the Vanyar, and the Teleri), but also to the Úmanyar, who started the journey West but never finished it. They get grouped with the Avari as the Moriquendi (“the Elves of darkness”). Among the Úmanyar were the Nandor, the Teleri who departed en masse rather than cross the Misty Mountains.
Got all that? If so, I’m freaking impressed. I don’t know all that by heart myself. I was flipping back and forth between this post and the book to make sure I got it all right. But Good News, Everybody! Don’t worry about that. Tolkien loved his languages, and loved his names, but you don’t need to know the vast majority of that.
So what’s the bits you DO need to know? Some Elves went, some Elves stayed behind, some Elves went but later wandered off. The ones who make it all the way to Valinor (the Noldor, the Vanyar, and the Teleri) you should know, but no need to make flash cards. You’ll get to know them just fine simply by reading. You should know Finwë and Elwë Singollo. Ingwë might be High King of all the Elves, but he’s also boring. Don’t worry about him.
So moving on. The Valar finally get off their divine backsides and do something about Melkor. Much of the world is indeed wrecked in the process, but the Elves come through just fine, and Melkor is locked in solitary. Too bad they had to rush things a bit and didn’t thoroughly clear out Utumno; I’m sure the continued freedom of Sauron and the Balrogs won’t cause any problems whatsoever.
And then there’s this, from the council when the Valar decided to summon the Elves:
At the last, therefore, the Valar summoned the Quendi to Valinor, there to be gathered at the knees of the Powers in the light of the Trees for ever; and Mandos broke his silence, saying: ‘So it is doomed.’ From this summons came many woes that afterwards befell.
This isn’t quite as bad as it seems at first glance, because Tolkien as a rule prefers to use Germanic words like “doomed” over Latin-derived words like “fated” or “destined,” and in that usage “doomed” doesn’t necessarily have a negative connotation. But it’s still rather ominous. The Valar are kind of being helicopter parents here.
Regarding the Elves captured and twisted into Orcs - I know I said early on I wasn't going to get into issues of canon, but this is the exception. As Christopher said in the forward, his goal was to make an internally coherent book, not one that necessarily reflected all of his father's ideas in their final forms. This is the best known example; Tolkien ultimately rejected this idea as an explanation for Orcish origins, as he had rejected others before he wrote this one. If you want to know all the details, that's what the twelve-volume History of Middle-earth is about.
So about the whole “first thing they saw was the stars” thing. Everyone owes it to themselves at least once in their lives to go miles away from the nearest town on a clear, moonless night and look up. It's breathtaking. If you've lived your life in urban areas, you'll finally get some idea of what the old poets were talking about.
Last point: geography. The world, as Galadriel says in the opening of the movies, is changed. There is a certain map, which bears a great resemblance to a set of lungs, that is complete nonsense and but with depressingly tenacious staying power, which I shall not utter link here. Instead, I’ll provide links to more maps from Karen Wynn Fonstad’s Atlas of Middle-earth. While the world has changed between the time here and the world as it is in the Third Age, you can still see Mirkwood (“Greenwood the Great”), the Misty Mountains (“Hithaeglir”), the White Mountains of Gondor, Eriador, etc.
That chapter was a doozy. Next time, things take a romantic turn when we learn “Of Thingol and Melian.”
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