Dragons

Dragons, also called Worms and Drakes, are the great winged fire-serpents of Middle-earth, the most terrible of the monstrous creatures bred by Morgoth in the Elder Days. In the Third Age they have become a memory of ancient ruin and a present, lurking threat, their power felt not in open war but in the desolation they leave behind. The Lord of the Rings encounters them chiefly through their legacy: the dragon Smaug's destruction of the Dwarf-kingdom beneath Erebor, and the hoard he guarded, are the distant causes of the quest that brings the One Ring back into the world's history. By the time the narrative opens, the last great Dragon is dead, slain in the Battle of Five Armies, and the surviving Dragons are said to have perished or fled, leaving only their fear and their treasure behind.

Origins and Nature

Dragons are the supreme products of Morgoth's evil craft, fire-serpents of immense size and cunning, winged and breathing flame. They are ancient beyond the reckoning of the Third Age, their kindred having been bred in the deeps of the world during the wars of the Elder Days. Their nature is one of pure destruction and greed: they hoard gold and jewels with a possessive malice that outlasts their own lives, and their very presence blights the lands they inhabit. The Ring-verse, which opens the book, does not name them, but its catalogue of the Three, Seven, and Nine rings, and the One that rules them, is set against a world in which the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone — the very halls that Dragons despoiled — are a diminished and scattered people. The Dragons are thus part of the ancient order of evil that the Dark Lord Sauron seeks to restore, though they are not his servants so much as independent calamities.

The Dragon of Erebor and the Fall of the Mountain Kingdom

The decisive Dragon event in the history leading up to The Lord of the Rings is the destruction of the Dwarf-kingdom under the Mountain, beneath Erebor in Dale, far off in the East. The great Dragon Smaug descended upon the mountain, drove out the Dwarves, and claimed their hoard for himself, becoming the guardian of a treasure of incalculable wealth. This catastrophe scattered the Dwarves of Erebor into exile and set the stage for the quest recounted in The Hobbit. It was to reclaim this hoard and to avenge their fallen kingdom that Thorin Oakenshield, descendant of kings, and his twelve companions in exile came one day to Bilbo Baggins's door, accompanied by the great Wizard Gandalf the Grey. The quest was successful, and the Dragon that guarded the hoard was destroyed, but the cost was high: before all was won, the Battle of Five Armies was fought, and Thorin was slain. The destruction of Smaug and the death of Thorin are the pivot on which the larger history turns, for it was during this quest that Bilbo, lost in the black orc-mines deep under the Misty Mountains, put his hand on a ring lying on the floor of a tunnel and put it in his pocket — an accident that seemed then like mere luck, but which proved to be the finding of the One Ring.

The Hoard and Its Aftermath

The treasure of the Dragon-hoard did not vanish with Smaug's death. Its dispersal and its memory continue to shape events long after the Battle of Five Armies. Bilbo Baggins, returning to his home at Bag End on June the 22nd in his fifty-second year, brought back with him a considerable portion of that wealth, and it was this wealth that sustained him for the sixty years that followed. He hung his sword, Sting, over his fireplace, and lent his coat of marvellous mail, the gift of the Dwarves from the Dragon-hoard, to the Michel Delving Mathom-house. But he kept in a drawer at Bag End the old cloak and hood he had worn on his travels, and the ring, secured by a fine chain, remained in his pocket. The Dragon's hoard thus becomes the material foundation of Bilbo's long, quiet life in the Shire, and the hidden ring — the true treasure, far more dangerous than gold — is the seed of the entire War of the Ring. The Dragons' legacy is therefore double-edged: their greed for treasure brought ruin to the Dwarves, but the wealth they hoarded, passing through Bilbo's hands, carried the One Ring into the heart of the Shire, where the final struggle against Sauron would begin.

The State of Dragons in the Third Age

By the time of the War of the Ring, the Dragons are no longer an active force in the world's conflicts. The last great Dragon, Smaug, is dead, and the narrative treats the surviving Dragons as a diminished remnant, their power broken and their numbers dwindled. They are spoken of in the past tense, as creatures of legend and ruin, their age ended. Yet their absence is itself a presence: the fear they instilled, the kingdoms they destroyed, and the hoards they guarded all remain as part of the landscape of Middle-earth. The Dwarves, once lords of great halls of stone, are now a wandering and diminished people, their greatest kingdom a memory of Dragon-fire. The Dragons thus stand as a symbol of an older, more elemental evil, one that has passed from the world but whose works endure, and their legacy is woven into the very fabric of the quest that defines the Third Age's end.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

Dragons function in The Lord of the Rings as a threshold figure, bridging the legendary past and the present struggle. They are the monsters of the Elder Days, the creations of Morgoth, and their kindred's destruction of Erebor is the proximate cause of the entire narrative: without Smaug, there would have been no quest, no Bilbo, no finding of the Ring. Their greed for treasure is the mirror image of the Ring's own corrupting power — both are hoards that destroy their possessors. The Dragon's hoard, which Bilbo carries back to the Shire, is the material link between the ancient evil of Morgoth and the present evil of Sauron, and the Ring that lay hidden among that treasure is the true Dragon, the one that cannot be slain by any arrow. The Dragons thus embody the theme of the long defeat: the great evils of the world are never wholly vanquished, only transformed, and the fire that destroyed Erebor is rekindled in the darkness of Mordor.