Posted on 01/10/2002 5:41:49 PM PST by SlickWillard
SPOILER ALERT: Do not read this if you prefer to believe that The Lord of the Rings has a happy ending. It doesn't. You have been warned.
'Thus the years drew on to the War of the Ring; of which more is told elsewhere: how the means unforeseen was revealed whereby Sauron might be overthrown, and how hope beyond hope was fulfilled. And it came to pass that in the hour of defeat Aragorn came up from the sea and unfurled the standard of Arwen in the battle of the Fields of Pelennor, and in that day he was first hailed as king. And at last when all was done he entered into the inheritance of his fathers and received the crown of Gondor and sceptre of Arnor; and at Midsummer in the year of the Fall of Sauron he took the hand of Arwen Undómiel, and they were wedded in the city of the Kings.
'The Third Age ended thus in victory and hope; and yet grievous among the sorrows of that Age was the parting of Elrond and Arwen, for they were sundered by the Sea and by a doom beyond the end of the world. When the Great Ring was unmade and the Three were shorn of their power, then Elrond grew weary at last and forsook Middle-earth, never to return. But Arwen became as a mortal woman, and yet it was not her lot to die until all that she had gained was lost.
'As Queen of Elves and Men she dwelt with Aragorn for six-score years in great glory and bliss; yet at last he felt the approach of old age and knew that the span of his life-days was drawing to an end, long though it had been. Then Aragorn said to Arwen:
'"At last, Lady Evenstar, fairest in this world, and most beloved, my world is fading. Lo! we have gathered, and we have spent, and now the time of payment draws near."
'Arwen knew well what he intended, and long had foreseen it; nonetheless she was overborne by her grief. "Would you then, lord, before your time leave your people that live by your word?" she said.
'"Not before my time," he answered. "For if I will not go now, then I must soon go perforce. And Eldarion our son is a man full-ripe for kingship."
'Then going to the House of the Kings in the Silent Street, Aragorn laid him down on the long bed that had been prepared for him. There he said farewell to Eldarion, and gave into his hands the winged crown of Gondor and the sceptre of Arnor; and then all left him save Arwen, and she stood alone by his bed. And for all her wisdom and lineage she could not forbear to plead with him to stay yet for a while. She was not yet weary of her days, and thus she tasted the bitterness of the mortality that she had taken upon her.
'"Lady Undómiel," said Aragorn, "the hour is indeed hard, yet it was made even in that day when we met under the white birches in the garden of Elrond where none now walk. And on the hill of Cerin Amroth when we forsook both the Shadow and the Twilight this doom we accepted. Take counsel with yourself, beloved, and ask whether you would indeed have me wait until I wither and fall from my high seat unmanned and witless. Nay, lady, I am the last of the Númenoreans and the latest King of the Elder Days; and to me has been given not only a span thrice that of Men of Middle-earth, but also the grace to go at my will, and give back the gift. Now, therefore, I will sleep.
'"I speak no comfort to you, for there is no comfort for such pain within the circles of the world. The uttermost choice is before you: to repent and go to the Havens and bear away into the West the memory of our days together that shall there be evergreen but never more than memory; or else to abide the Doom of Men."
'"Nay, dear lord," she said, "that choice is long over. There is now no ship that would bear me hence, and I must indeed abide the Doom of Men, whether I will or nill: the loss and the silence. But I say to you, King of the Númenoreans, not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive."
'"So it seems," he said. "But let us not be overthrown at the final test, who of old renounced the Shadow and the Ring. In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory, Farewell!"
'"Estel, Estel!" she cried, and with that even as he took her hand and kissed it, he fell into sleep. Then a great beauty was revealed in him, so that all who after came there looked on him in wonder; for they saw that the grace of his youth, and the valour of his manhood, and the wisdom and majesty of his age were blended together. And long there he lay, an image of the splendour of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world.
'But Arwen went forth from the House, and the light of her eyes was quenched, and it seemed to her people that she had become cold and grey as nightfall in winter that comes without a star. Then she said farewell to Eldarion, and to her daughters, and to all whom she had loved; and she went out from the city of Minas Tirith and passed away to the land of Lórien, and dwelt there alone under the fading trees until winter came. Galadriel had passed away and Celeborn also was gone, and the land was silent.
'There at last when the mallorn-leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by men that come after, and elanor and niphedril bloom no more east of the Sea.
'Here ends this tale, as it has come to us from the South; and with the passing of Evenstar no more is said in this book of the days of old.'
Maybe you have to have read The Silmarillion to gain a full appreciation for what happened.I did read it, but I didn't get what you got from it. That evil (shadow) will always be a part of the world until the end of the world is common to JRRT's "sub-creation" and Christian theology. And of course from that perspective, every story about the world is "tragic" -- but I still don't agree with your interpretation. Although JRRT doesn't write about Sam and Rosie's deaths (or Merry and Pippin's, Faramir's, etc.), we know that being mortal they must have died. We can infer that they didn't enjoy the process. But as I believe JRRT saw it, the process of dying is like childbirth, very painful while going through it, but the joy on the other side of the experience overwhelms the pain. C.S. Lewis had a lot to say on the subject also.
Sam did not die; he followed Bilbo and Frodo into the West:
S.R. 1469 Master Samwise becomes Mayor for the seventh and last time, being in 1476, at the end of his office, ninety-six years old. S.R. 1482 Death of Mistress Rose, wife of Master Samwise, on Mid-year's Day. On September 22 Master Samwise rides out from Bag End. He comes to the Tower Hills, and is last seen by Elanor, to whom he gives the Red Book afterwards kept by the Fairbairns. Among them the tradition is handed down from Elanor that Samwise passed the Towers, and went to the Grey Havens, and passed over Sea, last of the Ring-bearers.
I don't know how Tolkien could have said it any more clearly:
But Arwen became as a mortal woman, and yet it was not her lot to die until all that she had gained was lost.She gained The Gift of Men, the she lost it.
I have to agree with some of the other posters. That Arwen found dying hard, when it was not natural for her as it was for Aragorn, is not difficult to imagine. I also find no hint that Aragorn expected her to lie down beside him to die. Very few men have faced death with the nobility of Aragorn. The great difficulty of doing so is essentially what caused the Fall of Numenor.
I don't think Arwen's failure to take joy in the prospect of her death is equivalent to her turning to the Shadow. I was reading some of Tolkien's latest stuff last night, about the Ring of Morgoth (which was Middle Earth). It is fragmentary and hard to interpret, but essentially what he is saying is that all ME was Melkor's Ring, and that all matter (and all that it made up, including people) was therefore "stained" with evil. A big part of this evil was the fear of death, which is basically a loss of faith that death is not really death. But that does not mean that all who feel this fear are worshippers of Melkor. The Numenoreans fought Sauron for many centuries after they had lost their faith, but before they turned to true evil.
If absence of complete faith is equivalent to turning to the Shadow, most of us are in serious trouble!
BTW, I think it is a very believable and touching story.
And yet, Tolkien doesn't say
But Arwen became as a mortal woman, and yet it was not her lot to die until some small portion of that small gain was lost.Instead, he very clearly states
But Arwen became as a mortal woman, and yet it was not her lot to die until all that she had gained was lost.
Although there are intimations of a far distant world in which "all things will be made new" and Men, Elves and Valar will be reunited forever with Eru. LOTS of Christian foreshadowing in these works.
When Arwen died, she died as either an elf or a human. Which do you think it is?
You are one tough cookie, if you can read Arwen's despair as black evil deserving of some eternal punishment. Remind me to stay on your good side.
Couldn't this mean that she just couldn't/didn't die until after Aragorn died?
I fear that they will also remove the scouring of the Shire. I was looking at some sites, and I saw what I think was a picture of Saruman being impaled. I'm afraid they're going to kill him off, instead of just trapping him, and then eliminate that part of ROTK.
I guess it's not essential to the big story of middle earth, but I always liked the scouring because it shows how much the main hobbit characters have developed.
Actually, it is the big story of Middle-earth:
Saruman laughed. 'You do what Sharkey says, always, don't you, Worm? Well, now he says: follow!' He kicked Wormtongue in the face as he grovelled, and turned and made off. But at that something snapped: suddenly Wormtongue rose up, drawing a hidden knife, and then with a snarl like a dog he sprang on Saruman's back, jerked his head back, cut his throat, and with a yell ran off down the lane. Before Frodo could recover or speak a word, three hobbit-bows twanged and Wormtongue fell dead.Compare:To the dismay of those that stood by, about the body of Saruman a grey mist gathered, and rising slowly to a great height like smoke from a fire, as a pale shrowded figure it loomed over the Hill. For a moment it wavered, looking to the West; but out of the West came a cold wind, and it bent away, and with a sigh dissolved into nothing.
But Arwen went forth from the House, and the light of her eyes was quenched, and it seemed to her people that she had become cold and grey as nightfall in winter that comes without a star.
That is exactly how I read it - it was not the Gift of Men (death) that she gained, but the love life of a mortal man, Aragorn. She was not fated to die until she lost him. And how can she "lose" the Gift of Death, when Tolkien clearly says in the 2nd to last paragraph:
"There at last when the mallorn-leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed...."
I don't know about everyone, but this says to me that she died a natural death, esp. "laid herself to rest", "green grave". She did die a natural, human death.
As another person commented, you're one tough cookie to expect Arwen to take Aragorn's and her own deaths with a positive attitude, considering that her experience as a mortal woman was a tiny fraction of her life and she was not granted the vision that Aragorn evidently had about the eternal continuation of the soul. That is how I understand the doom/gift of men: doomed to die but gifted with an immortal soul which death cannot touch. From Arwen's experience as an elf before becoming mortal (well, half-elf), elven death is true death because while the elves are immortal in body if unharmed by accident or battle, when they die that's it. That's why they have to journey physically back to the Blessed Realm. At least, that's how I've always understood the back story of Middle Earth.
Personally, I think you're reading too much into a few phrases and putting your own spin on it. This is one of those "Balrogs have wings / not" arguments that I don't think we're going to settle, but I admit your take is interesting and thought-provoking.
For me, Lord of the Rings has a "happy" ending considering that death will take all mortal men (and women) and the elder races are doomed to fade away (or, worse, become evil). That much was known and set before the story really began, and there is nothing that the characters could have done to change those two things. The essence of tragedy is that the characters make the wrong choices and don't do the best they can with the opportunities at hand. In this case, the characters make the right choices, so I can't call it a tragedy.
Except that Arwen no longer has a choice:
"Nay, dear lord," she said, "that choice is long over. There is now no ship that would bear me hence, and I must indeed abide the Doom of Men, whether I will or nill: the loss and the silence.
What she lost was what she had materially gained in the world, and by her commitment, her Elvish immortality. But she gains her will, her choice, her follow-through and very bravely accepts her chosen fate.
Arwen is welcomed as a true hero and blessing to man's lineage when she goes into that Light after mortal death and reunites
:-)
We have often wondered whether Aragorn and Arwen actually were Beren and Luthien reincarnated to finish their long fight against The Shadow and secure a chance for men with a silver sliver of divinity and memory of Valinor embedded in nobility ... a grace from the Valar and halls of Mandos, a song that will last forever even when men's dim memories have faded.
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