What was it all for?

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by davem

Tolkien stated LotR was about 'Death, the inevitability of Death' - & so is Beowulf. If its 'only' about that, then its certainly not about 'nothing'. If its 'just a story' then that story is 'our' story. It is the story of our life, & more importantly of our death. Both works, perhaps, are 'meditations' on the coming of the Dragon, & how we must find a way to live while we await it.

davem won't like this but the same is to be found in His Dark Materials. Here too. Death is shown to be an inevitability, it cannot be cheated, and one of the messages the story gives us is to live while we can, to have something to say about our lives when they are over. In LotR we find a host of characters stirred to action (in many cases out of extreme apathy) by a threat; they live to the full, they do something, and then they die.

I somehow get the feeling that all fantasy and epic literature is somehow about Death, about the inevitability of it.