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#1 |
Princess of Skwerlz
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: where the Sea is eastwards (WtR: 6060 miles)
Posts: 7,500
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Just thinking about writing this post made me feel sad – not only because it’s the last chapter of LotR, and I agree with JRRT’s statement that the book’s chief fault is that it’s too short, and not only because I know of the bittersweet ending to which it brings the story. A big reason for my sadness is that we have reached the end of this project, that this post begins the last chapter discussion. I know, we will still be discussing the appendices, but that’s not the same; and though we will continue after that with chapter-by-chapter discussions of The Hobbit, my favourite book is over.
The chapter divides roughly into three sections: the first wraps up the events of the Scouring; the second tells of the Shire’s happy ending; and the third takes the Ringbearers to the Grey Havens. Despite all that, it’s a fairly short chapter. We begin by tying up loose ends – Fredegar (no longer Fatty!) appears, and we discover that he had an unexpectedly heroic role in the Shire during the Fellowship hobbits’ absence – leading a band of rebels! Would you have thought that?! Then there’s Lobelia, and even she has changed for the good through the trials she experienced. After Merry and Pippin played their military role in ridding the Shire of its enemies, Sam has his turn to shine in the rebuilding and replanting. He has grown and become a leader, and I am reminded of his vision of “Samwise the Strong” – he actually does have a small realm to supervise now! However, he does so without coercing others, and he does plenty of the work himself. He is generous in sharing Galadriel’s gift with his fellow countryhobbits. 1420 is the synonym for the Shire’s happy ending – the year of growth, of marvellous harvests, and of Sam and Rosie’s wedding. Yet not so for Frodo, who relives his traumatic experiences and the pain they caused him on their anniversaries. What do you think of the fact that Merry and Pippin went on wearing their armour in peacetime in the Shire? Does it strike you as inappropriate? Were they showing off? Or was it symbolic of their allegiance to their respective liege lords? Or was it perhaps a sign of the increased watchfulness of the Shire, showing that they were ready at all times to fight for their homeland if necessary, a warning to any enemies? What do you think of the name that was given the four hobbits, the ‘Travellers’? We come again to Bilbo’s birthday, the date that was celebrated annually – and almost two years from the time they came back to the Shire. Elrond had foretold that Frodo should look for Bilbo in a year, but he was mistaken. Any thoughts on that? What do you think of the various title alternatives that Bilbo thought up for the Red Book? Frodo’s title comes very close to Tolkien’s. We have two poems – another variation on Bilbo’s walking song that I find very poignant, and the song of the Elves, partly in Elvish and partly translated. There are several revelations in this section – Gildor shows up again, now finally leaving Middle-earth; and the Ringbearers are revealed for one last time. The most moving lines of the chapter are spoken here – by Frodo, giving his reason for leaving Middle-earth; and by Gandalf in farewell. The fulfilment of Frodo’s dream comes, and Sam’s homecoming, with the famous and beloved last words of the book. How do you feel when you read “The End”? For that matter, how do you feel now that we’ve reached the end of these discussions and the shared reading experience we have had? I can’t believe how much time has passed (1 1/2 years!) since we started, and I would like to thank all of you for making this such a wonderful experience. I have tremendously enjoyed sharing in your thoughts and feelings as you have written them, and I have learned much by reading your contributions. For comments looking back to past and/or ahead to future discussions, I invite you to post on the Feedback and Suggestion Box thread. However, we still have the Appendices to cover in the next few weeks, and I hope you will continue reading and posting with me!
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'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth...' |
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Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
Posts: 4,240
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As usual, I have to point out that this was written before I read Esty’s introduction, so I may go over some of the same ground - I just can’t face going over it & editing out repetitions.
‘What a tale we’ve been in, Mr Frodo!’ I can’t believe we’re finally here, that its finally over (yes, I know there are still the Appendices to go, but I almost want to end with this chapter now). Its been the most amazing experience. I’ve never read LotR with so much attention to detail, or got so much from it. I’d like to thank everyone who’s participated - & especially Esty for her amazing introductions. Anyway...... At midsummer Gandalf appeared suddenly, & his visit was long remembered for the astonishing things that happened to all the bonfires (which Hobbit children light on midsummer’s eve). The whole Shire was lit with lights of many colours until the dawn came, & it seemed that the fire ran wild for him over all the land so that the grass was kindled with glittering jewels, & the trees were hung with red & gold blossom all through the night & the Shire was full of light & song until the dawn came. That passage never made it into the final version of the text, but I can’t help feeling that it should have. It kind of sums up the mood & atmosphere of the Shire in that summer of 1420. The Shire, if not yet healed of its hurts, is well on its way to recovery, & we no longer have any doubts that it will pull through & be its old self again very soon. Merry, Pippin & Sam are getting back into the swing of things & everything has ‘ended better’ as the Gaffer says. Frodo seems at first to be recovering & taking part once more in the doings of the Shire. He releases the prisoners & takes over as deputy Mayor. In fact, he has every outward opportunity to ‘go back’ - no-one is stopping him. But as he says, he has been ‘too deeply hurt’. The Shire may not be the same to him, but that is because he himself has been changed, not the place itself or its inhabitants. They may not show any interest in his ‘adventures’ but they never did care for such things. Its not that Frodo has nothing to do. In fact, from our point of view, his role is essential: he gives us the Red Book. Without Frodo there would be no Lord of the Rings. But while his book is of the utmost importance to us, to his fellow Hobbits (Merry, Pippin, Sam & Bilbo excepted) it is just a collection of ‘silly stories’ about ‘chasing black men up mountains’ - maybe fit for reading to Hobbit children around a winter fireside - but hardly ‘sensible’ fare for grown up Hobbits. Merry & Pippin: ‘the boys are back in town!’. They clear out the remaining ruffians, & then swan around in full armour. They are accepted back in to Hobbit society, because, well, the upper classes have always been a bit eccentric (& everybody knows they’re queer folk in Buckland). Sam: after his mad adventures has settled down in sensible Hobbit fashion & started doing some useful work at last. Frodo, however, has taken after his uncle, Mad Baggins. What do you do with someone like that? Probably best to smile & say a polite ‘Good Morning’ & move quickly on, in case he decides to start a conversation! It seems that Sam is one of the few people to try & include Frodo, & its perhaps with Sam, alone, that Frodo tries to ‘make himself useful’. I imagine Frodo as being increasingly withdrawn, finding it harder & harder to break through his isolation. Sam seems to realise this. I can’t help but read Sam’s ‘dilemma’ over what to call his new daughter as an attempt to ‘include’ his Master & dearest friend in the happy event &, by extension, in the wider life & events of the Shire: Quote:
Frodo’s growing sense of isolation leads him to invite Sam to live with him. Sam, after all, is the only living person who has any hope of understanding Frodo, who, it seems, is desperately alone, staring into a void & unable to turn away. Sam’s repeated statement about being ‘torn in two’ to Frodo may actually have played a part in his decision to go too. Possibly he began to feel he was not only a burden to his friend, but that he was actually preventing him from living a full life with his wife & child. Its not clear (to me) when, exactly, Frodo realises that life in the Shire is impossible, but at some point he does realise. I think its less a realisation that he has to go than that he cannot stay. He is being ‘pulled’ away, & cannot find any hold to grab onto. Its as if the Shire, like Lorien in his ‘vision’ long ago, is ‘sailing away’ from him: Quote:
It seems he was expecting the Elven Host - though we’re not told how he knew the time & place of the meeting. What we will soon witness is the Departure of the Elves from Middle-earth, the culmination of their wars, suffering & sacrifice, the end of their hopes & dreams. They pass not with a bang, but not yet with a whimper. They pass into the West in humility, singing hymns to Elbereth. And two Hobbits will pass with them. Who would have thought it? Yet, it is necessary. The ‘assumption’ of Frodo & Bilbo into Paradise is right. The ‘humanity’ of the Hobbits is blessed, sanctified, through their suffering & sacrifice, & made ‘acceptable’. Yet, the West is not the Shire, & while Bilbo may have moved on to the Mountains, Frodo, I suspect, still loves the woods, fields & little rivers. But they have been taken from him. He has had to ‘give them up, lose them.’ As he says, ‘someone has to’. We’re told of Frodo’s vision of ‘white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.’ But this presents us with a difficulty - how do we know what Frodo saw? Who put that in the Red Book? Is that Sam’s invention, his hope for his master? We’ll never know, & in a sense, we really shouldn’t. That question: Did it really happen, did he really get to Avallone, receive his ‘reward’? adds to the poignancy of the ending. The final words of the book, in fact the whole ending, seems too sudden - we want to know what happens next. In fact, Tolkien did write a further chapter or ‘Epilogue’ (two versions of it in fact). It supplies some answers to our questions - what happened to Legolas & Gimli? what about Celeborn? how did Sam’s family prepare for Aragorn’s visit to his realm in the north? and did Sam let Frodo-lad have his very own Dwarvish battle-axe? It was left out, in the end, because in the opinion of those who read it it was just too sentimental. Tolkien felt the story lacked a final resolving chapter, but in the end I can’t help feeling the ending we have is the right one, & the final words Sam speaks are perfect. CT comments: Quote:
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Regal Dwarven Shade
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: A Remote Dwarven Hold
Posts: 3,589
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...finding a path that cannot be found, walking a road that cannot be seen, climbing a ladder that was never placed, or reading a paragraph that has no... |
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Dead Serious
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Much like the World War II veterans, and the World War Is before them, Merry and Pippin remaining in regalia is a visible reminder to the Shire of the fight it went through to free itself from the ruffians. Not exactly on World War scale, perhaps, but definitely not something to forget.
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I prefer history, true or feigned.
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A Mere Boggart
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: under the bed
Posts: 4,737
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Frodo has descended into illness and though he can cope day to day so long as he retreats from society, his trauma shows through especially during the anniversaries. Sam is the only bearer who has stayed relatively unscathed. He has mentally integrated his experiences and so is the one who copes the best; Bilbo also copes quite well, but he only achieves this by satisfying his restlessness and going into 'retreat' at Rivendell. It makes me wonder if Frodo too could have gained something from a retreat to Rivendell, but this option was closed to him as Elrond was planning to leave. It fascinates me that Tolkien was unable to kill off his Hobbits. As they are mortals then they will die eventually, but we are left with a sense of hope and longing as they leave for the Undying Lands. Quote:
Frodo's words remind me of Churchill's about the RAF: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." Was Frodo a sacrifice or was he a martyr? It depends upon how willing he was to take on his task, on whether he truly understood what he was doing and what would happen to him. And on that final point, I don't actually think any of the great powers really did know what would happen to him, as the Ring seems to have had a different effect on all the Ringbearers, Isildur included.
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Gordon's alive!
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#6 | ||
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: commonplace city
Posts: 518
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Davem, how this gets transcribes into the Red Book is one for the ages. TC is my only good answer for that! |
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Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
Posts: 4,240
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One possibility is that Sam, having been told by Frodo of his dream in Bombadil's house (or having read it in the Red Book) 'constructed' the ending. I like the mystery of it - was that Sam's hope for his friend? Did he so want it to be like that that he convinced himself (&/or sought to convince others) that that's 'what really happened'. Whatever the explanation, the ending presents us with a difficulty - either Tolkien breaks the spell he has so carefully woven about LotR being a translation of an ancient book which is a true history of those times simply in order to provide a 'sentimentally satisfying' end to Frodo's story, or he is telling us something about Sam, & therefore we don't actually know what happened to Frodo. What I 'like' about the latter option is that it makes the ending of the story even more poignant. Of course, if read in conjunction with 'Frodo's Dreme' the ending becomes even more ambiguous. In effect we have two 'Frodo's Dremes' - the one in 'The House of Tom Bombadil' & the one in 'The Adventures of Tom Bombadil'. Which one came true?
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“Everything was an object. If you killed a dwarf you could use it as a weapon – it was no different to other large heavy objects." Last edited by davem; 11-21-2005 at 04:40 PM. |
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Mischievous Candle
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Ponderings...
This last chapter has quite a light and humorous tone, much like in the Hobbit. There are little jokes again and almost everything is so well.
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Fenris Wolf
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#9 | |
Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
Posts: 4,240
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#10 | |
Gibbering Gibbet
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Beyond cloud nine
Posts: 1,844
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This is truly a chapter of endings, and not just of Frodo’s journey but of his friends. Merry, Pippin and Sam of course will go on, but their path is set before them now pretty clear and Frodo is able even to prophesy about Sam’s fate – becoming, in the end, Elvish indeed, with the power of sight being granted him. It’s also the real ending of the Third Age with the passing of Gandalf and Galadriel; and it’s the ending of Bilbo’s adventures. Since that moment on Mount Doom when Frodo said goodbye to Sam it seems the book has been moving through one ending after another, and of course with the appendices to follow even this is not really the ending, not of the story for – as we have learned – no story ever really ends.
So what is it that makes this chapter the real ending? It is the ending for us, for the readers. We’ve gone so far, and through so much with these characters. We’ve come to know and love them so well and so intimately, that every time I read these pages I do feel as though I am bidding farewell to friends. I never get through the closing pages without weeping, and call me a big softy but I have tears in my eyes right now as I think about it! But Gandalf, as always, has words of wisdom for me: Quote:
But again, the book has an answer for me, since the story does not end with the departure of Frodo into the West, but with Sam’s return to his home. That’s the real and enduring beauty of this story, for me: that it can move me to tears every time, but it’s always there for me to come back to when I need it or want it. “I’m back.” |
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#11 |
Pilgrim Soul
Join Date: May 2004
Location: watching the wonga-wonga birds circle...
Posts: 9,451
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Bilbo's last song
Day is ended, dim my eyes,
but journey long before me lies. Farewell, friends! I hear the call. The ship's beside the stony wall. Foam is white and waves are grey; beyond the sunset leads my way. Foam is salt, the wind is free; I hear the rising of the Sea. Farewell, friends! The sails are set, the wind is east, the moorings fret. Shadows long before me lie, beneath the ever-bending sky, but islands lie behind the Sun that I shall raise ere all is done; lands there are to west of West, where night is quiet and sleep is rest. Guided by the Lonely Star, beyond the utmost harbour-bar, I'll find the heavens fair and free, and beaches of the Starlit Sea. Ship, my ship! I seek the West, and fields and mountains ever blest. Farewell to Middle-earth at last. I see the Star above your mast! There is much I would say about this and other chapters - and I will return and say them... but I feel this belongs here.
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“But Finrod walks with Finarfin his father beneath the trees in Eldamar.”
Christopher Tolkien, Requiescat in pace |
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#12 | |
A Mere Boggart
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: under the bed
Posts: 4,737
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Sam's final words are as much for the benefit of the reader as they are for himself and those around him. In a sense, we too are 'back'. We have been dragged off from familiar Bag End and taken all the way around Middle-earth, through war, horror and unearthly beauty. Now we are back home again, and we too have to go back to our daily lives. But like Sam we can't forget what we have seen and we will not be the same ever again. I'm sure Tolkien put those parting words there for us as well as for Sam.
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Gordon's alive!
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#13 |
Spirit of the Lonely Star
Join Date: Mar 2002
Posts: 5,133
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You know, Lalwendë , I'm with you. In all the times I've read this chapter, I have never thought about this point before. Davem has shown me something new. Yet, with all respect to the latter, I can't think of this description as simply Sam's imagined wish as to what happened to his friend. I believe it is what happened to Frodo when he sailed West and saw what he had dreamt of in Bombadil's house so long before. After trusting the author for so many pages on such a long journey, I accept his authority to give the reader this information, however and wherever he found it out.
Can there really be a doubt that Frodo made it to Elvenhome when Tolkien discusses this so explicitly in his Letters? We do not know if Frodo found healing but we do know that he made it to the place he foresaw in that mysterious dream. However hurt and despairing Frodo may have been, I can't help feeling that it was inevitable that he leave the Shire and go West. While certainly his injuries and despair fed into this departure, I believe that Frodo's journey to the Blessed Land has roots that go much deeper than this. Why does that dream occur long before Frodo was injured? And who sends that dream? Is it simply a figment of Frodo's vivid imagination? (I can't accept that.) Is it something that Bombadil knows and understands? Perhaps but unlikely.... Or is it a beacon of hope from beyond the bounds of Arda? And it isn't only the dream that makes me wonder. What is utterly fascinating to me are the notes in HoMe. Yes, I know we don't want to go deeply into the material outside the text. But I don't think we can ignore it here. It's just too important. On page 53 of Sauron Defeated, Christopher Tolkien mentions that years and years before, when Frodo was still Bingo, long before the plot was hatched out, his father wrote these words: Bingo would return to the Shire and make peace, then "settle down in a little hut on the high green ridge--until one day he goes with the Elves West beyond the towers." This to me is mind boggling. Tolkien changed so much in the story and characters, but this aspect of the Ringbearer he did not change. Even from the beginning, before the author fully understood the nature of the Ring, JRRT had decided that Frodo must go to Elvenhome. This suggests Frodo's departure is inherent to who he was -- not merely a reflection of his brokenness. No one can deny that the brokenness is there, yet so too is the nobility of character. There were moments of anguish and utter despair for Frodo, but most of the time he was able to act with real grace. Certainly, his final words in the book are both poignant and gracious. They are the words of someone still struggling to hold things together. And the voyage to the West was just that -- not a giving up for Frodo but an attempt to regain his health in both a physical and spiritual sense. For me that underscores the bittersweet nature of that final chapter. Frodo must leave because he is broken, but he must also leave because he has grown beyond the Shire. Broken or whole, he would no longer fit in... I have more ideas about some "smaller incidents" in the early part of this chapter, but will wait till later. Last edited by Child of the 7th Age; 11-23-2005 at 04:40 PM. |
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#14 | |
Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
Posts: 4,240
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Whether Frodo came to Tol Eressea is not the question - I don't doubt that he did (I can't see the Grey Ship doing a Titanic ![]() This opens up some very interesting questions - was Frodo's vision a kind of promise on Eru/the Valar's part, sort of 'If you see the Quest through, Frodo, this is what you'll get', or was Frodo somehow stepping outside serial time & seeing an actual future event; so that, in some sense, that 'future' had already happened, his 'story' having already been 'written', so that in his dream he was kind of flipping to the end of the book & reading the last page. He is both participant in, & 'reader' of, his own story. But if Frodo was seeing the end of his own already written story, how much free will did he actually have? Could he have altered his own story by his free choices when he had already seen how it would end? If his vision is a glimpse of his future then everything that happened to him was pre-ordained, already 'written'. Where is free will in this scenario? Of course, Flieger has already explored this in depth. But none of this gets us any further in answering the question: how did Sam (or whichever later redactor put it in) know what Frodo saw? |
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#15 | |
Spirit of the Lonely Star
Join Date: Mar 2002
Posts: 5,133
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![]() But if the image of the white shore is only in Sam's mind, the reader does not know if that reflects the "truth". It is only Sam's hoping and wishing for a friend. (Unless perhaps, Sam has a dream that stems from the same source as Frodo's?) I guess my gut feeling is this.... This may seem blunt and bald, but this is one point in the story when I am not going to analyze what happened. I am merely going to accept what's written on the paper as a true reflection of Frodo's journey. If I start pulling this section apart and thinking of "why", it somehow disturbs the "magic" that, for me, is so strong at this point in the book. There is a lot in life I don't understand. This is just one more thing to add to the list. I can't understand where this description or vision comes from, but I can appreciate it. I would prefer to leave Frodo's sailing and the description of the white shores as a mystery. I have no idea if that's just me or anyone else feels this way. Of course, you should go ahead and poke and prod and question. But for me, the emotional tone of these final passages is so rivetting that I can't get beyond that. And, truthfully, I do not want to.... This is one time when the heart leads the head, and I simply follow.
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Multitasking women are never too busy to vote. Last edited by Child of the 7th Age; 11-23-2005 at 05:24 PM. |
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#16 |
Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
Posts: 4,240
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Ok, but leaving aside how the account got in there, what is the relationship between Frodo's 'dream' in the House of Bombadil & his 'real' experience of Tol Eressea?
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#17 |
Spirit of the Lonely Star
Join Date: Mar 2002
Posts: 5,133
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If we knew the answer, would the heart of the mystery be stripped away?
But still.....I would like to know the answer. Any ideas? |
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#18 | |||
A Mere Boggart
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: under the bed
Posts: 4,737
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I don't think it was a vision in the sense of a premonition of what would happen, but of what might happen. That might have been at the centre of Frodo's personal sense of hope through all his troubles. If so, and Sam did indeed choose the words based on what Frodo may have set down in writing already, then this too is as touching as if the words were about what truly happened to Frodo, as those words would have been about Frodo's belief.
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Gordon's alive!
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#19 |
Dead Serious
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The possibility occurred to me that if one wants to somehow cram this final scene into a package that makes it both a definitive happening and acceptable within the confines of the translator's conceit, one should perhaps look at Aelfwine...
Although Tolkien seems to have decided that the Straight Road was a one-way street, he never did quite abandon the idea that Aelfwine/Eriol travels to Eressea, learns the lore of the Eldar, and transcribes it for future generations- with that knowledge somehow having to make it back to Middle-Earth, to ultimately rest in the hands of J.R.R. Tolkien... Perhaps the view of Eressea that we are given is the universal arrival view, as seen by Aelfwine. After all, it was Tolkien's cherished conception that the Silmarillion and the Lord of the Rings be published in tandem- and Aelfwine was still conceived to be a part of the story. A bit of stretching going on in my little theory here, and it certainly begs the question of how Aelfwine's lore made it back to Merry Olde England, but it's what came to my mind...
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I prefer history, true or feigned.
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#20 | |
Mischievous Candle
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Fenris Wolf
Last edited by dancing spawn of ungoliant; 11-24-2005 at 04:04 AM. |
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#21 | |||
Cryptic Aura
Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 5,989
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This last chapter discussion has come at a bad time for me, for I have little time to devote to the Downs this week, yet I don't want to miss out on a properly observed closure to our months of discussion, even though the Appendices appear on the horizon, like the last rays of a setting sun. Fordim, you have outdone yourself with your splendid observation that this reading has been so unlike our usual habit of solitary reading, accomplished with others at our elbows or over our shoulders..
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One point of this chapter which has always intrigued me is the passage of the fair company through the Shire, for they are already not of this (that?) world any longer. Quote:
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#22 | ||
Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
Posts: 4,240
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Flicking back through the chapter I noticed the following incident:
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Deadnight Chanter
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tidbits...
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1. May it be that Frodo was somewhat trained in Osanwe Kenta (remember Galadriel mentioning he began to 'see with a keen eye' in Mirror of Galadriel) by his Burden? 2. May it be that all parties involved just paid heed to significance of dates for Frodo and Bilbo and choose (once again) their birthday for a meeting date? 3. Or maybe the explanation is quite trivial, and some elven company wandering in Woody End made a detour to warn him beforehand. As for the verse: Quote:
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Also in Book 1 Frodo seems himself unaware of hidden meaning of the song in Book I (all those 'Through shadows to the edge of night, Until the stars are all alight' etc), but now his singing is conscious.
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Egroeg Ihkhsal - Would you believe in the love at first sight? - Yes I'm certain that it happens all the time! |
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#24 | ||
Late Istar
Join Date: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,224
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One small thing that I think ought to be noted in connection with the last chapter is that the removal of the epilogue altered not only the tone of the work's end but also its emphasis - quite radically, I think.
As published, the final lines are of course: Quote:
Nothing in the epilogue mitigates that, but it does twist the whole sentiment around. This is how Tolkien intended the book to end before being convinced to drop the epilogue: Quote:
I think that this is an important window into the whole issue of 'sea-longing' in Tolkien's works. For Tolkien, the sea seems to represent a kind of yearning - not an ordinary yearning or desire for ordinary things, but a profound, transcendental desire. It seems to me that it is something very much like Tolkien's 'sea-longing' that makes humans want desperately to believe in a God, or in Nirvana, or in any of the other transcendental ideals. In the Silmarillion, this is explored through Tuor and Earendil. In LotR, it is explored through Frodo. When Frodo (like Earendil) becomes unable to find contentment in Middle-earth, he must go over the sea to seek it. Just so, when a real person cannot find fulfillment in the ordinary world, he or she longs to 'go across the sea' - to find something beyond the ordinary world. I think that the loss of the last line is the truly regrettable thing about the exclusion of the epilogue (even if that exclusion was ultimately necessary). For here Tolkien encapsulates the whole issue quite succinctly. Sam may be the most content person in Middle-earth, with his Rose and his garden, in 'the most belovedest place in all the world.' But even he hears the Sea. To me, this is one of Tolkien's most insightful comments about human nature. |
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#25 |
Blossom of Dwimordene
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: The realm of forgotten words
Posts: 10,358
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Will not go now into the finer points of this chapter. Just want to throw this out - is no one else surprised that Frodo named his pony Strider? Naming pets after the great ones of this world I can understand, but naming them after your friends is just too odd not to point it out.
(On an unrelated note I clearly have been neglecting my BD posting duties too long, cause my fingers now automatically type Stridor instead of Strider, when it used to be the other way around. Also not a great name for a pony.)
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You passed from under darkened dome, you enter now the secret land. - Take me to Finrod's fabled home!... ~ Finrod: The Rock Opera |
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#26 |
Dead Serious
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The end of the book! Even after a laboured read, even having reread so many times as to be able to quote passages, even with five chapters of endings behind us, it still seems to end too soon!
"The Grey Havens" is hauntingly beautiful and I think it only really works in its final scene if you've been through the Happily Ever After coming alive in 1420 first. Well, it *works,* but having the Happily Ever first--and Frodo being unable to join it--is the what makes the great parting both the correct solution and so bittersweet. (On the subject of bittersweet: Frodo, did you REALLY intend Sam to ride home from the Havens alone? Once Gandalf puts the idea into my head, I can't shake how sad that would be! Thank goodness for Gandalf tipping off Merry and Pippin!) As much as Tolkien wrote in the early 50s that The Lord of the Rings is really the conclusion to the Silmarillion, I've never really felt it--this work is too complete in itself, and the Silm (even in its fullest fragments, such as "Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin,") lacks the versatility of the LotR (i.e. it lacks a Hobbit dimension). But here, in this chapter, I *do* feel it. The departure of Elrond and Galadriel is the symbolic return of the Exiled Noldor, the end of the story of their exile, and the Age of Man begins.
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I prefer history, true or feigned.
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#27 |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: The Treetops, C/O Great Smials
Posts: 5,035
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I suppose Sam had Bill, though.
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"Sit by the firelight's glow; tell us an old tale we know. Tell of adventures strange and rare; never to change, ever to share! Stories we tell will cast their spell, now and for always." |
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