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Amara
Registered User
Jun 29 2014, 8:43pm
Post #1 of 5
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Question about Frodo's "death" - alternate interpretation
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Hi all, I remember reading one interpretation about the ending of LOTR a long time ago, and now I can't find anything about it online. I had thought I'd read that Tolkien confirmed this as one possible interpretation of the book, but it's been so many years that perhaps my memory of this matter is not trustworthy. So, the theory was that Frodo really died in Bag End of his emotional/physical wounds, and Sam wrote the bit about Frodo sailing into the West in the Red Book and as a story to tell his children. I realize there is plenty of evidence about Tolkien discussing Frodo reaching Tol Eressëa and later dying there after being healed. I was just wondering if anyone else had heard this theory about Sam making it up, if they know where I might have heard it originally, and if Tolkien ever did mention it as one possible interpretation, even as a possible but incorrect interpretation, of the book's ending. Thanks for your help.
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Bracegirdle
Valinor
Jun 29 2014, 9:48pm
Post #2 of 5
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OUCH! Talk about the death of a trilogy!
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Sorry, never heard of such a thing..... Maybe someone? Cheers
"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." -Albert Einstein
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Elizabeth
Half-elven
Jun 29 2014, 10:53pm
Post #3 of 5
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...that Tolkien would have given any sort of tolerance to such a theory. After all, he wrote (Letter 246, Sept. 1963, to a reader who commented on Frodo's "failure"):
'Alas! there are some wounds that cannot be wholly cured', said Gandalf (III 268) – not in Middle-earth. Frodo was sent or allowed to pass over Sea to heal him – if that could be done, before he died. He would have eventually to 'pass away': no mortal could, or can, abide for ever on earth, or within Time. So he went both to a purgatory and to a reward, for a while: a period of reflection and peace and a gaining of a truer understanding of his position in littleness and in greatness, spent still in Time amid the natural beauty of 'Arda Unmarred', the Earth unspoiled by evil. Bilbo went too. No doubt as a completion of the plan due to Gandalf himself. Gandalf had a very great affection for Bilbo, from the hobbit's childhood onwards. His companionship was really necessary for Frodo's sake – it is difficult to imagine a hobbit, even one who had been through Frodo's experiences, being really happy even in an earthly paradise without a companion of his own kind, and Bilbo was the person that Frodo most loved. (Cf III 252 lines 12 to 21 and 263 lines 1-2.) ... It is clear, of course, that the plan had actually been made and concerted (by Arwen, Gandalf and others) before Arwen spoke. But Frodo did not immediately take it in; the implications would slowly be understood on reflection. Such a journey would at first seem something not necessarily to be feared, even as something to look forward to – so long as undated and postponable. His real desire was hobbitlike (and humanlike) just 'to be himself again and get back to the old familiar life that had been interrupted. Already on the journey back from Rivendell he suddenly saw that was not for him possible. Hence his cry 'Where shall I find rest?' He knew the answer, and Gandalf did not reply. It is hard to imagine, after such a detailed analysis, that the journey was ever meant to be false.
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Elthir
Grey Havens
Jun 29 2014, 11:16pm
Post #4 of 5
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The abandoned Epilogue did have Sam finishing the book, and had Sam's children in it... but still Frodo had sailed.
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SirDennisC
Half-elven
Jun 30 2014, 2:06am
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him dying on the Lonely Isle after going there to be healed. This would be in keeping with the best guess at Arthur's death, that he died on Avalon, to which, according to Christopher Tolkien in The Fall of Arthur, Tol Eressëa is an allusion.
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