Concerning the sons of Elrond

Henoluin Elsilim

Henoluin Elsilim

Rivendell
Hello all!
Hope this doesn't interfere with the discussion already going on! If so, I apologize. [:)]

Two of my favorite (elven) characters in Lord of the Rings are definitely Elladan and Elrohir. Even though they don't actually have much of a part in the books and absolutely no part in the movie, the small part they do play in the books is pretty important.

It says in Appendix A, in LotR:
"... But to the children of Elrond a choice was also appointed: to pass with him from the circles of the world; or if they remained to become mortal and die in Middle-earth. For Elrond, therefore, all chances of the War of the Ring were fraught with sorrow."
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Which obviously means that if Elrond's children do not with him to Valinor, they cannot go at all.

In Appendix B, in LotR, is says:
"... But after the passing of Galadriel in a few years Celeborn grew weary of his realm and went to Imladris to dwell with the sons of Elrond."
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Now, its easy to see why Arwen didn't go with her father, but why didn't Elladan and Elrohir? What was so special about Middle-earth to keep them there, forsaking their immortal lives for mortal ones, and keeping them from being able to see their parents again? You would at least think that they would have wanted to sail if only to see their mother, whose "torment in the dens of the orcs" ("Many Meetings" - FotR) they spent so many years avenging.
What was it that kept them there? Was it love for their mortal friends among the Dunedain, or for Arwen and Aragorn, their sister and adopted brother? Or was it simply their love for the only world they had ever truly known? Or was it something totally different all together?

Any thoughts, anyone? [:)]
 
But to the children of Elrond a choice was also appointed: to pass with him from the circles of the world...
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I don't think the words necessarily mean that the sons of Elrond had to leave on the same ship as their father. Perhaps it's just a rather poetic way of saying "like him".

It's certainly clear that Elladan and Elrohir stay behind when Elrond sails. I like to think that they wanted to be there for Aragorn in the early years of his reign, having supported him so long while he was still a Ranger. It must have taken Aragorn a while to re-establish the North Kingdom, and help from Rivendell would surely have been most welcome. And no doubt it would have been a comfort to Arwen too, to know that her brothers were still in Middle-earth. But there's no indication that her brothers are still around after Aragorn's death, when she chooses to spend the last days of her life in the silence of a deserted Lothlórien. Surely if Elladan and Elrohir had still been around, they would have travelled to Lothlórien to comfort their sister. But unless they had already 'faded', and were no longer in contact with her, it seems most likely that they had passed over the Sea.

In the unpublished Epilogue, Sam makes it clear that Celeborn will eventually leave Imladris to rejoin Galadriel. I think it's quite possible that the sons of Elrond would leave with him. But as far as I know, nothing more is said of their choice. .
 
The first passage youève quoted doesnèt indicate in any way that Elrondès children should leave together with him or stay forever in ME. It simply says that they had the choice to sail with him (as a company) or make their choice when they are already parted with his father and if that choice was to remain in ME - to die as mortals. As FarFromHome has said, I think the brothers wanted to help more and to support both the Dunedain, especially Aragorn, and their sister. Lots of changes were to happen in ME and they definitely were needed. Besides, they kept Rivendell from being deserted for as long as we hear about it thus making difference from what happened in Lorien. I also think they sailed to the west before Aragorn died, otherwise they would have spend some time with Arwen.
 
as I note in a thread below, all the other immortals who choose mortality are female. So I think it is possible that Elrond's sons leave a bit later, and as FarFromHome notes, if they don't leave, why don't they come comfort their sister?
 
The Sons of Elrond were just out of touch with Arwen as they grew old or were already in decline themselves.....

I don't know, it makes no sense to me but Tolkien makes it pretty plain that by staying behind, the Sons of Elrond chose to remain in Middle-earth & 'become mortal'.....

Why would he say it if it were not so?
 
I guess it depends if you interpret “with” literally or loosely. I always read “with” to mean “like”: “But to the children of Elrond a choice was also appointed: to pass[, like] him [,] from the circles of the world...”

I read that sentence as I might read, “The ditto machine has passed from the world with carbon paper and typewriters.” It doesn’t mean that it happened simultaneously but rather similarly or during the same historical period.

This is part of my frustration with Tolkien. For a man with so great a knowledge of language, he sure could be vague sometimes. The proof is in the existence of these debates.
 
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thanks to everyone who has responded so far! [:)]

Maybe I just read into things to literally. I take "with" to mean they had to sail right then, or else be mortal. My reasoning is, if the children of Elrond could stay for as long as they wanted after Elrond's sailing, why didn't Arwen simply stay with Aragorn until his passing, and then sail after he was gone? Other than maybe the obvious reason of her wanting to be with him forever, even after death...

As to why the twins didn't comfort Arwen after Aragorn's passing, or why she didn't go to Imladris to be with them, I always kind of thought that the reason the was because maybe they were already dead, being so much older than Arwen to begin with. But who knows? Maybe its one of those things Tolkien never meant to be fully explained. [:)]
 
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if the children of Elrond could stay for as long as they wanted after Elrond's sailing, why didn't Arwen simply stay with Aragorn until his passing, and then sail after he was gone?
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That's the choice that Aragorn thinks Arwen can still make at the end of his life, but she puts him straight. It's too late for her, no ship will take her now.

It's very ambiguous - are there simply no more ships sailing west (meaning that her brothers, if they did leave, are long gone)? Or is it a kind of "moral" ban, like Galadriel's exile? It's interesting that Galadriel uses almost the same words to express her own sense of exile in Middle-earth, "What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a Sea?", in her song as the Fellowship leave Lothlórien. Maybe Arwen's choice too is a kind of exile - and she's simply not "allowed" to change her mind once she's committed herself and married a mortal. I'm pretty sure that Tolkien left all of this ambiguous quite deliberately - he intended the end of the Elves' story in Middle-earth to remain a mystery. He leaves us with a sense that there's more that we'll simply never know: '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.'
 
It's because of his great knowledge of language that he could maintain ambiguity.

And these debates are a testiment both to his deliberate ambiguity and to his obsessive consistency. Most fantasies are so full of contradictions that there is no point debating them.
 
in that she deliberately chose to marry a mortal. Had one of her brothers chosen to marry a mortal woman, that would also be an irrevocable choice. All the indications are that, short of some such decisive action, it is still possible for eligible beings to Sail West -- as Celeborn, Legolas, apparently Gimli, and possibly Sam did.

So, although we aren't told what happened to the twins, it is entirely possible that they lingered in Middle Earth for a while and then sailed. I agree that they would have been motivated to support Aragorn for a time.

I also like to think that they may have buried Arwen in her "green grave". It would be nice to think they could have consoled her, but it's very clear from the Appendix A text that she was inconsolable. If her children weren't sufficient motivation for her to remain, her brothers wouldn't have been, either.
 
Tolkien wrote that Mandos always tried to reincarnate elvish spouses into the same realm and time period. When Arwen married a mortal, however, that became impossible. She could only rejoin her husband in his afterlife.
 
doing some extra research on the subject, (gotta love sites like Wikipedia!) I decided that you guys are probably right, and that when it said that they had the choice to go "with" Elrond, it didn't mean "with" him, so much as "like" him, and they could have stayed in Middle-earth for a while, then followed Elrond later.

Thanks for all your responses! It was fun! [:)]
 
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It's very ambiguous - are there simply no more ships sailing west (meaning that her brothers, if they did leave, are long gone)? Or is it a kind of "moral" ban, like Galadriel's exile?
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I think Tolkien used the phrase based on widely popular expression used today as much as then - in three different languages I can think of right now, there is the same wording with slight differences: "There is no road to take me there", "There is no road in my forest", "There is no wind to take me there", "There is no river to take me there". These are only few samples of such narrative which I'm positive Tolkien knew better than I do as he studied such things much longer than I did.

All these expressions are used in similar cases: when the person speaking means "there is no comfort, future, life, new life, for me there." For example, if one's loved ones have passed away, and people ask "Why don't you go home?" or any other place where the person is supposed to feel better, he/she answers with one of the above phrases thus meaning there is no such place anymore, there is no healing, no future, no chance for another life. In Arwen's case I think it's that Tolkin said - there was no west for Arwen anymore, even if there was a way to reach it, it would never again mean the same and bring comfort to her. Therefore, theer was no ship to take her there where "there" is a place to make her feel better and heal the pain.

In Galadriel's case it's the same case but looked at the other way around - if there is a ship so great to take her where she would be able to forget and live again?

Just my two cents, I've never read it literally. Maybe because these expressions are so often used and so meaningful, I like to think Tolkien turned to the old fairy stories to express Arwen's feelings (these phrases originated from fairy and folk tales but very very long ago). Besides, he had this affection for poetic turns of the phrase and poetic usage of the language, IMO.
 
I believe that's the Irish version of the expression... [;)]

I think Tolkien used the phrase based on widely popular expression used today as much as then - in three different languages I can think of right now, there is the same wording with slight differences: "There is no road to take me there", "There is no road in my forest", "There is no wind to take me there", "There is no river to take me there"...
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I really like your suggestion that these expressions are just metaphors, and that therefore Arwen's and Galadriel's words about there being "no ship" for them might be metaphors too. On one level, I think you're right.

But I've always thought that Tolkien writes on two levels - the mythic/metaphoric on the one hand, and the "realistic" on the other. I've been reading Poetic Diction, written by fellow-Inkling Owen Barfield, who I believe influenced Tolkien with his theory that early peoples did not have a clear division between metaphor and reality the way we do - for them, the sound of thunder (for example) and the thunder god were bound together in the same idea. Barfield is writing about the way language may have been in the earliest times, and I like to think that Tolkien is trying to recreate that effect for us modern readers. So things that we would normally think of as mythic or metaphorical (ships that sail into the West, fire monsters like the balrog, for example) are experienced as real by the characters in the story.

Some people love the sense of "reality" that Tolkien gives to the images in the story, and prefer to think of the ships taking the Elves into the West as if they were real objects in an alternate history of the world. So they want to know how many ships there were, or who built them, or indeed why could some Elves travel on them and others not? They want to know whether balrogs had wings, because if this was a "real" monster, it must either have wings or not, right? Tolkien leaves the answers to so many of these questions ambiguous, I believe, because he wants to leave us balanced between the sense of reality that he gives to his world, and the sense of metaphor or myth that underlies it.

Ships sailing into the West, as you say, are part of fairy tales and folk tales in many cultures, symbolizing a passage to another world - in fact often symbolizing death. I remember Darkstone once making the point that Tolkien's fellow WWI officers called being killed "going West" - a great point, and probably based on their folk knowledge that equated sailing into the West as representing death (often the mystical death of a hero, like King Arthur for example, which probably especially appealed to WWI soldiers as a denial of the ugliness of the deaths they saw around them).

So I don't think there's a single answer about whether there "really" was no ship for Arwen. Especially in the Appendices, the reality/metaphor/myth boundary is very porous indeed.
 
Ah, one of those little lore questions that Tolkien never anticipated. He was fairly obsessive compulsive, but still, he's not superhuman -- every bit of his story couldn't have been in his head at all times.

I suspect that what happened is that the sentence he wrote in the prologue about Celeborn staying with the Sons of Elrond in Imladris for a while may not have been written with full consideration of the implications: that they also had become mortal.

I believe, thematically, that doesn't work. A great deal is made of Arwen's sacrifice and her death in the Appendices of ROTK. There's not even a footnote in the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen that "Oh, by the way, Elladan and Elrohir made the same traumatic choice, but it's not that important."

Years later, a fan (I think?) asked Tolkien about this, among other things. If you check out Letters #151, Tolkien makes the vague statement that "The end of his sons, Elladan and Elrohir, is not told: they delay their choice, and remain for a while."
DELAY their choice. Apparently in Tolkien's mind, they still could.

Tolkien tells us all that's known, there. But if we guess based on what the characters are like, then I bet they stayed to finish off the orcs of the Misty Mountains that tormented their mother -- which was their lifelong mission, apparently -- and then went west. I doubt they stayed until the end of Elessar's reign, because Arwen doesn't seek them out; she only goes to Lórien. I suspect she would've gone to find her brothers if she thought they were still in Middle-earth.

But that's only speculation; all we know is that yes, they could have sailed west, even though they didn't go with their father.
 
But I've always thought that Tolkien writes on two levels - the mythic/metaphoric on the one hand, and the "realistic" on the other. I've been reading Poetic Diction, written by fellow-Inkling Owen Barfield, who I believe influenced Tolkien with his theory that early peoples did not have a clear division between metaphor and reality the way we do - for them, the sound of thunder (for example) and the thunder god were bound together in the same idea.
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This is exactly right, I've studied it too. It's easy to see and find in old folklore tales. I agree that Tolkien worked on two levels.

Some people love the sense of "reality" that Tolkien gives to the images in the story, and prefer to think of the ships taking the Elves into the West as if they were real objects in an alternate history of the world.
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I also believe there were actual ships [:)] I commented on Arwen and Galadriel's wording because they both had to heal some wounds. Otherwise, I am a believer in Elven ships and sailing west! I do understand it as a metaphor of Death but not the Death we see as a monster. Rather a Death which is another part of the journey.

I remember Darkstone once making the point that Tolkien's fellow WWI officers called being killed "going West" - a great point,
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This is very interesting! I would have never thought people in the 20th century still referred to such ancient images but it's wonderful!
 
Only just stumbled over this thread and was cheered up by it. I'm quite a fan of the twins myself *points to screen name* and can't bear the thought that they remained in Middle-earth to die. Plus, I can't imagine they would do that to their father, who lost already so much.

I've always firmly believed they sailed in the end, and to read the quote meaning they had to chose, but not to sail with their father when he left suits me just fine [:)]

All my arguments for their sailing have already been posted. But I have to admit, I always thought - even if there's nothing in canon about it, of course - Gandalf was in a position to get them the approval of the Valar to stay a bit longer for the sake of their sister and foster-brother, if necessary. After all they did to fight Sauron, they deserved a reward. Maybe wishful thinking, but still ... [blush][;)]
 
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