[Mithalwen]

One of the things that I like most about the Lord of the Rings is that there are few if any simplistic happy endings. Although Tolikien perhaps kills off an unrealistically small number of his major protagonists given the vast slaughter of the War of the RIng, the survivors generally have to pay a price. It is a good versus evil struggle but the battles are not definitive throughout the history of Middle Earth. The war of the ring is no more final than the war of wrath or the last alliance. Each merely hold back the tide for a while. The seeds of evil sown by Melkor and Morgoth cannot be eradicated rather like original sin in the Judeo-Christian view of our own world. Only in the Last Battle when the world is remade can all its ills be put right. However, the Hobbits have to live in the world as it exists at their point of history and so , while it is fitting that the Shire is touched by the evil that threatened all of Middle Earth albeit in the form the minion Saruman rather than Sauron, it is also fitting that the damage is swiftly repaired and the hobbits have a spell of increased peace and prosperity as a reward for the labours of Frodo and Co. I think there is a lot of symbolism in the "only Mallorn west of the mountains and East of the Sea". Only Frodo, Sam and Bilbo will go to the undying lands but an echo of that land lives in the Shire.

Someone pointed out elsewhere on the forum that the White Tree of Gondor and the Shire's Mallorn are echoes of the Two Trees of Valinor and on reflection it "tidies up" the whole history of middle earth. The stories start (near enough) with the Two Trees of Valinor and we leave Gondor with the white tree flourishing as Arwen sings a song of Valinor and we leave the Shire with the mallorn flourishing and Elves singing the paean to Elbereth of the pilgrims. But this gives progression aswell as completion for having started with "gods and angels" in realms of bliss we end in mortal lands that are rapidly losing their "fairytale/supernatural" elements and are closer to the borders of our own history.