[Child of the 7th Age]

Fordim -

This must be my thread for misunderstanding what everyone is saying. However, on this one I'm going to stick to my guns. Actually, we agree on many points.... But I cannot agree with this sentence in your original post, and I think it's a critical point:

They're almost like children insofar as they never have to think about their mortality or face the loss of a loved one.

I can't agree. Elves were very aware of the fact that they would die at the end of Arda and had thought about that in some sophisticated ways. Moreover, death in battle was extremely common during the tumult in Beleriand: entire families were split apart, women and children murdered with the sack of cities by Orc armies. And once in the Halls of Mandos, there was no assurance that an Elf would leave them quickly. Death did affect their lives. They might pretend to deny that, but the reality was otherwise.

In the First Age, Men and Elves fought side by side. Close relationships and alliance were forged. Far down into the Second Age, the Men of Numenor had close contact with the Elves who paid frequent visits. Many of these Men earned the title "Elf-Friend". And then there was the alliance at the end of the Second Age. Surely, the Elves would mourn the deaths of Men that they termed friends and, in some cases this relationship was close enough that it can be said that the Elves did "lose loved ones". It's only in this context that we can understand the "gated communities" they had constructed by the Third Age.

This is why I cling to the idea of hobbits as synthesising the position of Elves and Men. They accept death into their lives and acknowlege it (as the Elves are not able to do) and commemorate it without it becoming the defining term of their existence (as it does for Men).

I would definitely agree that Hobbits were unique in not making death the defining term of their existence. They seem to have accepted it as part of a natural cycle. But I still don't see clear lines of demarcation between Elves and Men in this regard. In my opinion, both Men and Elves were preoccupied with denying the reality of death. One built memorials and had plaques with the names of the dead to try and perpetuate existence beyond physical life; the other tried to distance death by having philosophical discussions about the end of Arda and embalming their own community to avoid evidence of change.

The embalmed community was as much a commemoration of death as the physical remains left by Men. Remember that every evidence of change was an indication that the world was drawing nearer to its end, the point when all Elves would die. Hence, by stopping change they created an illusion that death could be defeated. But is this different in intent than the kind of funeral rituals and statuary that the Egyptians created, which Tolkien agreed was the best comparison with Numenor and, to some extent, with its step-child Gondor? Each was an illusion, an attempt to deny reality. As such I'm more comfortable with the teeter-totter than the three point balance.

It's interesting, however, how both our discussions focus on Numenor and Gondor as representative of men's fortunes but avoid place like Dale or Rohan.

It is the Hobbits who spend relatively little time or effort denying the reality of death. To the extent they pay attention to death, it is domesticated, with geneologies, tomb-like burrows and such. When death happens, it happens. A hobbit dying provides an excuse to gossip and probably to have a large potluck supper. To me the crucial difference is this: Hobbits accepted their place in the universe and didn't try to change or deny it as other races did. They had never even heard of Eru, but they were the ones most willing to accept the patterns that had been laid down by the Music and not to ask for a different portion in life.

Laying the teeter-totter and the balance aside, can we agree on this? Tolkien said that the LotR is a tale about death and the denial of death. It is this wish to deny or defeat death that Sauron used to corrupt the hearts of many. Perhaps the Ringbearer had to be a Hobbit because the urge to deny death was a little less strong in the heart of a Hobbit than it would have been in either an Elf or a Man? As we agree, Hobbits simply didn't spend a lot of time on such denial. Maybe the omission of the cemetary was very planned by JRRT. Sauron trafficked in death and the fear that others had of death, and the desire that different folk had to change their place in the grand scheme of things, which is a corollary of all this. Who better to defeat him than a people who had relatively little to do with death, but who were not terrified of it? Indeed, thoughts of death came as "consolation" for Frodo on the final stages of his journey....