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Indeed. His determination to stay at the Havens building ships until the last ship sails is heartbreakingly noble.
He is perhaps one of Tolkien's best "hinted at" characters - where we can find the bare bones of his story (if we look for them) but can only guess what his "fleshed out" story would be like - one of those "untold stories" that Tolkien loved so much ... "A story must be told or there'll be no story, but for me it is the untold stories that are ..." (I forget the exact words - the ones that he loved most/found more intriguing, or something). And yet Tolkien liked to tie off loose ends, too. Perhaps a slight contradiction (and perhaps we all have certain contradictions in our personalities and views).
Another character I love for quite similar reasons is Amandil. Much shorter lived, yes ... a player in a much shorter stretch of Middle-earth's history ... but a man who makes a heartbreaking sacrifice and endures - as far as we can make out - a very lonely end.
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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."
Last edited by Pervinca Took; 10-24-2012 at 02:18 PM.
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