Quote:
Originally Posted by Galin
Hmm, but yet the Elves can and will ultimately die with the End of the World.
The Quendi are not denied death [not that you said otherwise], but given a very different kind of life compared to 'brief' mortals.
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That's true, I said the "gift" thing a little inaccurately. The "gift" is the chance to enter the afterlife. Death is a "gift" only in that it allows a person to get there (in much the same way that some theologies regard pain and suffering as divine gifts since they allow a soul to be honed and forged to be worthy of the afterlife.) Or that Greek myth about the old woman who treats a god in disguise so well he says he will give her whatever she wishes. When she replies she herself needs nothing but begs the god to give the greatest blessing possible to her children the god agrees and both her children immediately drop dead.
As for the sundering thing, that could explain something else, why Arwen ISN'T at the Grey Havens. She can't go on the boat but you'd think she'd want to be there to say goodbye (it is her father after all). It seems like there may be an even deeper sundering involved in the choice, once an Halfelven chooses mortality, it's as if they are now considered already DEAD by the elves, as if it is forbidden for them to thereafter even ASSOCIATE (as far as I know, there is no record of Elrond taking trips to Numernor to visit his brother. Or Arwen getting visits by her brother. Maybe it's the same thing as Mitherellas, the immortal can't bear seeing their kin die, and the mortal can't bear seeing their kin live.