[akhtene]

Without getting into deep psycological analysis (of which I know very little) I'll just try to render the impression the final scene produced on me and my understanding of it.
While reading the book for the first time I couldn't help feeling that it all was somewhere near, just round the corner. It could be part of our world, or I so much wanted it to be (silly?) All right, the world was saved, it was changing, the elves were departing... Anyway they were not as much the part of that world (our world). But then the one who had done the most, suffered the most for the future of that world was leaving too... To me that marked the exact borderline between the two worlds, the two ages. The War with its heroism and treachery, sacrifice and temptation was over
(It must have taken 2 years for people to really live over it)And now they were - the future of their world. But Frodo had left too much of himself in the past, he couldn't belong to that new world. Yes, he had been wounded, he was suffering physicaly and mentally, but I felt he was going to the Undying Lands, where even the time goes differently, just because he didn't belong to his world any more. He was leaving the world which he loved, the world which he had sheltered from the greatest peril, to its own fate. To me his departure was even more sugnificant than the departure of the three Keepers. I cried, honestly.
Another idea just came to my mind. Speaking about folk lore and oral traditions. Great heroes seldom die in their beds (and Frodo was a hero, wasn't he?)So his departure over the Sea could give the chance to those who loved him (and the readers )to believe that FRODO LIVES