Melodrama in Middle-earth

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Eomer of the Rohirrim

Aye, aye.

Now, does anyone else find this a bit strange? That this event should be described in such grave terms? I get it: it's sad when a child leaves her mother never to return. But was there really no grief greater than this in history?

Tolkien is exploring the difference between those who, being essentially immortal, never know loss, and those who, being mortal, live constantly with that knowledge.

Here, for the first time, Melian experiences what it means to be human. And does so within deeply personal terms, a dreaded and almost primal fear of most human parents: outliving their own child. Nothing in her experience as an immortal has prepared her for this.

Such poignant recognition of the limit of life is one of the central themes of Tolkien's mythology. Anyone who has lost someone they deeply love, let alone a parent who has lost a child, is faced with the enormity of this irrevocable, final act.

Middle-earth offers no solution to this, unless one reads, very carefully, for the hints of the answer which Tolkien clung to in his own life.