“Not all those who wander are lost.”

[alatar]

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

We see it in Denethor, who says, “I would have things as they were – or nothing”, refusing to leave his city to do battle against the foe and even choosing death over change. (For more on him, please check out the Chapter-by-Chapter discussion of LotR, Book 5, Chapter 7 – ‘The Pyre of Denethor’.)

The paragraph above got me thinking about Aragorn's end, where he accepts change even at the end of all things. It is one thing to passively accept death, or to run from it as the Númenóreans did in their later years, but in Aragorn we see that he actively chose to change from this realm to whatever lay ahead. He knew that it was time to go, to change. And that's not an easy thing to do as one gets older and more "set in one's ways."

Similarly Denethor chose the timing of his own and almost that of his second son's ending, but to me it was an act of despair in which he wanted all thing to just STOP! Having lost one son, he now wanted to freeze time, keep his remaining son close and ward off the Darkness. In his pitiable mind it must have seemed that only immolation would stop change from finding him.

Great thread; will continue to think on it.