The Decision to Croak.

[Firefoot]

She wasn't Numenorean, but she was still part Elvish, and I'm sure that would have contributed to her longevity of life. My guess is that, though she made her decision a while ago, she could still have changed her mind to be Elvish up to the point when the gray ships left at the end of the Third Age. I don't think that the change to mortality was an immediate thing but much more gradual. At first perhaps quickened aging, then maybe becoming more prone to hurts and sicknesses, before eventually dying. But just because she chose mortality wouldn't have meant that she gave up all her Elvish attributes - I highly doubt that she was as vulnerable to sickness as Men, and she still would have lived a fairly long life, I suppose.

[radagastly]

First, about Arwen. I've always believed that Arwen's CHOICE was made when she laid herself down and died. Until then, she still could have chosen to take a ship to Valinor and remain immortal. I've always believed that her journey to Lorien was when she did her "soul-searching" to decide whether she would die or take a ship to the West. There was the pull of "Arda" trying to keep her alive, and her love for Aragorn pulling her away to see him again, beyond the Veil, in the Void.

As for the general decision to "croak," I think there is an inevitable "disconnection" with the world as it is. What I mean is that the older you get, the less you understand where society is at, and where it is going. I realize that sounds rather cynical, but I think about my grandparents. When my father's parents were first married, they lived in a (rented) log cabin without any plumbing or floors. Grandpa hunted and Grandma went into the woods to gather berries and other edibles. They grew a garden for the veggies etc. By the time my Grandmother died, humans had walked on the Moon, and this Internet site existed (and, in fact, I was already a member, under another name). That's a huge transition. I can only think that, eventually, you just can't keep up. It's time to go away and leave room for the people who can deal with it better than you can. Arwen is an exception. She does not fit the rule.

As for Merry and Pippin, I'm not so sure they "chose" to give up the ghost so much as they knew it was soon to be their time. There is nothing like age to realize that you long for those "college" days when you were young and healthy and (dare I say it, sexy!) The scars of a life create aches and pains that never really heal. They're imprinted on your soul, and you become more cautious, more wary. In the meantime, the World continues to progress. People's concerns just aren't what they were during the 'dark times." To dare quote (or misquote) Dylan Thomas (I'm not sure,) "You can't go home again."

You eventually just can't understand what thing's are about in the world you are living in, and it's time to go. If you did undersand, you wouldn't be ready to leave yet.

How depressing is it to realize that eventually, the world will out-grow you, and your only option is to turn away from it, to leave it entirely.

I can only quote Gandalf from "The Last Debate" in RotK.

Other evils there are that may come, for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherin we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

[Lalwendë]

I suppose there could be two ways of looking at Arwen's choice. Firstly, we could say that her choice to be mortal or Elven was linked to whether or not she wished to remain in Middle-earth. Arwen and her brothers were in a unique position as children of Elrond, who had been half-Elven and who had already made his decision. Part of the decision he made also involved accepting that as an Elf his 'natural' home would be the Undying Lands and accepting that one day he would go there. So we might say that Arwen's decision hung on whether or not she wished to go to the Undying Lands. Of course if she did, then after Aragorn's death they would be forever parted until the end of the world.

Or we could also look at it through Tolkien's ideals about marriage as a binding sacrament. Once Arwen had consummated her marriage to Aragorn would she be bound to him and therefore mortal? This seems like the most straightforward answer but then it raises questions of how the relationship betwen her hroa and fea could be altered by such a choice as that would be to fundamentally alter her nature.

Also why did she linger on if she had become mortal by marrying Aragorn? As I've said, she was not of Numenorean blood so presumably she did not have the same 'gift' which Aragorn possessed of being able to choose the moment of death. Wouldn't she age as any ordinary mortal woman might? This suggests to me that either she was 'gifted' herself with that choice. Would such a thing be permissible?

[Raynor]

Also why did she linger on if she had become mortal by marrying Aragorn?

Well, as an inner drive, she "was not yet weary of her days"; another explanation is that this was her fate (even if she did have the choice of Elros at hand), found in one of the variants of the story in The Third Age, HoME XII:

and it came to pass for her as Elrond foretold that she would not leave the world until she had lost all for which she made her choice

[Lalwendë]

and it came to pass for her as Elrond foretold that she would not leave the world until she had lost all for which she made her choice

That's an odd quote. We might assume that she would have left then, once her own children had aged and died, but her son (and daughters?) were still alive when she left for Lorien and death - as they too would be what she had made her choice for. Although in any case, she would have to decide to leave them behind, just as Aragorn had to. That, I would guess, is one of the hardest aspects of having to choose when to die - the knowledge that you will have to say goodbye to your family.

[Raynor]

Well, she made the choice of Luthien at the time of her wedding with Aragorn, at which moment her children weren't necessarily an existing motivation.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Raynor

Well, she made the choice of Luthien at the time of her wedding with Aragorn, at which moment her children weren't necessarily an existing motivation.

Well, one would have to ask whether she had sufficient foresight to know that she would have children - if she did then one would have to assume that they would have played a part in her decision.

I think children would have been assumed anyway, & transmission of her divine blood to future generations was also a part of her motivation.

I stated on another thread my own thoughts on Arwen's decision:http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showpos...0&postcount=13