A Happy Ending... or is it?

[Guinevere]

Originally posted by Child of the 7th age
To be truthful, at the end of the book, I find myself grieving for a world, for a past that never even existed. Rationally, I understand that. Yet, part of me does not want to accept those limitations and still yearns for something that feels as if it should have been.

Beautifully said! I feel very much the same as you wrote!
The ending is bitter-sweet, sad and yet hopeful. When I finish reading the LotR, I feel sad, but not depressed and empty!
I think this ending is beautiful and perfect, even if it makes the tears rise in my eyes. It is just like Gandalf says:

I will not say: Do not cry, for not all tears are an evil.

I feel that there is a balance between hope and melancholy, that there is a merciful providence behind it all, in spite of the sadness that many things are irrevocably lost.
I think the following quote expresses this mood very well:

Then Elrond and Galadriel rode on; for the Third Age was over, and the Days of the Rings were passed, and an end was come of the story and song of those times. With them went many Elves of the High Kindred who would no longer stay in Middle-earth; and among them, filled with a sadness that was yet blessed and without bitterness, rode Sam, and Frodo, and Bilbo, and the Elves delighted to honour them.

The ending of the tale of Aragorn and Arwen is even more sad, although Aragorn’s last words are full of hope (or rather “estel”, trust in Eru)

Originally posted by Child of the 7th age
I don't want to minimize the joy that is there in the ending. Indeed, one of the reasons I have trouble with some modern fiction is the underlying sense some authors convey that nothing has any intrinsic meaning. Instead, they point to a hollowness at the core of existence.

Once more, I agree very much with you!!

Strider tells the hobbits about the song of Tinuviel:

"It is a fair tale, though it is sad, as are all the tales of Middle-earth, and yet it may lift up your hearts"

"Lift up the heart" that is just the effect that reading the LotR has on the reader!

I also think the ending is rather realistic, in a way. It is not made sure what is really going to happen to Frodo, just as we don’t know what lies beyond the circles of the world. And the fact that the Elves, Ents, Dwarves, Woodwoses etc are all slowly going to vanish and only remain as a few misunderstood words in old poems and fairytales, and that Middle-earth and its magic will be replaced by the modern world is quite true and generates this “Heartracking sense of the vanished past” as Tolkien called it in a letter.

Originally posted by Dirigel quoting Child of the 7th age:

He did, because once the ship left the waters on the Straight Path, he died and went to heaven.

But Tolkien said explicitly:

from letter 181
The passage over Sea is not Death.

And I don’t agree with Davem’s opinion here:

What the post-LotR writings by JRRT have done is make his sojourn in the West a temporary thing for us, a transition period before he dies. This actually takes away the feeling that he has been rewarded for his sufferings on behalf of the people of Middle-earth. However long he got to spend in the West, he died. His time in the West is now seen (in Tolkien's words in one of the Letters) as a period in 'purgatory'. This effectively lessens the sense of 'completion' we feel when we read of his coming to Tol Eressea.

What I mean is, whether we think of Frodo's passage into the West as an allegory of his dying, or whether we see it as his going to the Earthly Paradise, the end of Frodo's story for us now is his death. He gets no 'reward'.

No reward? But look at what Tolkien wrote:

from letter 246:

Frodo was sent or allowed to pass over Sea to heal him - if that could be done, before he died. He would have eventually to "pass away": no mortal could, or can, abide for ever on earth, or within Time. So he went both to a purgatory and to a reward, for a while: a period of reflection and peace and a gaining of a truer understanding of his position in littleness and in greatness, spent still in Time amid the natural beauty of "Arda Unmarred", the Earth unspoiled by evil.

Bilbo went too. No doubt as a completion of the plan due to Gandalf himself. Gandalf had a very great affection for Bilbo. His companionship was really necessary for Frodo's sake - it is difficult to imagine a hobbit, even one who had been through Frodo's experiences, being really happy even in an earthly paradise, without a companion of his own kind, and Bilbo was the person that Frodo most loved.
But Bilbo also needed and deserved the favour on his own account. He bore still the mark of the Ring that needed to be finally erased: a trace of pride and personal possessivness.(...) As for reward for his part, it is difficult to feel that his lilfe would be complete without an experience of "pure Elvishness", and the opportunity of hearing the legends and histories in full, the fragments of which had so delighted him.

This feels very much like a reward to me! And the fact that he, as all mortals, will eventually die, doesn’t trouble me at all. Look at this quote:

from letter 325:
-As for Frodo or other mortals, they could only dwell in Aman for a limited time - whether brief or long. The Valar had neither the power nor the right to confer "immortality" upon them. Their sojorn was a "purgatory", but one of peace and healing and they would eventually pass away (die at their own desire and of free will) to destinations of which the Elves knew nothing.

So Frodo will lay down his life much in the same way as Aragorn did: trusting in Eru and knowing that he has fulfilled his life .
I will much rather believe in Tolkien's explantion than worry about the mysterious and depressing poem "the Seabell"!

originally quoted by Raynor:
Death as inevitable ending for Men was, apparently, a by-product of Melkor's influence on them

I thought death was "the gift of Iluvatar" and originally not meant as a punishment ?

[Aiwendil]

Davem wrote:

What the post-LotR writings by JRRT have done is make his sojourn in the West a temporary thing for us, a transition period before he dies.

I think that Guinevere is right in arguing that Frodo's journey to the West remains very much a reward. I would only like to add that, whatever the experience of readers may have been, it seems to me unlikely in the extreme that Tolkien ever saw Frodo's sojourn in Aman as eternal. Though he turned to the metaphysical framework of Middle-earth with greater attention in the post-LotR years, the broadest elements of that framework (which makes eternal earthly life impossible for any mortal) pre-date LotR. Indeed, the necessity of mortality for humans was a crucial point in both the QS version of Earendil's story and the developing legend of Numenor.

[Raynor]

I thought death was "the gift of Iluvatar" and originally not meant as a punishment ?

I did point to this being a Mannish idea ("as Andreth tells Finrod in their debate"); indeed, it would be more 'objective' to say that 'Melkor has cast his shadow upon death and confounded it with darkness, bringing forth evil out of good, and fear out of hope' .

[Beleg]

I feel pretty sad at the end of ROTK, but it's with the appendices that I cry my eyes out. The description of the year 1541 is depressing. I understood at this moment that the story was really over when all the characters are separated from each others.
The friendship between Legolas and Gimli is also very poignant, and i always wonder what happened to them once they left ME. did they perish in the Great Sea? Did they sail forever or at least until Gimli's death (which would be terrible for Legolas, left alone in a ship in the middle of the Ocean). Would Legolas go back to Valinor after that?

That's why I barely read this part of the appendices, and when it happens, just start to read the book I again, to tell myself "i don't want this story to end".

[Thinlómien]

Originally Posted by Beleg

The friendship between Legolas and Gimli is also very poignant, and i always wonder what happened to them once they left ME. did they perish in the Great Sea? Did they sail forever or at least until Gimli's death (which would be terrible for Legolas, left alone in a ship in the middle of the Ocean). Would Legolas go back to Valinor after that?

Gimli was allowed to the Undying Lands because of his friendship with Legolas and as a favor from Galadriel. He died there, later.

[Thinlómien]

All the three Arda books, LotR, Sil and even TH end with a loss. Yet, there is always something sweet that remains from the past and a new age begins, in good and bad.

----

However, reading through the Why save them? -thread, I decided I wanted to raise a question on Does LotR have a sad or a happy ending? As the question was similar enough, I posted it here instead of starting a new thread.

I guess most of the people (like me) would say that the end is neither happy nor sad; it has both kind of elements and you can't categorise it.

The answer which I'm after is however that if you had to say which one it is, what would you say? There can be sad elements in a happy end and happy elements in a sad end.

Is the ending more sad or happy in your opinion?

In any case, I like this thread and am glad to reactivate it, for one post at least...

[The Mouth of Sauron]

Not everyone's happy at the end of LOTR , let me assure you .

Sauron is gnawing himself in the shadows , unable to take form again and I'm consequently unemployed .

I was the Mouth of Sauron .

Who knows what was in JRRT's mind when he wrote the ending of LOTR ? It may be he envisaged a sequel where the main characters re-appeared but he just never had the time to write it . There was nothing to say evil couldn't stir up during the start of the Fourth Age and nothing to say Elves and/or Frodo couldn't return to Middle-Earth .

There were certainly plenty of undefeated enemies - Orcs, Haradrim , Variags of Khand , Corsairs , etc. remaining at the start of the Fourth Age - indeed numerically the were probably still much stronger than Gondor and Rohan combined. If they had been united , smart and led well, they could still have prevailed .