The Straight Road

[Lalwendë]

Cheers, Guin, saved me a job there as I wanted to talk about that quote

Therefore the loremasters of Men said that a Straight Road must still be, for those that were permitted to find it. And they taught that, while the new world fell away, the old road and the path of the memory of the West still went on, as it were a mighty bridge invisible that passed through the air of breath and of flight (which were bent now as the world was bent), and traversed Ilmen which flesh unaided cannot endure, until it came to Tol Eressëa,

As I said, you know me, I like to know how things work (Elves walking on custard and so forth...) and this gave me plenty of things to think about when I was rummaging through HoME the other night for more info.

Firstly there's that 'permitted'. OK so that might be something Men say happens, that someone or some thing 'permits' passage, and it might not actually happen that way. But if it does need 'permission' then who gives it and how?

And who can have that permission? Do ships sail out simply hoping to be granted it or do they get some kind of message?

Secondly there's the idea that the Road is a bridge which goes through the sky (very HDM...) and the real world falls away, so that Valinor is literally removed from the world. Therefore it isn't in 'the West', it's not even in the world itself.

Then finally there's this "flesh unaided cannot endure" line. Here I'm thinking around the issue wildly but bear with me.....The Elves, we know, can exist as a fea without a hroa, but Men cannot - though Sauron may have found a way with his Ringwraiths. Do Elves simply forgo their hroa as they pass the Straight Road, knowing they can have another once they get to the Halls of Mandos? The mortals we know for certain who travel the Straight Road at the end of the Third Age are all Ringbearers, and the Ring definitely has some effect on the hroa and either removes it or absorbs it or makes it disappear (however it does it, it definitely does do something to it). Does something about the Ringbearers and what they have experienced make it likely that the Straight Road works by doing something to fea/hroa?

Slightly mad, I know, but I have to examine why and how it works