In LOTR, nothing is perhaps more sad than the moment when Frodo
leaves at the Grey Havens. And when I was a teenager, a long time ago,
I wept and wept into the night as I finished the book, like many of us
I am sure; I will remember this moment forever. For years I could not
understand why Tolkien had done that, why he had abandoned him, why he
left had left us all to grieve so much, why he left Sam alone to come
back home at last.
With time and many experiences, I came to see it very differently. It
seems to me that Tolkien is saying many things through his characters,
or perhaps it is me who see many things, and maybe some will say I am
seeing what I want to see - but what good is a work of art anyway if it
does not make you reinvent your own world? :-)
Anyway, at the end of LOTR, there are many things that change, of
course, people choose new paths, destinies are twisted, the Elves are
leaving and so on. A new Age has begun indeed, the Age of Men. What
strikes me is how more free the people seem to be in the end, even
beside the obvious ‘freedom’ that the destruction of the Ring allows.
Aragorn is a bit afraid of that freedom, with Gandalf leaving
Middle-Earth: he would have wished him to stay longer to help him rule,
he is at lost for a while. But isn’t the Age of Men precisely that: the
Age of Choice, the Age of your own destiny, the Age where no-one will
define the rules but yourself, for your own life? Together, Men rule
their own lands with no Wizards, no Elves to guide them. Men are left
to themselves to judge their own actions and decisions. Yes we could
look at things and see that much of what once was is lost, and indeed
much was lost, knowledge, wisdom, beauty. But maybe because I have
always been an eternal optimist, I can’t help it but see that this new
Age is a new beginning and even a chance for Men to ‘show their
quality’.
Many changes do happen. One thing that goes almost unnoticed in LOTR is
the choice of Éowyn to become a healer, after having spent time
in the Houses of Healing and met and opened her heart to Faramir. That
is no small thing: to go from being a caged, bitter and suicidal
shieldmaiden of Rohan to a Healer of Ithilien, land of life and natural
beauty, is a transformation that tells of a desire to honour and
nurture life. In a sense, her vital force is now used to give and
maintain life instead of honouring death and glory.
As well, with Frodo leaving for the Undying Lands, Sam is ‘free’ to
live his own life, ‘to be whole’ again as he was meant to be. All the
time spent to repair and heal the Shire after the ravages of war is
telling of Sam’s inner strength and vital force. Of course Frodo is
changed as well. Frodo was part of the Third Age, and indeed he became
an instrument that allowed the passage to the Fourth Age, he was
himself forced to let go of wizards and elves to count only on his
'humanity' to go on on his quest, with Sam as a symbol of vitality and
hope.
But if he was an instrument that allowed it to come, Frodo does not
belong to the Age of Men. And yet, for all his suffering, what he
decides to do in leaving Middle-Earth is an act of pure Freedom, almost
as a tribute to the New Age. He makes the Choice to Heal, or at least
to try to find some healing, to ‘understand’ as Tolkien says in his
letters, and to find the great inner peace that this never fails to
bring. Tolkien does not say whether he achieves this or not, but he
gives him all the time he needs to do so, until he chooses to die at
his own will, which is in my opinion the Ultimate act of Freedom. Not
suicide! But to let go when it is time to do so.
LOTR is a story about war, and I believe about passages or initiations,
but when war is over, when the passage is crossed, or some part of it
is, what does peace/light mean? Does it mean to go back to old ways,
not to be disturbed, forgetting about what happened? Or does it mean to
reflect on the past and remember it and learn the lessons of war, as
Frodo tries to do with the Red Book? What if peace was not a time for
comfort, but a time to heal and to go ahead and understand and find new
ways of honouring life? A time to find what we have best in each of us
in order to do so? A time for the cleansing, for the ‘scouring’ of our
inner shires?
Frodo chose to leave Middle-Earth because, rightly or wrongly, he could
not find anything for him there that would give him peace. His decision
honours life, honours hope, continuation. In leaving, in a way he is
saying: “The Shire has been saved, but not for me, I have given all for
this and now I have to find some other way to feel whole again” and in
doing that, he is telling Sam and all his friends that he will NOT
abandon himself to death, suffering and decay. What better example of
love than that? Along with Éowyn and Faramir, and even Gandalf
going to Tom for ‘such talk as he have not had in all his time’, does
he not tell us that losing something does indeed mean gaining something
else?
Frodo was stripped of his old life in the darkest of ways, through a
suffering that is not to be compared to anything else in Middle-Earth,
and yet he chooses life in the end, not death. To us, who lose him, it
is almost unbearable to see him leave, but even Sam through his tears
understands in his heart of heart that this is for the best, and not
only for Frodo himself. Frodo’s leaving is the ultimate choice for life
and healing and understanding and peace. He is an example that after
war, or even to prevent war, there must be a deep healing, an
understanding, an openness to life and its manifestations. For him it
had to be outside Middle-Earth, for Sam it was in living a whole life
in the Shire, and for Éowyn, in becoming a healer, to honour
life and not death.
I know LOTR is about war and loss, and as any of you I can feel it deep
inside, it touches a reality that we all share. And yet I am not one to
let death govern my life, so why would such a story drive me so much
and for so long? What was it, what is it? It must have been the
subconscious appeal to life and hope, and the love of Frodo and Sam,
and somehow a deep understanding that Freedom and Choice were the
ultimate gift and doom of the Age of Men, our Age.
