I’ve often lamented that human lifespans are too short to really get anything done, so if it’s a choice between the human life I have now or the life of the Elves, I’ll be counted with the Elves. But assuming that I also get an Elros-like span of several centuries, I think that might be enough, while still leaving me free to learn the one thing the Elves cannot (which I’m not terribly curious about yet, but I imagine I eventually will be).
I do think, though, that while Elros made the right choice, he made it for the wrong reasons, and that laid the groundwork for the eventual fall of Numenor. He didn’t choose mortality for its own sake, but because he wanted to be a king among mortals.
Yes, that aspect of his intentions seems to have been acquired from his Noldoran roots, sadly. Fortunately, Elrond seems to have avoided that thought process, quite content to simply exist and be a guiding light in the world when he had the chance to be a potential “king” type person.
Knowledge of impending mortality stunts life’s dreams. As a result, a man generally aims at the easy target he can hit for his own glory (hence the overwhelming drive for power above all else) as opposed to one that will truly affect the world long after he dies.
Give me immortality and the ability to learn from my life. Even among the oldest elves there was none who’d had the time to master everything, but many who mastered a few to glorious effect. Men? Well they were good at dying. Neat. Even elves can die, and they do it better than men.
Elros option - big fish in a little pond with a good several century lifespan, ruling magnificent empires and the like. With your longer lifespan and increased vitality you are guaranteed to move right to the top.
Elrond option - even elves have stratification and imagine life working in the file room for eternity, because no one ever dies and therefore no one ever moves up. Granted you could go on a assassination spree or just orchestrate wars in some machiavellian fashion to thin out the herd. But they’re all millenia old themselves and know all the tricks - you’ll got caught eventually. Then it is eternity shoveling Shadowfax’s horse crap and that of his descendants ad infinitum. No thank you.
Ah, but the elves (and Elros was brought up as an elf, and should have met the army of the Valar when they came to Beleriand and captured Morgoth the final time) had word from the Valar themselves that men did not simply cease to be. They just went somewhere else. So Elros and Elrond likely would not have been fearful of death as the ordinary humans of their era were.
I think Elros made the better choice, though it could also be seen as an impulsive choice, befitting a Man. After all, Elrond is choosing to stay and care for the world, and spend millions of years coming to understand it. Elros, on the other hand, said, “to heck with this place! I’ve seen enough! I’m off to something new.”
And yet, the Elves in Middle-Earth accomplished almost nothing. They have the Grey Havens, Rivendell, the destroyed kingdom of Eregion, Lothlorien, some caves halls in Mirkwood, some wandering kin, and possibly some stuff down by Dol Amroth. Despite their wisdom, they were duped by Sauron into making rings that spelled their own doom. And after 6000 years in M-E minus Beleriand, they are fading away and accomplishing nothing, not even going to war against Sauron when the final curtain calls.
Men, on the other hand, create Anor, Gondor, Rohan, the Anduin vales, etc. They have kingdoms in Harad, kingdoms in the East. And they are the only ones that show up to take on Sauron when the final call comes.
For me, it’s pretty clear which life is the one that produces more… :dubious:
Indeed! Not to mention that the Highest Elves are those who heeded the Call of the Valar in the First Age, and NEVER came back to Middle-Earth. Their story is: born near Cuivenen, follow Olorin, reach Valinor, build Eressea and Elvenhome and a bunch of ships that are never to be used to return to M-E unless pillaged by your kinsfolk On A Mission. golf clap
The Elves we see in the LOTR are either (a) Grey Elves, who “never saw the light of Aman”, and (b) Noldorean exiles, kin-slayers even (yes, even Galadriel), and their descendants.
Let me be a Man, then, with the vigor and desire to do great deeds until the very end! As Tennyson wrote of brave Ulysses:
*Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,–
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. *
Ain’t no Elven bard gonna write that shit, baby.
well…they’re getting around to it. Sheesh, Men are so impatient. They had worked out magic & the silmarils, talking trees and arrogant condescension fairly well. So apart from the one trick pony of building squabbling iron-age empires for 5,000 years (and then whithering to the point where even a brief and dim flash of their former “glory” becomes a barely tenable chance of hope with no promise of an encore) what did men ever come up with?
And why go to war with Sauron? When the Men will simply allow him to keep reclaiming power? At some point you gotta stop giving the man fish and give him the fishing pole.
Yeah, the Elves and the Vulcans, both do arrogant condescension pretty well.
Actually, it does strike me that, particularly in the First Age, the Elves have more of everything than do Men: Wisdom, skill, power…pigheadedness, arrogance, and hubris. Come right down to it, Feanor and his sons were pretty much complete dicks.
Tolkien intended both the Eldar and the Edain as archetypes who were not real in the sense that we are real. They are both tools in his giant metaphor of storytelling: meta-stories. Neither gets to really be alive. So, if you are going to fight a long defeat over several millenia, the choice is going the long haul, or not.
My problem with Elrond (and his son’s choices) is that he lingered in ME without the understanding that he was fighting a long and endless war. There were many works he could have undertaken in the 3,000 years between Sauron’s fall and his inevitable return where Elrond could have made Sauron’s return an enormous uphill climb, and he did not. With or without his Elven ring, preferably without.
It’s not really a fair question: if I get tired of living, I can change my mind later, as elves can still die. But if I choose mortality, I’m stuck with it.
So, with that limited knowledge, I chose to be an elf. But the idea that the humans would not have an afterlife in a work that is an allegory to Catholicism seems very strange.
This doesn’t really make much sense. It’s mortality that drives men to build and accomplish great things that will outlast themselves and allow them to be remembered and revered. Mortality gives meaning to how one uses the years given.
While Gandalf was running around trying to save Middle Earth the Elves pretty much sat around and twiddled their thumbs because they simply didn’t give a damn any more. There isn’t really any written evidence that it’s the men who’s dreams are stunted.
