Lord of the Rings: ending is a tragedy?

Cafe Society
1

Ok, so Sauron was reduced to a powerless ghost, forstalling a reign that would have transformed the world into an unimaginable hell. Virtually anything would have been better than that. But still, consider: The Elves stay in Middle Earth came to an end. So did that of Gandalf and presumably of the other wizards. Saruman’s semi-orcs were left to debase the human gene pool, as the last gasp of Numinor played itself out. In short, the era of Middle Earth was over.

The fellowship could have just dumped the One Ring into the ocean and let someone else worry about it millenia later; except I suppose that the last shred of hope for preserving the statas quo was lost when Saruman turned evil. Sauron’s empire in Mordor was on the verge of being able to conquer the world even without the Ring.

This ending makes me very melancholy. It’s a little like an alternate-history story in which a nuclear war destroys civilzation for all time, and the surviving tribesmen can only pass down tales of the lost wonders of the past, but at least Stalin didn’t conquer the planet.

2

Of course it was a tragedy. Tolkein fought in the First World War. He learned the hard way that victory wasn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. Sometimes you win the war, but the world still changes in ways you didn’t desire. The First World War was the Vietnam of Europe, the fight than finally broke down all illusions about the glory of war and victory. See the writings of Robert Graves for more on this subject.

To quote General Buck Turgidson, from Strangelove, “We must choose, now, between two regrettable, but nevertheless distinguishable postwar environments – one in which you got 20 million killed, and another in which you got 150 million people killed.” That’s the way Tolkien would have seen war. The old ways depart, and the victory brings change, and the best you can say is “well, at least it’s not as bad as if we had lost.”

3

And it is worse than that. The whole Rings Trilogy is just a final act in a tragedy that goes back to the very beginning, when the Ainur themselves chose to follow the lead of Melkor, in the singing of the first Theme of Illuvatar.

Tolkien was writing a tragedy from its earliest roots. The tragic flaw of the Noldor, and the Doom it brought upon them. The weakness of men, that made them fear death, and so waste so much of life. Magic is going away, and it won’t be coming back. Even in the Hobbit, he speaks of a time long ago, when there was less noise, and more green in the world. Anyone who loves forests, and quiet places far from the road more than roads that go places, knows that it’s all going away, and cannot ever come back.

You should be sad. Ah Elbereth, Gilthoniel, still we remember, we who dwell . . .

But the hidden realm, in Doriath lies beneath new seas, and the halls of Nargothrond have been despoiled. Turgon has opened the leaguer of Gondolin, long since, and it to has perished. Luthien is lost to the elves, and now Arwen too has chosen to pass away. Elves live forever, and their sorrow never ends. Immortality is a mixed blessing indeed. But now comes the age of men. And men fail often of their promise, yet seldom of their seed. Those stories are no part of Tolkien’s tale.

Tris

4

Well … It’s sad in the same way growing up is sad. It’s sad in the way that losing your grandparents is sad.

Personally almost all books make me melancholy. “Lord of the Rings” does it. “Mostly Harmless” does it. The last “Little House on the Prairie” made me really really melancholy. It all makes it blatantly obvious to me that things will change, nothings remains the same and someday my life will be so different I wont be able to recognize it. And then I’ll die.

5

Excellent post, Tris.

Galadriel told Frodo, “Your coming to us is as the footsteps of doom.” She meant that, since the Ring had been found, Lothlorien was done for. Whether he failed or succeeded in his quest, the time of the Elves was ending: Either he lost the Ring to Sauron, who would then destroy everything, or he destroyed it, destroying also the power of the Three Rings, one of which was used to maintain Lothlorien.

The whole story, starting with Silmarillion, as Triskadecamus said, is a big downer. There are some stories of renown that will lift your spirits, but overall, it’s a book of endings and failures, treasons and betrayals. The continuing theme throughout the Silmarillion is that the forces of evil won only through the treachery and greed of the people fighting against them, both elves and men.

They’re all very depressing to read, but still some of the best reading I’ve ever done.

6

Yes and no. It was tragedy in the sense of the passing of the Elves, but that was a foregone conclusion immediately upon Galadriel turning down the ring. The greater tragedy would have been her taking up the ring and becoming a Dark Queen and utterly perverting the time of the Elves. In this respect, the passing of the Elves was more bittersweet than tragic. Their appointed time had passed, and arguably long before, at the forging of the rings in the Second Age.

It was not a tragedy in the sense that the good guys survived, their goals were accomplished, and their world evolved to what was intended. True, Frodo was irretriveably wounded, but he did live to see the kind of life he fought for made possible with only slight changes. And I think that it is important to understand that when Tolkien describes Frodo’s wounds as never healing, he is not talking about the shoulder pain and the loss of the finger so much as knowing that both times when he was called upon to be strong, that he put the ring on: first on Weathertop, and later at the Cracks of Doom. He was not strong enough either time to resist the evil of the ring. (Look for Tolkien’s unintentional allegory to his post traumatic stress in WWI.) While Frodo was not bitter about his ultimate failure, he was self aware enough that he could not forgive himself. Is this truly tragic, along the lines of Hamlet or Lear’s failures? Oedipus’? No, because the grace of God did not saddle the world with the consequences of Frodo’s failure, the failings and compulsive evil of Smeagol/Gollum interfered.

Compare Frodo’s enormous struggle with the ring with Sam’s short and uneventful ring bearing: Sam has the ring, contemplates what he could do with it, understanding it’s power (as Bilbo never understood it) and concludes that it isn’t the right thing and gives it back rather easily. By comparison to Frodo, the ring has almost no power over Sam, only Tom Bombadil is less affected. But remember, Frodo is quite bright and well educated.

7

And precisely because of same I can’t see it as a complete tragedy. And remember how the book ends. Child in arms, beloved near. “I’m home.”

Good has triumphed, but it just didn’t do it in the way we wanted it to.

8

Everything in Tolkien’s world is a Pyrrhic victory, and I agree with previous posters who made reference to Tolkien’s experience of World War I.

Tolkien lived through what was in many ways the axis upon which all future European history turned. After the Great War, the lifestyle of many, if not most Europeans changed forever. Many people of that generation (especially in England) looked back on the time before the war as a peaceful and idyllic period. Tolkien’s constant theme is that of a lost golden age, and the ultimately futile struggle to restore it. Throughout the boos, many characters seem to fear time, and the changes that are inevitable with its passing. The Elves have been lamenting their lost Eden since practically day 1, and have done everything in their power to preserve what they still have. Tolkien semed to regard the passage of time as something terrible but inevitable, and he portrays all of his characters as prisoners to time and to their own perceptions of it. The Elves are trapped in the past- they can do practically nothing but talk about the glory days and cry in their miruvoir. The Dwarves aren’t much better off. The Hobbits are trapped in the present moment- they have no history, and they dislike change. Men are trapped in the future, always waiting for their chance to shine and planning ahead, dreaming of the glory days to come. But the Hobbits seem the happiest and most stable of the races- this may be again Tolkien’s perception of time’s influence- happiness exists only in the present, and unhappiness comes from lost or delayed hopes and expectations.

Damn, I got off-topic. :wink:

9

Tolkien regularly denied that LOTR was a mere analogy for anything, because he disliked simplistic similes and metaphors. He believed a story should stand on its own, and that the world a writer created should take on a life and reality of its own. To him, Frodo is diminished if he’s seen simply as a symbol for Jesus and the Shire is cheapened if we see it as a metaphor for England. And yet, there’s little doubt that MUCH of what we read in LOTR is inspired by Tolkien’s devout Christianity and his own experiences in World War I.

Tolkien came home from World War I suffering from “shell shock” (today, I suppose they’d call it “post-combat stress fatigue”). He’d seen most of his closest friends killed in the war, and like many veterans of horrible wars, he found himself unable to resume a normal life for quite some time. In THAT regard, at least, Tolkien was not unlike Frodo at the end of LOTR. He’d given every ounce of his strength to fight against an enemy that he firmly believed had to be defeated… but found, upon his return home, that his life could NEVER be exactly as it was.

Moreover, it’s worth remembering that LOTR was completed and released after the SECOND World War. The post-war years were difficult, in England. The British soldiers who’d spent years fighting Hitler came home to a land that had been devastated by the Luftwaffe, a land in which shortages and rationing of nearly EVERYTHING was the norm. Tommy Atkins" probably got through the D-Day invasion by telling himself, “This will be over soon… and I’ll be home, and my Mum will have a pot of tea waiting… can go back to the ol’ pub for a pint and a smoke with my mates…” But when Tommy got home, he found that England was a shell of its old self, a place where he couldn’t easily get even simple things like tea, beer or tobacco.

Oh, MANY of those British soldiers were like Sam Gamgee, and managed to resume a fairly normal life fairly quickly. Others, like Tolkien, were more like Frodo… weary from the war, even weary of life itself.

For what it’s worth, Tolkien DID recover, DID marry, DID have children, DID have a successful career and a conventionally happy family life. ULTIMATELY, he was more like Sam Gamgee than Frodo, in his ability to embrace life again. But he certainly understood, all too well, why Frodo could not.

10

Here here! I could not say that the LotR was a tragedy except in the ways life itself is tragic.

11

Excellent disscussion guys, i think another reason why the ending is so melancholy/bittersweet is because Tolkein chose not to end it at the destroying of the ring but at the passing of all the main characters - Frodo, Gandalf, Elves, Biblo. As well as this we have learned the shire had been corrupted and people lived in fear - as astorian said this could be a metaphor for a WWI or WWII solider returning home to find life ruined.
Furthermoreso because Tolkein continues the story after the ‘conclusion’ of the main story (ring destoryed) we expect everything to be happy, but of course Frodo and the others will age, die and eventually pass out of knowledge (apart from books) thus we realise they are mortal (unless the grey havens keep them immortal - not sure) and will die. This realisation that they won’t, and physical can’t, stay young and happy and heros is ultimately a harsh truth which something like Walt Disney doesn’t deal with. I remember when i finished reading it and Sam was all alone without Frodo, Gandalf had gone, and realising Aragon was also alone feeling sadness and dissapointment, but the more i thought about it the more i realised it wasn’t a depressing ending, more just an ending of an age. And that it would be unrealistic to leave the reader simply thinking everything was happy as we would not contemplate their future and realise they will die.
Basically i think the ending is absolutly perfect for the book. If the ending had been to twee then all the darkness, struggles and sacrafice which he built up so well in 3 epic books would have been lost. Inversly if he had made the ending too dark the hope, faith and courage would have been lost. As it is he left it with an air of success and happiness but also of realisation and melancholy, which is so true with so many things in life.

12

also i dont know if anyone has heard but apprantly they have changed the story of TTT i dont know how to put in a spoiler box so i’ll just scroll down

apprantly they have Saruman being pushed out of Orthanc by Wormtongue and then falling on a spike. I cant believe that is true after all Peter Jackson did to ‘stay faithful’ to the books. He;d effectivly be re-writing it himself, which is not the idea. Has anyone else heard this, i just refuse to believe it.

13

Sorry, homeboy, but I’ve heard the same rumour. The Scouring of the Shire scene was felt to be too anticlimactic for movie audiences by some, and since Saruman gets offed by Wormtongue eventually anyway, the rumor is that the process is just speeded up.

Frankly, I don’t have a big problem with it. Staying completely faithful to JRRT’s extremely and incredibly complex works would make it commercially impossible to bring to the big screen at all.

But it’s all just rumour so far; I guess we’ll have to wait and se.

14

Seems to me it would be a shame to omit the scouring of the Shire. It’s one of the things that make the ending less tragic. Perhaps they’re going to end it with the celebrations that follow the destruction of the ring. This would leave out, not only the scouring of the Shire, but also the departures from Middle Earth that end the book. This would be imposing on the story a happier ending then it’s supposed to have, IMO.

15

I dont think that Peter Jackson would have gone to all the trouble to stay faithful to the books, as he himself has said in many interviews if he was then going to rewrite the story himself, i agree they could change the scouring of the shire and make it shorter, but i dont think it would be anti-climatic, and i think that the ending being ommited in order to make it happier would again spoil the story, but they dont have to drag it out, after making the first film so well it would be a shame if they were to change the next two films

16

The scouring of the Shire won’t be in the movies, the decisions has already been made. According to Peter Jackson the only reference to it is in Sam’s vision of the hobbits being rounded up and the Shire burning.

17

So the movie will show them returning to the Shire and finding that all is well there? Or the movie will end before the return to the Shire? If the latter is the case, does that mean that the departures from Middle Earth are also left out?

18

It isnt a tragedy. The wizards are just there to clear up the evil, that is why they went there in the first place, all 5 of them. Good won out in the end.

19

Such is the continuing tragedy of Arda Marred. Every work of the children of Iluvatar will be marred by the discord of Melkor. Yet each defeat will bring unlooked for victory, and the triumph of the spirit of Ainulindalë, until after Dagor Dagorath, at which time Eä will be remade aright.

Thus spake Qadgop the Seer

20

The movies are a bit of a tangent here, but there is a cast listing for Elanor Gamgee, so there’s at least some of the stuff in the Shire at the end left.

But back on topic: You can’t really say that the ending of Lord of the Rings is tragic, because the ending of the book isn’t in the book. Tolkien emphasized again and again that stories don’t really have beginnings and endings, they just merge into other stories. To find a beginning to his works, you have to go all the way back to The Beginning in the Music of the Ainur, and to find an end, you have to go all the way to The End, at the Second Music. If anything in between seems tragic, that’s just because we haven’t gotten to the ending yet.