Editing Half-elf (section)

=== Interpretations ===

{{further|Time in Tolkien's fiction}}

The Tolkien scholar [[Richard C. West]] notes the resemblance between the half-elves Arwen and Lúthien, and analyses Arwen's understanding of her fateful choice, between love for Aragorn and mortality on the one hand, and her father's wishes and immortality on the other.<ref name="West 2006">{{cite book |last=West |first=Richard C. |author-link=Richard C. West |chapter='Her Choice Was Made and Her Doom Appointed': Tragedy and Divine Comedy in the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen |title=The Lord of the Rings, 1954-2004 : Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder |editor1=Hammond, Wayne G. |editor1-link=Wayne G. Hammond |editor2=Scull, Christina |editor2-link=Christina Scull |publisher=[[Marquette University Press]] |year=2006 |isbn=0-87462-018-X |oclc=298788493 |pages=317–329}}</ref> West analyses the scene at the camp on Weathertop where Aragorn recounts to the hobbits in poetry and prose the tale of Beren and Lúthien, with West highlighting Aragorn's words and "pensive mood" as he tells them that Lúthien "chose mortality, and to die from the world, so that she might follow [Beren]" and that "together they passed, long ago, beyond the confines of this world" and that she "alone of the Elf-kindred has died indeed and left the world, and they have lost her whom they most loved".<ref name="West 2006"/> West speculates that Aragorn may be thinking here of the consequences of what will happen should Arwen marry him, and later states that he finds "the lonely death of Arwen the most moving tragedy within [''The Lord of the Rings'']".<ref name="West 2006"/> A similar conclusion regarding Aragorn's feelings at Weathertop is drawn by the scholar of medieval English literature John M. Bowers in his work on the influence of [[Geoffrey Chaucer]] on Tolkien. Bowers, looking at both the Weathertop scene and 'The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen', states that like certain pilgrims in Chaucer's ''[[The Canterbury Tales|Canterbury Tales]]'', Aragorn's stories of his ancestors "open a window into his private desires and fears".<ref name="Bowers 2019">{{cite book |last=Bowers |first=John M. |title=Tolkien's Lost Chaucer |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2019 |isbn=978-0198842675 |pages=244–245 }}</ref>

The scholar of English literature [[Anna Vaninskaya]] studies how Tolkien uses fantasy to examine the issues of love and death, time and immortality. Given that Tolkien's Elves are immortal, [[Death and immortality in Middle-earth|they face the question of death]] from a unique vantage-point.<ref name="Vaninskaya 2020">{{cite book |last=Vaninskaya |first=Anna |author-link=Anna Vaninskaya |chapter=J. R. R. Tolkien: More Than Memory |title=Fantasies of time and death: Dunsany, Eddison, Tolkien |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |year=2020 |isbn=978-1-137-51837-8 |oclc=1134852757 |pages=153–228}}</ref> Sarah Workman writes that in the ''Tale of Aragorn and Arwen'', Arwen's mourning of Aragorn serves to overcome what [[Peter Brooks (writer)|Peter Brooks]] called (she writes) the "meaningless", interminable nature of immortality. Workman quotes Brooks's statement that "all narration is obituary" and states that it is in that conception that Tolkien valued Arwen's fate: it is Arwen's "mourning gaze that allows for the transmission of Aragorn's memory",<ref name="Workman 2014"/> or in Tolkien's words which she quotes, "And long there he lay, an image of the splendour of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed".<ref name="Workman 2014">{{cite book |last=Workman |first=Sarah |chapter= Female Valour Without Renown: Memory, Mourning and Loss at the Center of Middle-earth |title=A Quest of Her Own: Essays on the Female Hero in Modern Fantasy |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gfoDBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA87 |year=2014 |publisher=[[McFarland & Company]] |isbn=978-1-4766-1763-3 |pages=87–88}}</ref>

Critics including the Polish scholar of religion in literature and film, Christopher Garbowski, note that while Tolkien contrasts Elves and Men throughout ''The Lord of the Rings'', he introduces the [[Central conceit|conceit]] that an Elf may marry a Man on condition of surrendering her immortality, something that happens exactly twice in Middle-earth: with Lúthien, and then with Arwen.<ref name="Garbowski 2006">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Garbowski |first=Christopher  |editor-last=Drout |editor-first=Michael D. C. |editor-link=Michael D. C. Drout |title=Death |encyclopedia=[[J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia|J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment]] |year=2006 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-135-88034-7 |pages=119–120}}</ref><ref group=T>{{harvnb|Tolkien|1993}}, Part Four. Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, pp. 303–366</ref><ref name="Davis 2013">{{cite book |last=Davis |first=Bill |editor1-last=Bassham |editor1-first=Gregory |editor2-last=Bronson |editor2-first=Eric |chapter=Choosing to Die: The Gift of Mortality in Middle-earth |title=The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy: One Book to Rule Them All |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Dw-NAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA123 |year=2013 |publisher=[[Open Court Publishing Company]] |isbn=978-0-8126-9806-0 |pages=123–136}}</ref><ref name="Gray 2009">{{cite book |last=Gray | first=William |chapter=J. R. R. Tolkien and the Love of Faery |title=Fantasy, Myth and the Measure of Truth: Tales of Pullman, Lewis, Tolkien, MacDonald and Hoffmann |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-230-00505-1 |oclc=228503211 |page=102}}</ref>

The scholar of English literature Catherine Madsen notes the reflection of mortality in the "fading" of Middle-earth from the enormous powers like [[Morgoth]] and [[Elbereth]] that battled in the First Age. She writes that "Aragorn is a hero and a descendant of heroes, but he is brought up in hiding and given the name of Hope [Estel]; Arwen possesses the beauty of Lúthien, but she is born in the twilight of her people and her title is Evenstar; these two restore the original glories only for a little while, before the world is altered and 'fades into the light of common day'".<ref name="Madsen 2004">{{cite book |last=Madsen |first=Catherine |chapter='Light from an Invisible Lamp': Natural Religion in ''The Lord of the Rings'' |editor-last=Chance |editor-first=Jane |editor-link=Jane Chance | title=Tolkien and the invention of myth: a reader |title-link=Tolkien and the Invention of Myth |publisher=[[University Press of Kentucky]] |location=Lexington |year=2004 |isbn=0-8131-2301-1 |oclc=54938267 |page=42}}</ref>{{efn|Madsen is here quoting from [[William Wordsworth]]'s ''[[Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood|Ode on Intimations of Immortality]]'', line 76.}} Rateliff, writing on the theme of the evocation of loss in Tolkien's works, describes the 'Gift of Men' as being "to accept loss and decay as essential parts of the world" and draws parallels with other writings by Tolkien: "The Elves cling to the past and so are swept away with it; in a fallen world, acceptance of the inevitability of death is the only way to pass beyond the world's limitations, for [[Brendan the Navigator|Brendan]] or [[Niggle]] or Arwen."<ref name="Rateliff 2006">{{cite book | last=Rateliff | first=John D. | author-link=John D. Rateliff | chapter='And All the Days of Her Life Are Forgotten' {{!}} 'The Lord of the Rings' as Mythic Prehistory  |title=The Lord of the Rings, 1954-2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder |editor1=Hammond, Wayne G. |editor1-link=Wayne G. Hammond |editor2=Scull, Christina |editor2-link=Christina Scull |publisher=[[Marquette University Press]] |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-87462-018-4 |oclc=298788493 |pages=67–100}}</ref>

The medievalist [[Verlyn Flieger]] wrote that nobody knows where Men go to when they leave Middle-earth, and that the nearest Tolkien came to dealing with the question was in his essay ''[[On Fairy-Stories]]'' "where, after speculating that since 'fairy-stories are made by men not by fairies', they must deal with what he called the Great Escape, the escape from death. He went on to the singular assertion that 'the Human-stories of the elves are doubtless full of the Escape from Deathlessness'."<ref name="Flieger 2005">{{cite book |last=Flieger |first=Verlyn |author-link=Verlyn Flieger |title=Interrupted Music: The Making of Tolkien's Mythology |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q6zgmCf_kY4C&pg=PA46 |year=2005 |publisher=[[Kent State University Press]] |isbn=978-0-87338-824-5 |page=46}}</ref><ref group=T>{{cite book |last=Tolkien |first=J. R. R. |author-link=J. R. R. Tolkien |title=[[Tree and Leaf]] |chapter=[[On Fairy-Stories]] |publisher=[[George Allen & Unwin]] |year=1964 |page=59}}</ref> Flieger suggests that two of the "human stories" of Tolkien's Elves really focus on this kind of escape, the ''Tale of Beren and Lúthien'' and the ''Tale of Aragorn and Arwen'', where in both cases a half-elf makes her escape from deathlessness.<ref name="Flieger 2005"/> Shippey comments that "the themes of the Escape from Death, and the Escape from Deathlessness, are vital parts of Tolkien's entire mythology."<ref name="IsaacsZimbardo2005">{{cite book |last=Shippey |first=Tom |author-link=Tom Shippey |editor1=Isaacs, Neil D. |editor2=Zimbardo, Rose A. |editor2-link=Rose Zimbardo |chapter=Another road to Middle-earth: Jackson's movie trilogy |title=[[Understanding The Lord of the Rings|Understanding the Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism]] |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GEWXQbASXZUC&pg=PA242 |year=2005 |publisher=[[Houghton Mifflin Harcourt]] |isbn=0-618-42253-6 |page=242}}</ref> In a 1968 broadcast on BBC2, Tolkien quoted French philosopher [[Simone de Beauvoir]] and described the inevitability of death as the "key-spring of ''The Lord of the Rings''".<ref name="Lee 2018">{{cite journal |last=Lee|first=Stuart D. |author-link=Stuart D. Lee |title="Tolkien in Oxford" (BBC, 1968): A Reconstruction |journal=[[Tolkien Studies]] |date=2018 |volume=15 |pages=115–176 |issn=1547-3155 |doi=10.1353/tks.2018.0008|s2cid=171785254 |url=https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:937e4b3c-ea7a-4da2-ad9d-1d3d3612180d }}</ref>{{efn|As described by Armstrong (1998) and Lee (2018), Tolkien stated: "human stories [are] always about one thing aren't they? Death: the inevitability of death" and then pulled a newspaper cutting from his pocket and read out the following quote from de Beauvoir's ''A Very Easy Death'' (1964): "There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that happens to man is ever natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must die, but for every man his death is an accident, and even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation."<ref name="Armstrong 1998">{{cite journal |last=Armstrong |first=Helen |title=There Are Two People in This Marriage|journal=Mallorn | publisher=[[The Tolkien Society]]| date=1998 |volume=36 |pages=5–12}}</ref><ref name="Lee 2018"/>}} In their annotated and expanded edition of Tolkien's essay (''Tolkien On Fairy-stories''), Flieger and textual scholar [[Douglas A. Anderson]] provide commentary on 'the Escape from Deathlessness' passage, referencing Tolkien's views in a 1956 letter, that:

{{blockquote|The real theme [of ''The Lord of the Rings''] for me is .. Death and Immortality: the mystery of the love of the world in the hearts of a race [Men] 'doomed' to leave and seemingly lose it; the anguish in the hearts of a race [Elves] 'doomed' not to leave it, until its whole evil-aroused story is complete. But if you have now read [[The Return of the King|Vol. III]] and the story of Aragorn [and Arwen], you will have perceived that.<ref group=T>{{harvnb|Carpenter|2023|loc=#186 to Joanna de Bortadano (drafts), April 1956 }}</ref><ref name="Flieger Anderson 2008"><!--quote is primary, obvs, commentary is 2ndry-->{{cite book |title=Tolkien On Fairy-stories |last=Tolkien |first=J. R. R. |author-link=J. R. R. Tolkien |editor1=Flieger, Verlyn |editor1-link=Verlyn Flieger |editor2=Anderson, Douglas A. |editor2-link=Douglas A. Anderson |publisher=[[HarperCollins]] | year=2008 |isbn=978-0-00-724466-9 |page=119 |url=https://archive.org/details/tolkienonfairyst00verl/page/119}}</ref>}}

Flieger remarks further that by attaching herself to men's lives and deaths, Lúthien is running against the current of elven life, but at the same time, by undergoing death and darkness Beren and she manage to come to the light. What is more, Flieger writes, their union creates a new race, the half-elven, who have the privilege of choosing either fate, and "new hope for both races".<ref name="Flieger 1983">{{cite book |last=Flieger |first=Verlyn |author-link=Verlyn Flieger |year=1983 |title=Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World |title-link=Splintered Light |publisher=[[William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company]] |isbn=978-0-8028-1955-0 |pages=129–130}}</ref> She notes that Tolkien described the story as "Release from Bondage", meaning death, release from deathlessness, and explains "Through death, men can let go; in their deathlessness, elves cannot. The half-elven can also be released from bondage, freed from the earth, if they wish. Tolkien makes no promises; what's to come is still unsure."<ref name="Flieger 1983"/> In her view, this is the Catholic Tolkien's key point, that being able to let go means trusting in faith. Holding on to life, or to physical treasures like the [[Silmaril]] which gets Thingol killed, is "folly". Thingol was in the light of the Two Trees, but by grasping Middle-earth, Lúthien, and finally the Silmaril, he journeys into and ends in darkness. It is the opposite of Lúthien's journey.<ref name="Flieger 1983"/>