Inspiration '', which begins .
Missing religion s like Aragorn. Shippey notes that both Aragorn and Arwen are pagan, though Aragorn is "remarkably virtuous ... without even the faults of
Theoden, and he foreknows his death like a [Christian] saint". Shippey explains that Tolkien, a devout
Roman Catholic, "thought, or hoped, that God had a plan for Virtuous pagan|[virtuous pagan] pre-Catholics too", so that heroes like Aragorn would go to
Limbo rather than to Hell. Whatever the case, Shippey considers the tale to give "the deepest sense of religious belief mentioned explicitly in Middle-earth", Amendt-Raduege describes the death of Aragorn as "one of the most deeply moving scenes in the story". The scholar of English literature Chris Walsh describes "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen" as an alternative ending to
The Lord of the Rings, with Aragorn's sombre last words to Arwen in place of the hobbit
Sam Gamgee's cheery "Well, I'm back". Walsh notes that in a letter, Tolkien wrote "The passage over Sea [to Elvenhome in the West] is not Death ... I am only concerned with Death as part of the nature, physical and spiritual, of Man, and with Hope without guarantees. That is why I regard the tale of Arwen and Aragorn as the most important of the appendices; it is part of the essential story". Sarah Workman writes that the relegation of the tale to an appendix "does not subordinate its importance", citing the same letter. Walsh states that he is interested to find that while Tolkien had "reluctantly relegated" Walsh notes that Jackson includes a flash forward to Elrond's vision of Arwen as the King's widow, with the phrase "There is nothing for you here: only death" used both in the film of
The Two Towers and again in
The Return of the King: in Walsh's view, death is the story's focus. Gray notes that one effect of the relegation is an emphasis on dramatic action, at the price of "love-interest". The Tolkien scholar
Christina Scull notes that as a result of this hobbit-centred viewpoint, first-time readers can be "as surprised as the hobbits when Arwen and her escort arrive at Minas Tirith". The scholar of medieval and Renaissance literature Mary R. Bowman writes that both "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen" and the final part of Appendix B (a detailed timeline) are examples of the appendices denying the closure of
The Lord of the Rings by narrating events for some 120 years after those of the final chapter of the main text; this differs from the non-narrative nature of the later appendices which add "cultural and linguistic material".
"History, true or feigned" in the "Tale of Aragorn and Arwen" with
Dante's echoing of
Lancelot and
Guinevere in his tale of
Paolo and Francesca, in the same way that
Dante in his
Inferno (5.121–138) narrates that
Paolo and Francesca were trying to imitate
Lancelot and
Guinevere of
Arthurian legend. Rateliff observes that this points up a "highly unusual" aspect of the book among modern fantasy: it is set "in the real world but in an imagined prehistory." In this tale of decline and fall, notes
Marjorie Burns, Tolkien "clever[ly]" manages to include an element of rising to nobility. Men cannot climb the hierarchy, as
Eru,
Valar, and Elves are permanently above them. But the Elves voluntarily leave at the end of the Third Age, so men can take their place. Further, Burns writes, the marriage with Arwen infuses Aragorn's line with fresh Elven blood, bringing some of the Elves' actual power and nobility to Gondor.
Love and death The Tolkien scholar
Richard C. West notes the resemblance between 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. Others such as Bill Davis analyse Tolkien's exploration of mortality through an elf's choosing to die. West further shows how Tolkien subtly weaves the tale into the main story of
The Lord of the Rings. West gives examples of direct and indirect references to Arwen that only make sense or become clearer once the tale in the Appendices has been read, such as the gift-giving scene in Lothlorien where Aragorn refers to Arwen with his words to Galadriel "Lady, you know all my desire, and long held in keeping the only treasure that I seek. Yet it is not yours to give me, even if you would; and only through darkness shall I come to it", and in response is presented by Galadriel with a green elfstone (earning him the name "Elessar") set in a silver brooch from Arwen. The scholar of English literature
Anna Vaninskaya studies "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen" to see how Tolkien uses fantasy to examine the issues of love and death, time and immortality. Given that Tolkien's Elves are immortal, they face the question of death from a unique vantage-point. Sarah Workman writes that in the tale, Arwen's mourning of Aragorn serves to overcome what
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", The political philosopher Germaine Paulo Walsh compares Tolkien's view that "the ability to exercise wise judgment is tied to a steadfast belief in the ultimate justice of the cosmos, even in the face of circumstances that seem hopeless" with the attitudes towards death in Ancient Greece. He writes that
Plato stated that
Homer took
Achilles as the model for death, the "only sound response" being despair, whereas Tolkien's model is Aragorn, who chooses death freely according to the "ancient prerogative of the
Númenórean rulers"; when Arwen pleads with him to hold off, he "concedes that death is a cause for 'sorrow' but not for 'despair'." 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 or
Niggle or Arwen." 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 that of Aragorn and Arwen, where in both cases an elf makes her escape from deathlessness; though since Elves do not die, she questions whether the theme can be at once death and immortality. 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". In their annotated and expanded edition of Tolkien's essay (
Tolkien On Fairy-stories), Flieger and the textual scholar
Douglas A. Anderson provide commentary on 'the Escape from Deathlessness' passage, referencing Tolkien's views in a 1956 letter, that: == See also ==