Aragorn and Arwen as (anti-) Tragedy

     To what extent is the story of Arwen and Aragorn a tragedy? It might seem reasonable to view the 'star-cross'd lovers' facing their deaths as the fulfillment of the tragic cycle, but the immortality of Arwen creates several complications. Is Arwen's hamartia simply her vulnerability to Aragorn? Could the meeting of Aragorn and Arwen be the crucial peripeteia, or is there no crucial moment where the storyline deviates in terms of their fortune? Is their ending cathartic, considering the range in possibilities for how they possibly could have died? Part of the problem with answering these questions is that the tale of Aragorn and Arwen gives rather little substance. We simply don't receive an adequate detailing of Arwen's emotional struggle to choose between Aragorn or her family in order to determine how the events of Arwen's life could be seen as 'good' or 'bad' fortune. But by looking specifically at the question of forsaking immortality, I hope to explore the tragic appearance of love between Arwen and Aragorn.

     I think it's crucial to first look at Aragorn, as his journey for love is less tragic and fairly straightforward. He sees Arwen, thinks she's pretty, does whatever he needs to do to marry her, marries her, has a child, and then dies. While his adventure to become the king of Gondor and Arnor has many twists and turns, and his chances of marrying Arwen seem quite diminished at numerous points, his options are always fairly morally obvious. He can either continue pursuing his goal of becoming the ruler of Gondor and Arnor, facing death in battle, or he can be a coward and hide from conflict, simply leaving himself to die later on with none of his goals accomplished. In this sense, it's hard to see Aragorn as a tragic character, but rather more of an adventurer. His treasure is Arwen, and he must unite Gondor and Arnor under his rule in order to receive his treasure. By pursuing his adventure, Aragorn has everything to gain, and very little to lose.

     While Aragorn is a fairly narrow character in terms of his love life, Arwen is much more complicated. Primarily, Arwen is unlike a normal treasure in the sense that she has the explicit choice to be a treasure or not to be a treasure. She had the option of turning away Aragorn, or even running away with Aragorn, but she rejects both of these options in a very morally ambiguous choice. While the circumstances are unclear, the choice between family and romance, and between mortality and immortality, is going to be a difficult choice in any case. This suggests that meeting Aragorn, and him falling in love with her, was itself a tragic peripeteia. Before meeting Aragorn, Arwen did not have the choice of paths ahead of her, but now the choice was explicitly hers. She could no longer live the life of a normal elf explicitly because Aragorn presented his love to her, which is fundamentally at odds with her immortality. 

     However hard the choice may be, the choice is not necessarily the choice of which is the greatest sacrifice, but rather it could be seen as a positive reversal. While immortality might be seen as a cage by the elves where their fëar are trapped to their hröar, having the sudden chance to choose immortality allows Arwen to weigh the pros and cons of immortality. Just as Eru grants death to Men as a gift, perhaps the tragic reversal for Arwen is positive in this sense, where Aragorn presents the possibility for her to receive the gift of death. 

     Both the immortality of Elves and the mortality of Men are in some way gifts from Eru, but which is the better gift? Or maybe they're both bad gifts, prompting one to ask which is the greater Doom? The elves don't seem to be particularly happy with their immortality, as they have to witness all the sorrows of Arda Marred and they believe that once the world ends both their hröar and their fëar will no longer exist. In contrast, Men are scared of their deaths, as they are scared of what lies beyond in the Void or if anything at all lies beyond, so they are more desperate to cling to Arda Marred. For both Elves and Men, their gifts from Eru can easily become a Doom. Is the existence of Elves also the existence of waiting for existence to end? Is the existence of Men the fear of whether your existence will end? Obviously this paints a rather bleak picture of the contrasting lives of Elves and Men with respect to existence, and perhaps it raises the question of why Eru would choose to place his Children in such conditions. Nonetheless, it is clear that immortality eliminates the fear of mortality, and mortality eliminates the sorrowful waiting for the end of immortality, but neither is satisfying in itself, leaving Arwen with a false choice.

      Maybe the choice between mortality and immortality was barely even present for Arwen, and the real choice was between romance or family. There is nothing very unpredictable about her choice, because no story shows a character choosing her family over her love. Love is nearly always the more relatable and powerful emotion in story-telling. Especially, Arwen had already spent hundreds of years with her family, whereas Aragorn had relatively little time left. Elrond clearly does not want to let go of Arwen, but perhaps this is partially due to Elrond wanting to extend his own immortality through having a lineage. Arwen does not need to worry about this issue, because she can recreate her immortality through her son, Eldarion, allowing her retain some aspect of both familial love and immortality. The choice to be the object of a family or the subject of a family is similarly not a particularly challenging question, especially in light of the lack of emotional depth described in the tale.

     At this point I'm inclined to say that the tale of Arwen and Aragorn is not a tragedy, but appears as a tragedy from the mortal perspective. In this perspective, Arwen not only abandons her immortality, but obtains the fear of imminent death due to her vulnerability to Aragorn's love. But she is merely exchanging one gift of existence, or doom of existence, for another, just as she exchanges one family for another. Ultimately, Arwen simply gains love with Aragorn. Neither her death nor Aragorn's death is tragic as they are both fated to die at some point, whether it be at the end of Arda or within a few hundred years. The real choice comes down to whether Arwen wants to die in love, or not in love, which is not a difficult question to answer in the end. Arwen does not merely die for love, but she dies in a qualified sense where she is debatably all-around gaining through her love with Aragorn.

-FK