Down the Hobbit Hole

Why hobbits? Why do they exist in Middle-earth and why are our protagonists hobbits?

    In “Creative Anachronisms,” Shippey draws a parallel between hobbits and rabbits. Rabbits do not naturally live in the British Isles and were only introduced in the thirteenth century, so there does not exist an Old English word for them, yet Tolkien chose to include them in his world. In fact, rabbits are one of the relatively few animals explicitly mentioned in LotR. In letter 316 to R.W. Burchfield, Tolkien even defined hobbit as a “hole-dweller,” much like rabbits with their famous rabbit holes, and as Shippey points out, Bilbo is often described as a rabbit in The Hobbit. The reason for this is that, like rabbits, hobbits are distinctly English but also distinctly not Old English: they like “fried fish and chips” (book 4 chapter 4, p. 333), smoke pipe-weed (despite tobacco only arriving in Europe in the 16th century), and settle their disputes using contracts written in modern financial language rather than violence (Shippey, “The Ring as ‘Equalizer’”). Essentially, the hobbits exist somewhat as a stand-in for a modern English spirit that lets modern readers relate to them and discover Middle-earth through them, as opposed to the more historically correct Men.

    This approach can be further refined by considering the contradictory nature of what it means to be English: small-town unadventurous folk who love singing and eating vs. heroic global conquerors with their epic legends. The first, embodied by the hobbits, has its historical roots in the Anglo-Saxons whereas the second, similar to the Gondorians with their Númenórean ancestors, are more comparable to the Normans that conquered them. Not much is known about the origins of the hobbits before crossing the Brandywine, like the Anglo-Saxons and their migration over the English Channel, whereas the Men and Elves have very rich histories. Although Tolkien was more interested in telling stories of the latter, the story would be incomplete without the former.

    In class, we discussed how each of the four core hobbits of LotR (plus Bilbo) is characterized by a different aspect of service and consequently heroism, but I am intrigued by the less heroic, yet equally devoted, servants, Gollum and Wormtongue. Gollum devoted hundreds of years to the Ring, and when he lost it, he scoured the ends of Middle-earth (including Mordor) to find it and get it back. Depending on whether you view the Ring as its own autonomous entity imposing its evil will on others or just something that magnifies the evil that already exists in others, Gollum is either the single most disciplined or the single least disciplined character in the story (given Shippey's discussion of the word). It is this dedication to the Ring that makes him unintentionally destroy it. If you define heroism by the outcome rather than the intention, then this is one of the most heroic acts in LotR. Ironically, this is very similar to the dilemma that came up in our discussion on whether Frodo failed his mission or not, and if you instead define heroism by the intention, then Frodo is not particularly heroic either since he chose to keep the Ring. I only mention this because it happens a second time—with Wormtongue—and as we know, Tolkien loves his comparable pairs of characters. Wormtongue dutifully does Saruman’s bidding, sabotaging the Rohirrim and subjugating the Shire, until he reaches a breaking point and kills his master. Again, if he had been any less devoted in his service, such as by standing up for himself or defecting after the fall of Isengard, Saruman would have survived since Frodo was willing to spare his life. As far as I can tell, Tolkien does not give a conclusive answer to the question: is service only heroic when the one you are serving is good? 

    However, these two instances speak to an important aspect of Frodo’s story: his lack of agency in practice. The narrative seems to undermine or completely disregard the choices he makes, such as keeping the Ring a secret from the rest of the hobbits, embarking on his quest alone (leaving the Shire, Rivendell, and Emyn Muil), keeping the Ring at Mount Doom, sparing Saruman’s life, etc.. I find this aspect particularly interesting because it distinguishes him from his three companions—each of which gets to decide their own fate—yet makes him much more realistic. When reading letter 5 to G.B. Smith, I couldn’t help but correlate Frodo’s fate with that of many modern soldiers, drafted into a foreign war and stripped of his agency, only to return home to a barely recognizable country, injured and sick. Again, Tolkien is able to incorporate both the modern and the ancient with Frodo’s tragic ending and the fairytale endings of the other hobbits. This is similar to how the realistic evil of the scouring of the Shire serves to balance out the fairytale evil of Sauron’s Mordor. I also want to mention that the core hobbits mature during their quest, but all of them, except Sam, seem to eventually “outgrow” hobbit society and evolve into something that isn’t quite hobbit but isn’t quite Man, either—three-quarter-lings, if I may. Sam, formerly just a gardener, heals the Shire and becomes its mayor—because remember, the hands of a king mayor are the hands of a healer—whereas Merry and Pippin eventually move to Gondor, and Bilbo and Frodo seemingly transcend the mortal world altogether by sailing west for Valinor.

The of Richecourt in 1918 (Library of Congress) for reference, since the scouring of the Shire is missing from the movies.

    I think that part of the reason why the Ring-bearer had to be a hobbit is encapsulated by their distaste for seafaring (except for those weirdo Brandybucks). The uncontrollable and unpredictable nature of the sea represents both possibility and peril: it is the route to discovery, but also to overreach. For example, the Númenóreans attempt to transcend death by sailing to Valinor, but the sea ends up destroying them. This hubris is distinctly missing in the hobbits who do not seem to have many aspirations through which they can be corrupted. Hobbits, who barely wish to leave home, definitely do not dream of conquering distant lands. Boromir was so easily corrupted by the Ring because of his desire to save Gondor and become king, whereas the Ring had no effect on Tom Bombadil who is already perfectly content with his life as it is, and Sam was even able to give it up after carrying it for two days because he only wants to serve Frodo. I think this tells us something about how Tolkien views morality: the defeat of great evil does not come from greater power, but from the refusal of it; and such refusal is most likely to be found among those who never sought greatness to begin with.

-ME

The Allure of Elves, Or, How Love of Love

            Upon my first watch of The Fellowship of the Ring, I found myself drawn by Arwen, Galadriel, Legolas, and even low-opacity Elrond, as funny as that might sound. Elves with their ethereal glow drew me in, and in other fantasy media, elves are my go-to favorite characters when they are present (i.e. Astarion from Baldur’s Gate 3). Samwise Gamgee and I share the same enthusiasm for the Elves of lore, with us both being enchanted by the tales that we both have heard, heard by the former and seen by the latter. It truly is something that is quite odd, for in older tales, Elves are presented as some sort of mischievous creatures and not the image of serenity we think of usually in more modern media (except for Christmas media, of course, but we shan’t brush upon that in this post). So I began to wonder what really drew people like me to really like the Elves of Middle-Earth. So, using Tolkien’s own letters and the day’s lecture (plus some of my own tidbits of knowledge), I set out to find out. 

One of the key points that I came across over and over again is the nature of love and its connection to the Elves. That did not surprise me. I have seen many fans in online spaces fawn over the romance of Arwen and Aragorn, with the most notable aspect of their romance in these spaces being that Arwen gave up her immortality to be with Aragorn, her love. Arwen, upon becoming Queen of the Reunited Kingdom, gives Frodo her place on the ship to Valinor. Though this sacrifice seems like a fairytale at first, there is the “bitter and the sweet”, as Arwen described her (and Lúthien’s) sacrifice of leaving her Elven family and forging a new one with the addition of human death. Arwen and Aragorn have a happy marriage, with many children, a peaceful kingdom, and each other. When Aragron passes, she travels to Lórien and passes of a broken heart in the place where they first fell in love. Imagine the pain of heartbreak extended over millenia, where Arwen would have to endure such tragic loss and be unable to join Aragorn

Tolkien himself writes about his Lúthien and his Arwen, his wife Edith. As we have discussed, the love between them withstood much turbulence to persevere. The tale, though written as a somewhat cautionary tale, cannot help but ooze with the love he holds for his wife. He describes his tough decision: choosing between “...disobeying and grieving (or deceiving) a guardian who had been a father to me, more than most real fathers, but without any obligation, and ‘dropping’ the love-affair until I was 21” (Letters no. 43), with the addition of not regretting waiting until he was 21, but stating that it did personally affect him very much being away from Edith. Despite him being away from his future wife, the love he had for her withstood separation and the many trials he undertook on the path of their relationship. She, as Tolkien described, could have gone off many married someone else, but they found and chose each other even after years of separation, her sacrificing her prospects for his self-described “moderate degree” and "dwindling pounds” and even the chance of her becoming a widow for love and family. Such a choice seems romantic yet tragic, much like Arwen’s and Lúthien’s; it is one that could have gone another way had certain events happened, yet both Tolkien’s choice of love and Edith’s choice of love withstood trials, and it came out victorious. 

Then I thought about vampires. I think about vampires a lot, actually. Vampires, much like Elves, are so otherworldly that I cannot be helped but to be drawn to them. Louis du Point du Lac says it best in Anne Rice’s novel Interview with the Vampire:

“Do you think us beautiful, magical, our white skin, our fierce eyes? Oh, I remember perfectly what mortal vision was, the dimness of it, and how the vampire’s beauty burned through that veil, so powerfully alluring, so utterly deceiving!” (Rice 261).

This quote, which comes towards the end of the novel, is meant to dissuade a character from becoming a vampire, to which Louis attempts to contrast the nature of the vampire by saying that all that glitters is not gold. The immortal and beautiful vampires shoulder the burden of not being human, and living such long lives oftentimes alone, plagued with many tragedies. Louis speaks from a place of humanity, where he wants to preserve the little he has and the life of another, for his choice plagued him even after the events of the story.

Now, I know you’re wondering, thinking “God, Nicole, how does Interview with the Vampire fit into a discussion on the Elves of Middle-Earth?” 

Well, to that I say that immortality in both the worlds of Middle-Earth and in multiple vampire media (Anne Rice’s in particular) are essentially two sides of the same coin. Part of the reason I like vampire media so much is the issue of mortality, and the curse of eternal living. I find the mortality aspect of the immortal fascinating; those who still bear mortal issues oftentime feel miserably trapped by immortality. Louis du Point du Lac retains his “mortal nature” through the unwillingness to let his human side go; he loves, which is enough for him to stay grounded in life despite being dead. When he loses the people he loves most, all of that humanness that he kept was lost, and he was left to shoulder the burden of eternal life with no one to share it with. Louis cannot “un-become” a vampire. His curse is immortal life, and the only way to lift is to die, which is what he sought in the first place. The opposite side of the coin is the Elves, where they are able to relinquish their burden of prolonged life for… death! It is a strange paradox for Elves as compared to vampires and creatures. The more I thought about it, though, the more it made sense to me as to why I liked both creatures. 

The issue of humanity is essentially the same. Elves are aspects of the humane, where they express a “devoted love for the physical world” as Tolkien says in Letter 181. Even so, their immortality allows them to watch, caring from afar while shouldering the care. In another letter, Tolkien describes it so:

“The Elves were sufficiently longeval to be called by Man 'immortal'. But they were not unageing or unwearying. Their own tradition was that they were confined to the limits of this world (in space and time), even if they died, and would continue in some form to exist in it until 'the end of the world'. But what 'the end of the world' portended for it or for themselves they did not know(though they no doubt had theories). Neither had they of course any special information concerning what 'death' portended for Men. They believed that it meant 'liberation from the circles of the world', and was in that respect to them enviable. And they would point out to Men who envied them that a dread of ultimate loss, though it may be indefinitely remote, is not necessarily the easier to bear if it is in the end ineluctably certain : a burden may become heavier the longer it is borne.” (Letters no. 245)” 

    The burden can only be lifted through such a human thing like death. 

I am drawn to vampires mainly due to their connection to humanity. Oftentimes, the expression of love, whether it be the last remnants of humanity or showcases of lust through the mechanizations of vampirism. It is why I really like Interview with the Vampire, for the struggle for humanity and the lament of losing it was paramount, and that drew me in. Conversely, it is also why I was drawn to the Arwen and the Elves. The sacrifices they are willing to make for their loved ones shows more humanity than anything. Sacrificing one’s eternal life for love made for such a compelling yet heartbreaking tale that I would not have helped to be drawn. Love is one of the things that makes humans truly human; Christian doctrine (at least, the part that I went over in another class) even dictates that love comes from God, and the love that God gives proves His Creation. Love is a human response, and to love is to be human.

—NPM

Love and Loss, or the Life of a Wraith

The idea that death was a wound has always seemed obvious to me. I have been fortunate enough not to have lost many people who are close to me, but the ones I have lost so far have hurt deeply. While the “Gift of Eru Illuvatar” sounds like a gift on paper, experiencing it does not make it feel much like a gift. When reading the Athrabeth, Finrod’s arguments sounded noble and high minded, but Andreth’s arguments made a lot of sense to me as a human. As a human, loss is certain, and that feels far more like a curse than a gift. With my disposition towards death being bad, I am captivated by the stories of Beren and Luthien and Aragorn and Arwen. From my negative view on death I can’t imagine what kind of strength of love would have Arwen and Luthien trade endless life for the certainty of loss and a grave. Finrod explains it from the Elves’ view, that immortality may not in fact be all positives, an immortal being with just a fëa (spirit) and no hröa (body) is a fate worse than death, as one remains bound to Arda. However, I still struggle to understand how the type of endless life that the Elves possess and knowing you will see your family and loved ones again, even with its drawbacks, can be a worse bond than the certainty of grief that Andreth faces.

It really stuck with me in class when it was said that, “She traded endless twilight for the brightness of one mortal lifetime filled with love, laughter, scraped knees, bedtime stories, and the wild, irreplaceable joy of watching her child grow.” Neither the marriages of Beren and Luthien or Aragorn and Arwen are “happy ever afters,” they both involved bitterness and loss. The story of Aragorn and Arwen is especially sad as Arwen dies alone in the now abandoned forests of Lorien. As she says during the tale “As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive." (Appendix A, Part I) Finrod can speak of it as a gift, for he will never have to face the loss, which Arwen understands now is why Humans speak of it as a curse, yet she knew it was a certainty when she made her choice and chose it all the same. 

This is where Letter 43 enters the picture. On the surface it may come off as a grumpy letter about the failings of love and the inherent limitations of the genders, but going under that I think it is cutting to the core of what marriage is. As humans we are going to die, getting married is guaranteeing yourself or your partner an immense amount of pain in death, and yet choosing to get married anyway. Choosing not to get married would save you some pain, but it would be like choosing not to interact with the world. With that logic we could try and forgo all bonds of relationships with others to escape pain, but then we would be like wraiths. Not interacting would be the worst of both worlds, one would be like a wraith described by Finrod as a fate worse than death, but then still dying anyway. It would be like receiving that one day of a human life time and choosing to waste it. In today’s world that could look like refusing to make friends because friends can leave or refusing to fall in love because it will inevitably cause pain. The point is not that these refusals fail to save us from pain, to some extent they might, but they will also prevent us from experiencing the things that would make the pain worth bearing. As Haldir states in the Fellowship of the Ring “and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” (Book 2, Chapter 6) I am beginning to wrap my head around the fact that maybe loss is what makes love so special. When Edith died, Tolkien wrote Luthien on her grave and when he died, Beren was inscribed under his name on the tombstone. The entire story of The Lord of the Rings is only possible because of the very marriage between Beren and Luthien. The descendants that result from Luthien trading that eternal twilight for one human day and a child, with all of the joy and sadness attached, play key roles in Sauron’s defeat. 

Towards the end of the Athrabeth, after Andreth argues that maybe Eru is a far off king letting princes do as they will, Finrod speaks of something stranger: the Creator entering into Arda and healing it from within. Over the course of the discussion they have logically arrived at the idea of the Incarnation. In Christianity, God does take a body, a hröa, as Jesus Christ and allows it to be destroyed on the cross. If death is a wound, it is something that God entered his own creation to share with us. If Jesus dies with us, then death must somehow be a gift. That's a part of the class that I am still processing, and the idea of death still scares me and I suspect it will for a long time, but maybe Finrod is right, and death is what makes life meaningful. Wouldn't a single day that changes be more meaningful than an eternal, never changing twilight?

—EN

Old Hope: Re-enchantment in a Disenchanted World?

“Elves and Men are just different aspects of the Humane,” Tolkien noted in Letter 181. That is to say, he did not construct and depict Elves and Men as two separate and independent species. Rather, in Middle-earth, Tolkien was observing and portraying two different modes of human existence.

“Death” functions as the anchor where these two modes of being both meet and diverge. Mortal Men are doomed to die, while Elvish “immortality” is not truly eternal life. Elves will also perish eventually, but only with the end of Arda. Death for them is so distant as to become almost unimaginable, producing a mode of existence that ostensibly resembles infinity. Their distinct modes of being yield two radically different psychologies, in which Men and Elves experience history differently, approach Eru differently, and ultimately participate in Arda differently. More importantly, both of these worldviews can still be found within modern humanity itself. Tolkien’s construction of Men and Elves is therefore not escapist mythology, but a genuine reflection — even a prophetic reflection — of real-world human existential conditions.

At the turn of the millennium, philosopher Susan Buck-Morss argued that the central project of the twentieth century had been “the construction of mass utopia.” The crisis of modernity was the collapse of traditional authority — religion, monarchy, transcendence itself. In response, humanity attempted to construct dreamworlds of its own.

For a moment, it seemed as if we had succeeded. Not because our dreams had been fulfilled, but because we once again believed that history possessed meaning, direction, and destiny. History had its subject — not one guaranteed by God, but one discovered and justified by humanity itself: technological progress, revolution, liberation, communism (even fascism, in the case of the Third Reich). The world remained enchanted because it still appeared intelligible, and because we believed ourselves to be progressing toward a future already visible on the horizon.

In both premodern religious societies and the ideological dreamworlds of the twentieth century, one finds a profound sense of confidence, and even passion (fanaticism, in its extreme forms).Where one knows that the world is unfolding toward a clear future—or simply that it is unfolding at all, rather than stagnating or repeating itself—there is little room for weariness.

“There is no weariness in the eyes of the Elves” (“Athrabeth” 316).  The Elves, in many ways, resemble this enchanted condition. In the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, Andreth’s anxiety and despair stand in stark contrast to Finrod’s almost instinctive certainty. Finrod possesses an unwavering trust in Eru and in the coherence of His Creation. Everything belongs within the design of the One. Even death, for the Elves, ultimately remains part of a meaningful cosmic order.

This is the crucial point: although Elves will eventually perish with Arda, they never truly experience death as existential anguish. Death remains comprehensible, integrated into the structure of the world. Moreover, the death of the Elves comes with the death of the world itself. They are never burdened with confronting the terror of an unknown world (or afterlife of soul) continuing without them.

Men, however, are different. As Andreth says: “we have no certainty, no knowledge” (“Athrabeth”311), Men are perpetually haunted by uncertainty because death may arrive at any moment. They cannot rehearse or prepare for its arrival, nor can they fully conceptualize what lies beyond it.

If Elves embody a state of enchantment, then Men embody disenchantment. They no longer possess confidence in the intelligibility of the world. In its place emerge frustration, melancholy, and radical skepticism. And this condition feels profoundly reflective of our own age.

After the collapse of the twentieth century’s dreamworlds since WW2 and Cold War, humanity was once again thrown into a vacuum of authority and meaning. We no longer believe that history necessarily progresses toward a utopian redemption - we have even begun to distrust the very idea of progress itself. We have lost our dreams, and in many cases, we have even become exhausted by the very act of dreaming itself. Suddenly Andreth’s questions no longer sound mythological — they sound exactly contemporary:

Are we the Children of the One?
Are we not cast off finally?
Or were we ever so?
Is not the Nameless the Lord of the World? (“Athrabeth” 320)

While the Elves are still speaking of Eru, Estel, and divine Creation, Men have begun to suspect that the foundation of these may already be broken. This is what makes Tolkien’s portrayal of Men astonishingly prescient. Writing within the twentieth century — an age still filled with ideological passion and historical confidence — Tolkien had already begun imagining the spiritual condition of the twenty-first: life in a disenchanted world.

Yet Tolkien does not simply advocate a return to enchantment, and this becomes clearest in the “Old Hope” of Men.

According to Andreth, some believe that Eru himself will enter into Arda and heal the Marring of Melkor from within history itself. Since Melkor’s corruption is structural and permanently woven into the fabric of the world, Arda cannot save itself through its own internal logic. Redemption must come from outside — from the foreign, the transcendent. Here, again, Tolkien redirects us to Men, the Guests of Arda, who remain perpetually disenchanted yet still long for re-enchantment, precisely because they belong somewhere beyond (transcends) the world they inhabit.

Yet the truly remarkable moment comes from Finrod. For the first time, the Elf who had previously spoken with complete certainty begins to hesitate. His language changes — he begins to say “maybe,” “I guess,” “I propound,” and so forth. He does not abandon faith in Eru’s design, but he comes to realize that perhaps the design is not something static and completed, but something gradually unfolding: Eru’s plan may not operate like a finished blueprint, and Arda itself may still be in the process of becoming.

Tolkien moves away from deterministic futurism altogether. As the Ainulindalë declares, “in every age there come forth things that are new and have no foretelling, for they do not proceed from the past.” Even Men, the Second Children, emerge as something unforeseen, beyond the vision of the Valar. And perhaps this is Tolkien’s deepest warning against modern ideological enchantment. Having witnessed the catastrophes of the twentieth century, Tolkien understood how easily attempts to restore absolute meaning, historical certainty, and collective destiny can harden into totalizing ideologies.

Thus Tolkien does not offer re-enchantment in the traditional sense. He does not secure and restore to us a stable “subject of history.” Instead, he leaves us with something more fragile, but perhaps also more humane: the possibility that meaning emerges not from certainty about history’s predetermined destination, but from our openness to becoming itself — a condition of perpetual unfolding and transcendence. In a disenchanted world, what we require is not renewed faith in a fixed historical destiny, but faith in humanity’s capacity to continue participating in an unfinished world.

- YC

Work Cited:

Tolkien, J. R. R. “Ainulindalë.” The Silmarillion, edited by Christopher Tolkien, Houghton Mifflin, 1977, pp. 15–30.

Tolkien, J. R. R. “Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth.” Morgoth’s Ring: The Later Silmarillion, Part One, edited by Christopher Tolkien, vol. 10 of The History of Middle-earth, Houghton Mifflin, 1993, pp. 303–66.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter, Houghton Mifflin, 1981. Letter 181.

An Unexpected Gift

Thursday’s class brought forward death and tried to make sense of it as a gift and in connection to love. I think that we can use the questions and examples presented by Tolkien’s elves to help understand the love in human death from a Christian perspective. Conveniently, I have recently been spending a lot of time meditating on St. Thérèse of Lisieux's thoughts on death, specifically, her acceptance of it. Day 8 of her Novena focuses on this theme and directs our attention to the Catechism's statement about death, which describes that in “departure, which is death, the soul is separated from the body” (Catholic Church 1005). St. Therese finds comfort in this, reflecting, “well, I have no fear of a separation which will unite me forever with the good God” (“The ‘Little Flower’ Novena”). Thinking about death by focusing on a separation, a subsequent gain, and finally a unification rather than a complete loss greatly helps explain why death is a gift, yet it is easy to remain unconvinced that this gift could outweigh the loss of everything known. However, the Catechism states, this is only a temporary separation which will be undone at the end of times when souls are brought back to their bodies. This reversal, I believe, helps validate Finrod’s point in Morgoth's Ring: The Later Silmarillion, Part 1, The Legends of Aman, which argues that “the separation of fëa and hröa is ‘unnatural’” (Tolkien 330). 

In both the cases of The Fall and the ‘Marring of Arda’, the soul’s separation was unprecedented and only a result of these disruptions. However, what is unnatural is not always wrong, and this separation should not be seen as a way to cast negativity onto humans’ new existence. Andreth uses the separation of body and soul as an argument for disharmony in Man, stating that this means “his parts would not be united by love” (317) and furthermore that the body is an “imposition indeed, not a gift” (317). Well, if these bodies are a hindrance rather than a gift, it seems quite easy to understand why death would then be a gift. A release from the disharmony of our clashing body and soul, unnatural to the ground we walk on and live on. Except that is certainly not what it feels like. The love experienced through flesh, the warm sun, the shade of a tree, a sip of water, a hug from a friend, and so much more. All these experiences are examples of love experienced through the unification of body and soul, so love must exist in the union as well. The body is a gift that allows connection to all of its related creations. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). Even Jesus Himself came to Earth in a body with a soul, which He describes as in anguish before His death, as noted in John 12:27 and Matthew 26:38. When He dies, His body is left behind, and when He returns, His body is regained. It is made abundantly clear by Thomas’s touch of Jesus that Jesus returned to His flesh, but why would He do so if the body was a true imposition? The body is a blessing that allows him to touch and interact in a way that the soul alone could not provide. Jesus’s time physically on Earth demonstrates the love held in a body through the love He gives. We can look to His human example to understand the love that unites body and soul. 

The body is a gift to experience love. But how, then, can death be a gift as well? I think now is a good time to turn to Lúthien and Beren and the unique death that accompanies their love. The union of Lúthien and Beren, along with that of any elf-human couple, requires a choice not necessary between couples of the same being. The elf must give up their immortality to fully experience love and thus receive the gift of death. In this case, though the sacrifice is great, we can see death more clearly as a gift because it allows for such a powerful union. In Book 1 of The Lord of the Rings, when Aragorn tells the tale of Beren and Lúthien to the company, he says that after Beren died, Lúthien chose “to die from the world, so that she might follow him… together they passed” (Tolkien 189). I think what is to be emphasized in this story is that their union is most emphasized in their death. At least in this telling, though Beren and Lúthien share this tale, they are only described as “together” during their death. Only death was able to unite them, and is that not the greatest gift? To be united with what is loved most. The cost is what we know, but the reward remains to be fully understood, and there lies the struggle. The elves who chose mortality realized the value in death, which is love. 

Yes, death is a separation, but it also ends the separation between life and the greatest love. Furthermore, the separation of the body and soul will come to an end, and our current loss will be regained. What seems unnatural about death is remedied by all it provides, but earthly mystery makes the gift unclear, wrapped in a package most easily opened at our own death. However, it is not impossible to open the package while living by practicing faith and becoming closer to God; Arwen, Lúthien, and others, for example, were able to see the gift of the love they sacrificed for. While the love they departed for was more visible than the love between God and humans (in the sense that they were able to physically see their partner), there was still a great unknown in leaving the rest of their life behind. We can look to these elves as examples in our own experiences of death as a reminder to trust in the love that awaits.

-AHW