Elves at Heart, Sam's Love, & a Final Parting

Reflections on our year-long Fellowship of the Readers

A year and two days ago, we began this Fellowship of the Readers, accompanying both Bilbo and Frodo on their respective journeys. While Frodo has a ways to go back (I will send out only a few more posts at pivotal scenes this year up until September, but with no expectation of reading along), I am officially concluding our Fellowship’s reading of The Lord of the Rings, and would therefore like to reflect on what I’ve learned on this lovely, perilous journey across Middle-earth.

Elves at Tolkien’s Heart

While we began our reading of The Lord of the Rings in April of 2024, in truth, Frodo’s journey really began in September of that year when he decides to leave the Shire and destroy the Ring. In the meantime, we read The Hobbit, which, in many ways, prepared us for Frodo’s more dark and harrowing road.

I have read both novels many times before, and yet, without the luxury of reading as quickly as I wanted to, I was forced to wait along with our protagonists as they spent time in various places and lingered before journeying on. On the one hand, this could prove quite annoying; we are not used to experiencing the lives of book characters in real time. In fact, some might argue a story’s virtue lies in its ability to warp time and make a hundred years feel like two minutes, and one hour a thousand lifetimes. We often use stories to escape real time and enjoy being swept up in drama after drama, thrilling action, and neat conclusions.

But on the other hand, this forced me to pay attention to parts of the novel I had never noticed before. Specifically, it made me realize just how central the Elves are to the story. Of course, I knew the Elves were vital to the very fabric of Middle-earth (anyone who has read the Silmarillion would know this), but I could now see they were important in a different way. The months-long reprieves that our heroes spent in places like Rivendell and Lórien proved this. They were like pockets of the magical realm of Fëarie that Tolkien writes about in his essays, as if the entire novel and Middle-earth itself were created merely to be able to visit these enchanting, Elvish lands. We might be reminded that Tolkien once told his son that his purpose for writing The Lord of the Rings was to create a place where the phrase ‘Elen síla lúmenn’ omentielmo’ (“A star shines on the hour of our meeting”) would be a common greeting.

Yet more than that, Rivendell and Lórien are seen as some of the last vestiges of the great, powerful Elvish kingdoms that had long been destroyed, and are ultimately only the last glimmer of their beauty, like the light of the setting sun on the sea. Those long stays with the Elves are bittersweet, for they allow us, mortal Men, along with the Hobbits, a chance to see that beauty, even if it is just a ghostly memory of it, but it is also a painful reminder of its end, and the end of the story. All journeys in the realm of Fäerie are perilous for that very reason: the beauty and wonder of that world all the more poignantly remind us of its inevitable end, the fading and passing away of that particular magic we might call enchantment, and that we find in reading the story itself.

As Elrond says, the Elves symbolize the long defeat, the fruitless victory of life, and the mingling of Joy and Sorrow that comes with it. In many ways, the Elves represent our Earth, and though they are immortal, they are still bound to the Earth and its making and unmaking. So, they face the lifespan of the Cosmos with joy at its creation and sorrow at its ending, which reflects the natural cycles of our own lives.

But Tolkien leaves us with a sliver of Hope, the Doom—or Gift—of Mortal Men bestowed upon them by Ilúvatar, to leave the confines of the World to a fate unknown only to His mind. Not even the Elves know of it, though they wonder at it, and even envy it. For, perhaps, if there is something worse than an unknown Fate, it is a known one, and the knowledge, the profound wisdom, that comes with such a known Fate, as with the Elves, is also a burden. And as with any journey, even Death (as much as Life), they always begin with a step into the unknown. So Bilbo sings:

The Road goes ever on and on,
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

Sam’s “Rustic” Love

As much as the Elves appeared central to my eyes this time around reading The Lord of the Rings, I was even more moved by Sam’s centralness as a heroic figure. Thanks to the helpful commentary in my Reader’s Companion, I was made aware of more of Tolkien’s thoughts on his own writing, which I had rarely read much about before this, preferring always to take an author at their word in the story. But it nonetheless became clearer to me that Tolkien conceived Sam as the story’s hero, much more than Frodo. And even clearer that Sam’s form of heroism (different from that of Aragorn or Boromir) is more dear to Tolkien, and more at the heart of his epic—and perhaps all epic tales in general.

To see it written in his own words, in a letter to Milton Waldman, Tolkien writes:

‘I think the simple “rustic” love of Sam and his Rosie (nowhere elaborated) is absolutely essential to the study of his (the chief hero’s) character, and to the theme of the relation of ordinary life (breathing, eating, working, begetting) and quests, sacrifice, causes, and the “longing for Elves”, and sheer beauty’ (Letters, p. 161)

To tease out all the themes packed into this single, complex sentence would be impossible. But let me begin with a comparison to Frodo, whom some might consider more of the hero, since he essentially sacrifices his life for the Quest, even if he fails in the destruction of the Ring. Much like Boromir, the Quest claims his life, not in such a battle-like fashion, but still with much selfless pain endured. It is not so much that I believe Tolkien did not consider figures like Aragorn, Boromir, and Frodo as heroes of a sort, but they are heroes that belong in the epic tales of the Third Age—like the ones told in the Silmarillion or sung about by the fireside after the War of the Ring is done—and cannot truly be inherited by the Fourth Age, the Age of Men, which is why The Lord of the Rings, an epic centered around humble Hobbits and most importantly Sam, resonates so much today.

Yet more than that, Sam is so essential to this epic because he reminds us of life after the adventure, after the sacrifices and quests and battles. To die valiantly in battle like Boromir, or to defeat your enemy and become King like Aragorn, or even to give up your life for a cause like Frodo—these are all grand, heroic actions with the ultimate aim of protecting the ordinary life, the day-to-day cycle of, as Tolkien says, breathing, eating, working, and begetting, which have an immense value in their own right. Even the Elves and their “sheer beauty” revere above all the simple, rustic elements of Nature, the cycles of the seasons, the fruit and flowers of the earth, song, dance, enchantment with the very wind and starlight, essentially everything that keeps Life going on after Death, or, more to the point, despite Death.

Thus, Sam brings the entire Quest into sharp relief, and his domestic yearnings at the end of The Lord of the Rings solidify not the scaling down of epic heroism, but the uplifting of the ordinary folk, and ordinary living, as equally heroic, if not more. As we see throughout the entire story, the preservation of simple, grounded places like the Shire is what gives the dark and perilous journey Hope, and even gives comfort to the Elves and great Men like Aragorn, that even amid all the Joys and Sorrows of Middle-earth, and the “long defeat” of the Elves, and the precarious nature of Mortal Men, there are ordinary acts of love and nurture done every day that ultimately keep Evil at bay, and are worth fighting for, being precious beyond the most rare gem.

There is more I could say on this topic, but sleep and other such simple pleasures call to me. And so with the conclusion of this year-long reading fellowship, and the bittersweet end of The Lord of the Rings, let us laugh through the tears like Pippin as he bids Frodo farewell at the Gray Havens, and remember that, sometimes, the most courageous act of all is to continue on living despite the Sorrow—for where there is Sorrow, also there is Joy, now and always, beyond even the unmaking of this World.

Namárië and until we meet again!

~Zoë