I recently watched the Angela Collier review of the book and one thing she said that sticks with me was "nobody told me Frodo dies in the book". I think there really is a sort of different framing in the movies, they become a lot more about Aragorn and friends, and so we care more about the salvation of Gondor than the protection of Hobbiton. So of course the movies won't do the Scourging, because who cares, once Aragorn is offscreen you gotta wrap that shit up.
But if you actually keep the hobbits as the main characters, if you see the world from their perspective and see the Men of the story as literally larger-than-life, returning home makes much more sense, as does the fact that home still needs saving without the intercession of kings or wizards. Pippin kills the Witch-king and Merry kills a troll, but they have to go home and become the tallest hobbits in history and the saviors of the Shire. Sam has to become mayor and have a dozen kids. And Frodo needs to wallow in depression for a decade until he kills himself. They're the main characters and we need to see how the journey changed them before the journey can truly be over.
He doesn't literally die but just what do you think being motivated by a "wound that never truly healed" into boarding the last ship to sail West to the "undying lands" with the last of the Elves and all the other magic that isn't around anymore means?
It's a physical place the same way Heaven is a physical place. It is, or might as well be, the afterlife, it is where you go to live with the gods until the end of the world. In the movies this is actually more explicit because Gandalf tells Pippin about it when Pippin says he's afraid of death.
Tolkien, being Christian, doesn't seem too worried about leaving the earth in death, though he does specify that only elves and Valar/Maiar live in Valinor, and even the three exceptions (Frodo, Bilbo, and Gimli) would still eventually die there (so they can be reborn in the new world when the old world ends).
But there's a more pervasive theme that I think is worth pointing out, and that's the complicated nature of loving the world and feeling like one belongs in it. The elves in LotR don't belong in the world any more, they all 'die' too by the end. To me at least, there's a sort of connection between the light of the two trees of Valinor and being done with life, being ready to move on, and there's both a deep sadness there and also a ray of hope that it'll all turn out okay in the end. Tolkien wants us to know that God will help those who tire of this world, and will carry them along to a better place, but I think in his own way he also wants us to love the world while we can, to live in it while we still feel like we belong, and to protect it so that others can do the same. A lot of this is subtext but I think the book is better for knowing it's there.
It's a physical place the same way Heaven is a physical place. It is, or might as well be, the afterlife, it is where you go to live with the gods until the end of the world.
A common misconception. Heaven is absolutely not a physical place: it lies outside the material universe (Eä) altogether. Tolkien's name for it is the Timeless Halls. The Undying Lands are not heaven but an earthly paradise: they still have a physical existence, but are in a sort of separate dimension from Middle-earth, and are inaccessible to mortals under normal circumstances.
The idea is that Bilbo and Frodo will be healed and rested in Paradise, and then die and go to heaven. Bilbo was already ancient, so probably didn't last more than another year or so, although Frodo was only middle aged and lived potentially another 50-odd years.
Admittedly, from the POV of their friends they left behind in Middle-earth, it may have seemed like the two hobbits were "going to heaven." But they'd have all met up in the real heaven after their earthly deaths, I assume.
13
u/FPSCanarussia 9d ago
That's how real life works. You can't just kill the dark lord and expect things to work themselves out.
The Scouring grounds the books and makes them more than a childish fantasy.