The Ones Who Walk Away from the West and the Sea

[truepenny]

He looks at the ship and says, "I don't deserve this."

They all stare at him: the tall fair people, the wizard, his friends. "Nonsense, my boy," the wizard says, making a good recovery. "Of course you do. You wouldn't be here if you didn't."

"No," he says, more certain now. "It's not . . . right."

They don't understand him. The tall fair people mostly look bored, a little offended. "You won't get a second chance," warns one of them--he can't tell them apart anymore. His friends are distressed. "But you have to, sir," says one--he has a hard time telling them apart sometimes, too. "You've been so ill."

"Yes, I know. You think I'm dying. But if that's true, isn't this a cheat?"

The tall fair people are definitely offended now. The wizard drags him aside, fingers as gnarled and hard as oak doubtless leaving bruises. "Speak a little fairer, my friend," the wizard advises in a grim whisper.

"I don't mean it's a cheat for them," he protests. "It's their ship. But if I'm dying, shouldn't I have the courage and the honesty to, well, die? And if I'm not dying . . ."

The wizard raises bushy eyebrows. "If?"

"Why should I get to escape being tired and in pain and lonely?"

"You--"

"I failed," he says levelly. "You know that as well as I do. That the quest succeeded is ultimately a happy accident, nothing more. I do not deserve this gift."

"Perhaps it isn't a question of deserving," the wizard suggests.

"Oh, but it is. It's my reward for doing a job none of you wanted." He laughs, bitterly, at the expression on the wizard's face. "Did you really think I didn't know? That that's exactly what it is? My reward for madness and pain and failure. And you know something? Even if I do deserve it, I don't want it. Let one of them"--with a wave at his friends, clustered anxiously on the shore--"go. Any one of them deserves it more than I."

"You are ill."

"It hasn't killed me yet."

"What are you going to do?"

For the first time in--weeks? months? years? He can't remember how long it's been since he last smiled, and the expression is achingly unfamiliar on his face. He says truthfully, almost joyfully, "I have absolutely no bloody idea."

And he turns and walks away.

Comments

[lomedet.livejournal.com]

that? is *gorgeous*.

It also makes me want to be thinky about Tolkein and happy endings, but jet lag has eaten my powers of think.

I'm so glad I refreshed my friends page one last time before bed - I'm kind of hoping that I'll get to dream a 'what next' for this.

[redbird]

Wow.

I would argue that he did earn it, for that long trek through the wilderness, through Mordor, knowing how slim the chance was, but that's not the point here.

[khriskin]

Somehow I think I would have been happier with this ending... it's oddly more comforting than the 'reality'. Spend your last days alive and not in trapped yet again in someone else's fantasy. Poor thing. *sighs*

[indigo419.livejournal.com]

Brilliant! What a subversive retelling. :0P

[cleverthylacine]

I like :D

[frostedelves.livejournal.com]

Heh, and hell yes. I always thought it was rotten to reward a person with never seeing his friends again anyway.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, it wasn't a reward (if it was, Frodo would have declined); he knew that he would yet see Sam, and have estel that he would see the others after death.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Very, very good!!

[westlinwind.livejournal.com]

Elegantly done.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Fabulous. All the moreso because of our modern issues with Rapture believers and the idea of skipping out on that whole unpleasant "dying" thing.

[aranel.livejournal.com]

Something I think Rapture believers tend to forget is that St. Paul says, "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed."

Goodness, let's hope so.

[lossrockhart.livejournal.com]

Great stuff, really speaks to the silliness of Tolkien's feverant, yet rather unrealistic desire for eucatastrophe. Happy endings are, unfortunately, one of the most fictitious elements of fiction.

BTW: I got here via matociquala's journal. Hope you don't mind if I stick around.

[andelku.livejournal.com]

Depends on what constitutes eucastrophe. He has no bloody idea what to do next, but whatever it is will NOT be analogous to death, thank you very much. I think this is a happier ending than Tolkien's, which implies that there is no possible Earthly happiness left in the real world for Frodo. Much happier, much more optimistic, and strangely, wonderfully exciting!

But I'm a sucker for Tennyson's Ulysses.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

*Nice* twist. And like all good pastiches and parodies, it illuminates the original.

[phoebesmum.livejournal.com]

... and sometimes LJ's worthwhile after all, even on an otherwise squee-free day.

(Morality aside, other people than me must've thought that it'd be awfully boring for Bilbo and Frodo, being the only two Hobbits in a world full of Elves. This is discounting the 'no sex' issue, it being Tolkien and such things not being pertinent.)

The original ending? Very much for the weeping-over when you are 12. Not so much for the adulthood. Although, set into Tolkienish perspective, I suppose it makes sense.

Also, had this been the filmed ending, we would have been spared that bloody awful song.

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

I do remember wondering how Frodo could bear to go to the Grey Havens without Sam, especially after everything they'd gone through together.

A lovely reimagining of the ending.

[aranel.livejournal.com]

I wonder if Tolkien has to send Frodo to the Grey Havens, so that Sam can get married and have a normal life. (And I don't even mean that in a slashy way.)

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

Y'know, that actually makes a lot of sense. And truepenny did seem to be hinting at osmething of that nature in her explanatory post.

[sidravitale]

That's what I always thought. Sam isn't truly back from the quest until Frodo is gone. But I like this version (very much), b/c it's Frodo taking the reins of his life (for the first time? last time?) and moving on, so that would still let Sam move on, too.

[princejvstin.livejournal.com]

Brilliant, Sarah.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

I really, really like this.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Ah, some real people. How very unTolkienesque.

Such good points made in so few words.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Tolkien thought death was a gift.

The West isn't supposed to be a reward, and that isn't supposed to be a happy ending.

Bilbo and Frodo go to the West because the possibility of the gift of death has been taken from them, and at least that way they can live with other people who don't die and drug themselves with music and perhaps in time be healed enough to get death back. That's what Elrond hopes for Bilbo anyway. The power of choosing, of answering like that, of walking out of the story, is... well, if Frodo could have done that, he wouldn't have lost all he's lost by that point.

Frodo had lost his will, not just his will to live but his will. You're saying Tolkien was sentimental to offer the possibility of healing when they're essentially already dead, but is it not more sentimental to offer the possibility of living at that point? Frodo's failed in his quest, and he's already failed at living too, all he can do even in crisis is be shocked and sad. He initiates nothing. By the end there he's prophesying, he has lost where he is in time. He has no will, never mind free will, he can't live, and has lost the capacity for the mercy of death. If he were capable of making the choice you have him make, he'd never have been in the place where he had to make it.

You can't put the end of The Anubis Gates there and have it work. All the weight of it is wrong.

Or, to put it another way, if you want to write a different story that comes up to that point and leaves the failed hero with will to choose, that would be fine.

[(Anonymous)]

Exactly right, and much better said than I could have.

Just one addition: the elves might feel pity or sorrow if this happened; but bored? offended? I don't know who the "tall fair people" are, but they have nothing in common with Tolkien's elves. And the wizard isn't Gandalf either.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yeah, have to say I agree. (Nor do I believe for a moment that Gandalf would have been an asshole.) Still, it was an interesting and provocative read, which is my favorite kind of fanfic.

[delkytlar.livejournal.com]

Bilbo and Frodo are also the last two being left in Middle Earth who have been touched by Sauron's evil via the Ring. If Middle Earth is to move on to become a new world dominated by man and bereft of magic, it makes sense that Gandalf, Elrond, Bilbo and Frodo recognize that they must leave. Were they to stay, their part of the world would remain tied to that magical past, and it would retard the progress of the world beyond keeping Sam from marrying. They all recognize that Middle Earth has to be freed of all traces of the old magic. That is why they choose to go. It's the ultimate sacrifice they can make, well beyond anything they did before.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thank you so very much for assuming that I don't know that.

I know this 400 words is monumentally unfair to Tolkien and traduces a number of things about his work and his beliefs.

I'm not stupid.

However, I can still disagree with his beliefs. And sometimes, in some moods, I do. This is one way to express that disagreement.

It's also a cross-connect in my head with "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," and therefore has been warped accordingly. There are, in other words, reasons that the tall fair people don't seem like Tolkien's elves and the wizard doesn't seem like one of Tolkien's wizards. It's not because I don't know how to write Tolkien's elves and wizards, but because I was treating LotR as an intertext.

I am well aware of your feelings about Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings. And I'm sorry this offended you. But I'm not going to censor myself accordingly.

Not asking for censorship

[deiseach.livejournal.com]

The West is not escape; it is not immortality; it is not mindless bliss.

Tolkien raps the Valar over the knuckles for their attempts to do exactly that (create a pure land untouched by Melkor and leaving him to rampage throughout Arda before the coming of the Children).

Mortals do die in Valinor (ask Ar-Pharazon); in fact, they may even die sooner, their lives not being made for the unstained land.

A 'happy ending' would have been the Hobbits returning to the Shire after the Big Adventure and finding it completely unchanged and untouched, which was not what happened.

Besides, it's a bit much to get huffy about people giving their opinions on your piece when you yourself have done a mashup of Tolkien and LeGuin (without evening asking the author if you might use her work, I dare say?)

Isn't provoking discussion and different points of view what you were aiming at?

Re: Not asking for censorship

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Dear Sir or Madam,

Kindly don't put words in my mouth. Nowhere did I say I think Tolkien's is a "happy" ending. Of course it isn't, nor can it be. My thoughts about his ending, and my argument with it, are here (http://truepenny.livejournal.com/493180.html).

I prefer to go by "The Spiky Mace of Mild Reason"

[deiseach.livejournal.com]

You wrote a different ending to the one given. Some, as seen by the comments, liked it. Some, as seen by the comments, didn't.

Putting it up on for all to see makes it available for comment, and you take the chance of those who disagree with your reading as you disagree with Tolkien's.

Either don't use his characters, or change them sufficiently to be unrecognisable, if you want to escape we vicious and horrible renders of 'Hmm, don't think you've got the idea there' or 'Sorry, not the world as constructed by the author on his terms.'

How about a re-imagining of the ending of "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas"? Where, say, the victim chooses to suffer to ensure Omelas and its people stay as they are? Which is what you seem to me to have Frodo doing, here, but then, I obviously don't get what you're getting at, so my opinion need be no more burdensome to you than the flicker of dying electrons on the screen.

[grave-tidings.livejournal.com]

If I remember Tolkien's letters on this, he said that Frodo failed to understand that he had *not* failed. He failed to understand that destroying the ring was a group effort, not a heroic effort for a single hobbit.

I didn't realize that Frodo and Bilbo were to live forever Oversea. I thought that only the Elves were immortal, and that Tolkien made it clear elsewhere (in the Letters again, perhaps) that only the Elves had the mental/emotional capacity to endure living forever. That other races wouldn't be able to bear it, weren't equipped to handle it.

I've always thought both Bilbo and Frodo would live out the remainder of their lives and then die, just as would Gimli after Legolas took him Oversea.

[mattador.livejournal.com]

Definitely an interesting look at the situation.

[seyella.livejournal.com]

I thought it was a really interesting take on the end of LOTR. For me personally, the idea of leaving my friends behind like that did seem cruel, and so even though i liked the ending there was still a part of me that wanted something well, morel ike this. I think it's really good.
I also just wanted to say how much i love your books. So much so in fact that i'm using Melusine to compare against the madness of king george for me english coursework. :)
Anyway, a truly beautiful piece of writing.

Fascinating

[muneraven.livejournal.com]

I've always resisted reading Tolkien critically much (I am sentimental about certain books), but your take on the ending, the responses to your piece, made me really think (darn you). I could hold forth on this one (probably saying several silly things in the process) but I won't clutter your blog too much. I'll make just one point:

Did Frodo really EVER have real relationships to connect him to the Shire? His love of the Shire seems to me to be rather detached and condescending from the get-go, at most a love of the familiar . . a rather Asperger's-Syndrome-like abstract fondness. Much is made of the friendship between Frodo and Sam. Were they really friends? There is no equality in their relationship . . Sam SERVES Frodo. Again there is fondess, but not what I would describe as a real friendship. In fact, Frodo is not close to ANY of his fellows, really. Throughout the books he is a little apart and alone. That's why his sailing into the West made sense to me. Why not? Once the Shire changed enough so that Frodo didn't have the familiarity to cling to, what was left to keep him "home"? Did EVIL damage Frodo so that he couldn't live normally at the end of the story? Or did the changes to the Shire (which were wrought by evil, but would have come anyway, albeit more gently) simply kill what little Frodo had to connect him to others?

I like YOUR Ringbearer better than the original, Truepenny. There is loyalty, honesty, and a courage in your character that I don't think exists at all in the original. Your ringbearer is NOT detached.

Alas, I suppose you'd get your socks sued off if you rewrote the whole tale, lol. Plus you probably have other stories clamouring to be written. :-)

[kaffrithe.livejournal.com]

I love the thought of Frodo actually getting to make a decision on his own to do something for himself, after having spent three books being pushed and shoved and beaten half to death by duty and circumstance.

awesome!

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm....I never got the impression that Frodo (or Bilbo or Sam or Gimli) were going West to live forever. My impression was always that they would still eventually die. Just that there would be no more pain and suffering for them.

I can't say for sure because it's been far too long since I've read Tolkien's letters and such, but I don't think he intended it to be a "get away from Death free card" situation, either. More that it was an opportunity for those few given the gift to go West to live the rest of their lives in peace, with no pain.

[kate_nepveu]

I think the whole point of the downfall of Nuemenor is that being undying is a matter of species not location.

I was puzzled by this too, but on second read I interpreted the "if I'm dying" as referring to a curable illness, not the general condition of mortality.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

This made me go off on a whole imaginary riff about King Arthur's uneasy sleep, waiting for the Worst Peril to Britain to happen so he can fight it and die at last, rousing to half-awakening at key historical moments - the Norman invasion - uh-uh; Napoleon? - not yet; the Blitz? - there's still worse to come...

What happens to heroes (he's not the only one, of course) - put into storage until required. You wouldn't do it to a dog, would you?

The Ones Who Walk Away from the West and the Sea

[travellex.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow.
That's courage, to chose the not knowing.
I loved the not being able to tell his friends appart either.

And just in the conversation, the change and discovering in the actually speaking the words out loud.

Brava!

[jael-the-scribe.livejournal.com]

I followed a link and was not disappointed. Very nicely done!

[jay-of-lasgalen.livejournal.com]

Hmm. That is thought provoking - and I can so see Frodo thinking this. He didn't succeed in destroying the ring himself, and the passage West is just to ease the conscience of those who put him in an impossible situation.

I like it.


Jay

[rous3.livejournal.com]

Very nicely penned. And, I do think that this ending would be very apropos. Thank you for sharing.

rous

[tesseract-5.livejournal.com]

*cheers on Frodo him who learned to smile by walking away from.. the proffered lotuses? the pipe dream?

I adore how you reference Ursula Le Guin's story as well.