Can Elves and Humans Meet again Beyond Eä?

#tolkien #middleearth #fantasy #elves

Q: Can Elves and Humans Meet again Beyond Eä?

ANSWER: I received the following question in October 2022:

I have a question regarding the famous Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth. It is undoubtedly one of the greatest creations of our beloved JRR, but certainly it is a tricky text, with a lot of intresting topics faced. My question is specifically about Finrod’s last phrase, the iconic “But you are not for Arda. Whither you go, may you find light. Await us there, my brother and me.”

Is it possible somehow for humans and elves to “meet again” after death, even though their fates are entirely different?

That is the great question of Elvish existence. Should they have hope of an eternal existence as Men seem to?

I’m not going to quote a lot of Tolkien texts this time around. I want to weigh in on the symbolic meaning of certain relationships in Tolkien’s fiction. I welcome comments from anyone, but would especially like to see the thoughts of the several educators who occasionally comment on the blog.

There Is A Pattern in Tolkien’s Man-Elf Relationships

One of the notable things about “Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth” is that they discuss her love for his brother (a love that was returned in silence).

Every Tolkien fan who has read about Beren and Luthien knows that their story is J.R.R. Tolkien’s reflection on his own youthful romance with his wife Edith. She was several years older than him when they met in their teens. He fell in love with her and she reluctantly returned his feelings. He literally had to win her heart, no doubt partially because he would have been less mature than her in some ways.

Tolkien’s guardian, Father Francis Morgan, forbade the relationship. His opposition to the relationship was represented by Luthien’s father Thingol in the stories.

After suffering through periods of separation and trial, both Ronald Tolkien and Beren were eventually reunited with their loves, who pledged themselves to their future husbands. Edith was engaged to another man when Tolkien came of age and could make his own life decisions.

This theme of love and separation plays out in all of Tolkien’s major romances. Nearly everyone spends time apart: Eärendil and Elwing, Aragorn and Arwen, Elrond and Celebrian, Celeborn and Galadriel – the list goes on. Tuor was a rare exception, and maybe only because his story wasn’t fully developed. He and Idril Celebrindal met in Gondolin and they don’t seem to have been separated afterward.

There’s always a question about whether the two can be together – and of course this is a classic love story trope. It’s really the point of most love stories. Can the two lovers overcome all obstacles and find happiness in the end?

So for Tolkien’s Elf-Man relationships, there’s one final obstacle that can’t be resolved in the story: the different natures of Elves and Men. No matter how great their love, they can’t be sure that they’ll meet again after they die. Only Luthien crosses that barrier (for certain – Tolkien implies that Tuor may have crossed the other way).

The Nature of Being an Elf

Arwen, of course, chooses to be mortal so that she can spend the rest of her life with Aragorn. But then she returns to Lorien to die, unable to let go at the very end of her Elvishness. She didn’t want to die in Gondor. She didn’t want to be entombed in Rath Dinen with Aragorn.

What does that say about her feelings about her choice? She begged Aragorn not to give back his gift of life so easily, to use his grace to die in peace and pass on to the Fate of Men willingly.

That fate awaited Arwen. But she faced this one final test: to die peacefully as a mortal woman, ready to accept her fate.

I think she passed that test in the end. She laid herself down in her grave in Lorien. She didn’t wander off into the wilderness, filled with bitterness and dread (say, the way Maglor did when he realized he couldn’t hold a Silmaril after all his sins and failings). But I still think Arwen’s ending was sad because to me it represents Tolkien’s uncertainty about what happens to an Elf after Eä itself ends.

Arwen’s departure from Gondor was like an attempt to flee from mortality. She ran back to an Elvish land she had dwelt in for so long, but not to Imladris where her brothers (and possibly Celeborn) may have still dwelt in peace. Like Firiel in the poem “The Last Ship”, Arwen felt her mortality separated her from the Elvish world. She could only go as far as a land where Elves once dwelt, not to a land where Elves still lived.

She would not have been like them. Her fate was separate from theirs.

The Point of the Athrabeth

Finrod and other Elves wondered what would happen to them after Eä ends. They were blessed with a longevity that matched the life of Arda (not even the life of Eä). When Arda fails and fades, or however it ends, do Elvish spirits pass away to some other place or are they trapped in Eä until it ends, or do they simply cease to exist?

I think Tolkien made it clear that something Ilúvatar creates cannot simply “cease to exist”. Maybe Eä will but Eä is not a living soul the way the Ainur, Quendi, Men, and Dwarves are.

Tolkien wrote that “Elves and Men are just different aspects of the Humane, and represent the problem of Death as seen by a finite but willing and self-conscious person. In this mythological world the Elves and Men are in their incarnate forms kindred, but in the relation of their ‘spirits’ to the world in time represent different ‘experiments’, each of which has its own natural trend, and weakness.”

Ilúvatar Is the Ultimate Challenge for Love

The question of what happens to Elvish spirits in the long run mirrors the question we all ask ourselves when pondering infinity and our own sense of mortality. The Christian view is that if you put your faith in God, there’s a chance you’ll be able to see your loved ones again. Friends, family, even enemies can all be reunited in what comes after – the “afterlife” – if they have faith.

I think Tolkien’s Elves ask the same question many of us eventually ask: Am I ready to die?

For an Elf in Middle-earth, death of the body may be peaceful or painful. But there is hope of some kind of second life, a resurrection in a “promised land”. But that’s not what Tolkien would have considered the true resurrection, which is promised to Judeo-Christians who placed their faith in God.

But it’s not enough to ask if I’m ready to die because my death means I may be leaving behind those whom I love. And it means I may not be with those who loved me afterward.

To be an Elf in Tolkien’s view is to face the uncertainty of what comes after death. In a way, he’s magnifying what we humans already feel because we only know by our faith in God that there is an afterlife. We haven’t yet seen the physical evidence of that afterlife and “returned to tell the tale” as Glorfindel might have.

So, Can Elves and Men Be Reunited beyond Eä?

If Elves are simply longeval humans whose spirits are destinated to hang around Eä until the end of Time and Space, then I’d say there is every reason to believe that they can be reunited with Men afterwards.

I think that was the meaning of Finrod’s words – but it’s a matter of faith. You must place your faith in God.

That’s a lot to ask, and not much to ask at all. But it’s a very Christian lesson, in my opinion, if that is indeed what Tolkien meant. And I think it was.

See also

Did the Elves Fear Death at All?

How Well Did Tolkien Imagine Longevity?

Do Elves Die When They Go Into the West?

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Tolkien Elves

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about the Peredhil

Short Questions and Answers, Volume 9

An Interview with Douglas Charles Kane (from Interviews with the Scholars)

Do Elves Dream of Eclectic Sleep? (Classic Essay)

# # #

Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?

10

Click to Like