I had meant to get back here and explain my previous fly-by post.
Voronwë_the_Faithful wrote:I was torn in two then, lass, but now I am all whole.
This is the type of thing that I was talking about of Tolkien relating back to a previous statement to close a loop. It may not be to your taste, Hobby, but I like it.
Well, tastes differ.
But I'm rather pleased that my choice is also Tolkien's.
And I
love the bath song and the fox!
So, what do I think is wrong with the above quote (and the rest of this alternate ending)?
(Sorry if this causes offense - I somehow think it might!
)
When Frodo says: "You will have to be one and whole..." (and the whole speech), I'm bawling with emotion at this prospect for the future.
When Sam says: "but now I am all whole" it makes me gag with the smugness of the statement.
It's just something that doesn't work when a character says it in retrospect about themselves. (When was the last time you looked at your life and made such a grandiloquent statement about it?)
But giving the reader a glimpse into a future of conciliation and continuation, there's something uplifiting about it.
Maybe it has to do with the difference between looking forward and looking backward. Or maybe just with not stating the obvious when you're telling a story.
Another thing that's "wrong" (to my taste) with the alternative ending is that it puts Sam in the wrong!
When Frodo makes his prediction, we have no reason to doubt that things will really be like that, and we are free to imagine that all this happens.
We are free to imagine that Sam lived happily and wholesomely, and still remembered Frodo and the hard times etc., that he was a different hobbit forever after, but still one who was able to live his life successfully.
But in this alternative ending, we have Sam analyse his own feelings and come to the conclusion that everything is perfect - only to be torn out of this by the call of the sea! What are we to conclude from that but that Sam has been living a lie all these years? He is
not whole, he
thought he was, but he was wrong! I think this is absolutely terrible!
Ok, having mentioned that we are "free to imagine" I'd like to ask something to the people who said that they'd like to "know more" about other aspects of Middle-earth.
Why don't you just imagine the things you miss yourselves?
It's not like they are real history and your own imaginings would be not "true". If the original author has never imagined something, then there is no "true" or "not true" about anything.
Of course, the one special thing about Tolkien's own texts is the quality of the writing - yes, I would enjoy no end of that beautiful prose, and I'm usually the first to say that what anyone else thinks up can't reach up to the original.
But as to the mere subject matter -
what is Dol Amroth like, anyway? How good is the beer in the Forsaken Inn? Has it really been forsaken or is it just a god-forsaken way from anywhere? Why are the empty lands of Eriador so empty? We've been over the High Pass and Caradhras; what is the Gladden Pass like?
scirocco, I think the beer in the Forsaken Inn tastes
exactly the way you imagine it to taste!
Edit (because I think this needs clarification): what I think I was getting at is the difference between just enjoying reading and hearing a good story and wanting to "know" things, wishing for information.
If it's the first, I perfectly understand wishing that Tolkien had written more, but from what you guys said (and what other people have said elsewhere, too) I get the impression that it might be the latter.
So, I'd like to know what kind of 'wish for more' this is that you have expressed?
). And while the fox is an aberration, I find it irresistible.
The LOTR itself is fine as it is, but there's so little of anything else in Middle-earth. To the more specific list, I'd add a LOT more of Númenor, Ost-in-Edhil and the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, the Rohirrim and their ancestors, and Arnor and its division and fall, and what else...
Sirocco! 
Does me good to see you and read you again! Heading down to Melbourne any time soon? Have you heard about our proposed Great Ozzie Moot in 2007? wilko has expressed interest (just by way of tempting you)
