Middle-earth Journeys
Tolkien Studies
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March 25, TA 3019
25 March 2006 21:38:09The Host is surrounded on the Slag-hills. Frodo and Samwise reach the Sammath Naur. Gollum seizes the Ring and falls in the Cracks of Doom. Downfall of Barad-dur and passing of Sauron.
"Sauron", by Alan Lee
Today is Christmas and Easter and your birthday and every other good holiday in Middle-earth! Indeed, in Gondor, March 25 is New Years Day, because the event that was the best outcome that our friends could have wished for, the eucatastrophe, has actually happened. As Sam would have said, Glory and trumpets!
For all that, the end was simple and swift: "'My Precious! O my Precious!' And with that, even as his eyes were lifted up to gloat on his prize, he stepped too far, toppled, wavered for a moment on the brink, and then with a shriek he fell."
A mis-step? An intervention of the Valar? Obedience to the Ringbearer ("If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom.")? What was 'meant' to be, at the Cracks of Doom? I think for Tolkien, these are not contradictory explanations: causes work at different levels in Middle-earth.
March 25, close to the vernal equinox and the date of the Christian Incarnation, when hope was born into a world beset by Satan's temptation--and Frodo undoes evil at the very site where it was forged.
The Eagles are coming!
For all that, the end was simple and swift: "'My Precious! O my Precious!' And with that, even as his eyes were lifted up to gloat on his prize, he stepped too far, toppled, wavered for a moment on the brink, and then with a shriek he fell."
A mis-step? An intervention of the Valar? Obedience to the Ringbearer ("If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom.")? What was 'meant' to be, at the Cracks of Doom? I think for Tolkien, these are not contradictory explanations: causes work at different levels in Middle-earth.
March 25, close to the vernal equinox and the date of the Christian Incarnation, when hope was born into a world beset by Satan's temptation--and Frodo undoes evil at the very site where it was forged.
The Eagles are coming!