Every journey has an ending; the journey that is life has the most dramatic one for us mortals. One of the major changes of Jackson's film sheds light on his interpretation of the theme of death in Tolkien's trilogy. Much has been made of the enhancement of elf-maiden Arwen's role in the film. For instance, her rescuing Frodo from the Ringwraiths at the Ford of Bruinen sequence has garnered considerable attention. Jeffrey Mallinson rightly indicates the Marian touch in Arwen's tears of grace in her effort to save Frodo at its end. However, the most important element in the transformation has been Jackson's forwarding the story of Aragorn and Arwen's romance and death from the novel's fictional appendix to the body of the main narration in The Two Towers.

To remind readers, Tolkien's conceit in The Lord of the Rings is that if an elf wishes to wed a mortal, it must give up its immortality. Nonetheless, a compensation for doing so exists. Whereas the elf's immortality is connected with the duration of life on earth, at best a possible few billion years if we wish to get scientific about it, becoming "human" involves the same benefits of humanity's participation in the divine: a chance at entering eternity through genuine death. To put it another way, Tolkien's chosen elves participate in a quasi-Pascalian wager.

This does not necessarily make accepting death any easier when it does come. Despite Aragorn's parting assertion that "we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory," the literary Arwen experiences despair upon her husband's demise, as peaceful and benign as the latter is described. The question arises: What happens if right from the start there is no promise of eternity in the bargain? What can Aragorn offer his beloved besides mortal love?

Consider the scene in the extended version of The Fellowship of the Ring. Aragorn is singing the "Lay of Beren and Luthien," which deals with the prototypical case of elf-mortal love. Frodo interrupts, asking: "Where is she? (...) The woman you are singing about." Aragorn tellingly responds: "she's dead." This rather secular hero bears the consciousness of not having anything but himself to offer Arwen, which explains his acceptance in Rivendell of Elrond's argument against the union. What does Arwen gain in her choice? Much as in Wenders' Wings of Desire, where a similar theme is treated, Jackson suggests that the ennui of deathlessness could add an attraction to the mortal, yet full, life. However, whereas in the work of the German filmmaker the consequences of the "choice" are simply understood, in Jackson's film the question of death is directly confronted.

In the sequence of the film that projects a vision of Aragorn's death and Arwen's subsequent despair there seems to be no room for the words Tolkien's Aragorn uttered to his spouse. Death is final. One can counter that an equivalent of the literary Aragorn's words are substituted in Gandalf's attempt at solacing Theoden at the site of the latter's son's grave, with much the same effect—the king remains unconsoled. The wizard reiterates the theme with a more positive result in his moving dialogue with Pippin during the siege of Minas Tirith in The Return of the King. Furthermore, the significance of these words is strengthened through the agency of Gandalf and his experience, especially his being "sent" once again after his physical death.

Visual clues associating Gandalf with Christian hope occur often enough in the film. For instance, during his fall into the abyss in Fellowship his arms are outspread in a cruciform. Moreover, during the course of Gandalf's message to Aragorn in Theoden's stable in The Two Towers, one of the upper windows emanating light forms a cathedral-like rosette around his head. Obviously the light surrounding him during his revelatory-like "return" also bears a rather heavy-handed religious symbolism.

The above might be true, but it seems to me in light of the evidence that the same message is deliberately separated from the Aragorn-Arwen relationship and dramatizes the issue between them. Thus a parallel truth is added to the overall narrative. Elrond, who evokes the vision of the death scene for his daughter, makes no mention of anything resembling Tolkien's idea of death as a "Gift of Ilúvatar," as intimated in Aragorn's words cited above. And as we have seen, if Jackson's Aragorn has such a knowledge he seems not to believe it. In a sense, Jackson's Middle-earth is more like our own with a number of truth-claims available, and the central issue of death becomes more of an open question.

This is not completely out of line with Tolkien's intent. He once affirmed that the dominant theme of The Lord of the Rings was a contemplation of death, further quoting Simone Beauvoir's words: "All men must die, but for every man his death is an accident, and even if he knows and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation." Theologian Gabriel Moran expresses what might be called the paradox at the heart of the adaptation: "The one who loves intensely in this life finds it difficult to believe that anything survives death. The lover simply finds it still harder to accept that death is the end of all." Even upon seeing Aragorn and Arwen united in The Return of the King, the earlier death scene haunts us.

This section of Mr. Garbowski's book originally appeared as part of an extended essay which ran in the Spring '04 edition of the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture.

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