Inspired by a question from mrkinch

[wellinghall]

... which I will reply to, honest, having just found the email nestling in the bottom of my inbox ...

[Poll #1123403]

Comments

[megamole.livejournal.com]

If he'd wanted a cod Happy Ending, Tolkien would have ended with Aragorn's coronation at the Field of Cormallen.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Net, yes. For Frodo, not so much.

[overconvergent.livejournal.com]

I was about to say that. If you're Sam, then you get a different answer to Frodo, I guess

[tree_and_leaf]

I agree with megamole.

On the other hand, I wouldn't say it had a sad ending, either. It's - bittersweet, I suppose, because joy can never be unmixed for long in a fallen world - and yet it is also a world where grace is apparent, too, and evil, though it cannot be wholly destroyed, cannot conquer forever.

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

You really needed a Mixed option. It had its happy and its sad parts. I did cry, but it wasn't the Really Sad type of cry.

[tigerfort.livejournal.com]

[X] both/neither, depending on your viewpoint and what you mean by ending (since we have a fair amount of detail about what happens in the story after the end of the book).

[bouncy-elf.livejournal.com]

It is eternally bittersweet.

[hyalma.livejournal.com]

As a matter of fact, I would choose both issues - it's like a glass of water, of which the optimist says it's half-filled, and the pessimist - that it's half-empty.

Bittersweet, yes.

[mrkinch.livejournal.com]

It may depend on where one's sympathies chiefly lie. There are those for whom the fading of the Elves is of no import. I am not one of them; I think it is a tragedy for all the peoples and for Middle-Earth itself. This quite aside from the ephemeral nature of victory over evil.

The question gets caught in my head every time I find reference to those critics for whom the physical survival of 8/9ths of the Fellowship demonstrates that

The Lord of the Rings

is a juvenile adventure story. There is also the writer who suggest who else should die when in order for the book to escape being so. I am not certain which astonishes me more.

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

ish - Frodo was going to somewhere he could recover, something not granted to many. For most of the rest of the world, distinct improvement all round.

[melilot-909.livejournal.com]

"sad but not unhappy" as JRRT wrote about Fangorn's eyes.

[findabair.livejournal.com]

Interesting question! I haven't really thought of it quite in those terms before (and now that I think of it, I really wonder why I have not!).

I have to say like people here have done before me though, that it's difficult answer either yes or no.