The Straight Road

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

Letter 325 (just about the whole thing) says:

The ‘immortals’ who were permitted to leave Middle-earth and seek Aman. . .set sail in ships specially made and hallowed for this voyage, and steered due West towards the ancient site of those lands. They only set out after sundown; but if any keen-eyed observer from that shore had watched on of these ships he might have seen that it never became hull-down but dwindled only by distance until it vanished in the twilight: it followed the straight road to the true West and not the bent road of the earth’s surface. As it vanished it left the physical world. There was no return. The Elves who took this road and those few ‘mortals’ who by special grace went with them, had abandoned the ‘History of the world’ and could play no further part in it.

The angelic immortals (incarnate only at their own will), the Valar or regents under God, and other of the same order but less power and majesty (such as Olórin=Gandalf) needed no transport, unless they for a time remained incarnate, and they could, if allowed or commanded, return.

As for Frodo or other mortals, they could only dwell in Aman for a limited time – whether brief or long. The Valar had neither the power nor the right to confer ‘immortality’ upon them. Their sojourn was a ‘purgatory’, but one of peace and healing and they would eventually pass away (die at their own desire and of free will) to destinations of which the Elves knew nothing.

This general idea lies behind the events of The Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion, but it is not put forward as geologically or astronomically ‘true’; except that some special physical catastrophe is supposed to lie behind the legends and marked the first stage in the succession of Men to dominion of the world. But the legends are mainly of ‘Mannish’ origin blended with those of the Sindar (Grey-elves) and others who had never left Middle-earth.

From that description of the transit, it does sound, in science-fictional terms, like some kind of interdimensional shift, vanishing from the physical world of Arda to another plane of existence. It seems that if you don't have the right ship or don't have permission, you just keep sailing along in the water and remain on the earth. One does wonder how the passengers perceive that part of the transit where they leave the waters and continue straight on rather than following the curvature of the earth. It's interesting, I think, that the legends about it are written by people who never made the trip.

I have somehow always felt that Frodo reached Aman without incident -- possibly because he did dream of his arrival there long before he even knew it would ever happen, or what it was he saw in his dream, but also possibly because it felt like a classic heroic end. Not the attainment of an eternal paradise, but the bestowing of a reward, a sort of cosmic "even of the scales," to offset all he had suffered in struggling to achieve the onus that had been laid upon him. It seems to me that in most legends and myths, the end of the hero's journey is never wholly a "happily ever after" situation; either the "paradise" achieved is not perfect, or the road to it was so fraught with trials and tragedies, it could only be a bittersweet reward, at best.