Who Were the Real Heroes of Middle-Earth?

have been privileged to read it. The poem is rich and moving, romantic and epic in theme and style. And it details the love of Beren and Luthien with a passion that will never die. We are provided only a glimpse of the fire and depth of the story as Aragorn seeks to comfort the hobbits of the Shire in the darkness on Weathertop. "'I will tell you the tale of Tinuviel,' said Strider, 'in brief -- for it is a long tale of which the end is not now known; and there are none now, except Elrond, that remember it aright as it was told of old....'" (Tolkien, "Fellowship", p. 203) Much the same could be said of the story of Ronald and Edith, for at the time he wrote this passage they had yet many years ahead of them, and he did not know how their tale would end. Aragorn's words were a foreshadowing, however, of Sam's own observation many chapters (and months) later in "The Stairs of Cirith Ungol" that he and Frodo were in the same tale as Beren and Luthien, for they were carrying part of the light of the Silmaril rescued by Beren and Luthien in a phial prepared by Galadriel, and they were pursuing the downfall of Sauron, who had struggled with the pair ages before when he himself was but a servant of a greater Dark Lord. And in real life Aragorn's words were reflected in the fact that Tolkien never completed the Lay. He knew more-or-less how Beren and Luthien's lives would end, but the details had not been written. Aragorn could not have told the end of the tale no matter how worthy it might be for the story in The Lord of the Rings. But as many have remarked, Aragorn's own story is very similar to that of Beren's. Like Beren Aragorn lost his father to servants of the enemy, but Aragorn's father died when he was still a child and Aragorn never really got to know him. Here the parallel is much closer between Aragorn and Tolkien himself, whose father died when he was three years old, the same age as when Aragorn lost his father. Aragorn's heritage was never really tarnished, though it had been diminished through the centuries. He was a descendant of kings whose heirs had become chietains of a mysterious wandering folk. The Tolkiens had emigrated to England from Germany

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