Do Elves Dream of Eclectic Sleep? - Page 7
© Michael Martinez
It was all about choices: the choices they had made, the choices they had to make. The Elves were really burdened by the need to choose, and they wanted to choose both ways. For an Elf, Time in the Third Age was just a means of deferring the ultimate choice. Tolkien implies that many of them chose to remain in Middle-earth and fade, dwelling near the places they had loved in life, remembering only the events most dear to them.
Maybe in the end the only Elves to actually let go of the past were those who finally resolved to leave Middle-earth forever. It was a fate better than death, and one of their own choosing. To be true to their own nature, the Elves understood that they had to make a choice between the certainty of the past with all its known greatness and the uncertainty of the future with all its great unknowns. The trip over Sea was therefore the first step beyond regret and sorrow.
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