Recovery of Freshness: A Celebration of Tolkien Fanart #6
Miriam Ellis, "Well, I'm back"
For this entry in Recovery of Freshness, I have chosen an image by Miriam Ellis, a traditional artist who has made many high-profile Tolkien paintings and other great works which are featured on her personal website. This particular image, entitled “Well, I’m back,” captures the last words and what could be considered the Happy Ending of The Lord of the Rings, the moment when Samwise Gamgee, whom Tolkien identified as the true hero of the story, receives the greatest reward for his heroic sacrifice: home and family: “And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Elanor upon his lap. He drew a deep breath. ‘Well, I’m back,’ he said.”1 Ellis’s excellent painting highlights the comfort and warmth which were the end-goal inspiring all of Sam’s efforts throughout the War of the Ring.
The light of the crackling fire and the candelabra on the hearth and beams provide the only light in the room, expertly cast onto Sam as he sits holding his daughter Elanor on whom he and his wife Rosie Cotton gaze with joy and love. A skilled use of perspective gives this scene a tunnelled quality resembling a cask of Green Dragon ale, with the appropriately curved walls of Bag End oriented toward the circular window which looks out onto Sam’s well-tended gardens. One open panel of the window lets in the cool evening breeze of autumn. Surrounded by the flowers of new life, Sam is able to overcome his sorrow at losing his master, Frodo Baggins, as well as his dear friends Bilbo and Gandalf, turning his mind and heart now to the future, as Frodo instructed.
It could be said that all great stories begin and end with family. The Bible, as the central record of human history and our communion with God, is no different: it begins with Adam and Eve in Eden, married prior to original sin in what Pope St. John Paul II called the “primordial sacrament” and the “sacrament of creation,” the first sign of man’s loving and eternal espousement to God.2 The timeline of Scripture is measured by family relationships, both good and bad, from Abraham, Moses and David to Judas Maccabee and the geneaology and Holy Family of Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph. Finally, the Bible concludes with a foretaste of the Happy Ending of human history: the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, (Rev 19:9) when man’s marriage to God, promised in Eden and “consummated” on the Cross, (Jn 19:30) will be finally realized as all are joined together in the single mystical family of the Church Triumphant.
Tolkien fully understood this truth. In his personal life, his wife and children were all-important to him, the guiding force for all that he did, as can be seen in the inspiration of Beren and Lúthien from his romance with Edith, as well as the deep affection he expressed in letters to his children:
Can’t you see why I care so much about you, and why all that you do concerns me so closely? Still, let us both take heart of hope and faith. The link between father and son is not only of the perishable flesh: it must have something of aeternitas about it.3
This is also reflected in his stories, most of all in The Lord of the Rings, where the heroes of the story - other than the celibate priest figures of Frodo and Bilbo and the angel Gandalf - all return home and start families. For Aragorn, Arwen was a key motivation for his entire journey, as he refused to marry her until he was worthy of her, freeing Middle-earth from Sauron and claiming his rightful throne at last. Likewise, Faramir married Éowyn and raised their family in the idyllic garden of Ithilien, while Merry and Pippin began their own families just as Sam did. In this way, family, marriage and the gift of new life fulfill all hope, serving as a constant reminder, even in their hardship and loss, that God loves us and desires to be with us forever, and was even, like Frodo, willing to give up His life to save us from destruction:
It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.4
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (Mariner Books, 2004), 1031. Kindle.
Pope John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston, MA: Pauline, 2006), 96:1, 6. Kindle.
J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien (eds), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (London: HarperCollins, 2012), 54-55. Kindle.
Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, 1029.
What a beautiful work of art! May we never forget the importance of the family, especially during these times when the family is in constant threat.