Free Master of Middle Earth by Paul H. Kocher

could triple the life spans of these
men, but they could not make them undying as were the elves, because they "were not permitted to take from them the Gift of Men . . .":
death (emphasis added). The Valar obeyed an edict coming down from above. On
the other hand, they seem to have some discretion in applying this edict to the
half-human, half-elven offspring of the two previous marriages between elves
and men: "At the end of the First Age the Valar gave to the Half-elven an
irrevocable choice to which kindred they would belong." Under the command
to make this choice, Arwen abandons immortality in order to marry Aragorn.
    The other occasion
which the Valar clearly do not, perhaps cannot, manage by themselves is the
invasion of Valinor by rebellious Númenoreans demanding immortality. Then
". . . the Valar laid down their Guardianship and called upon the One . .
." who sank Númenor under the waves. These incidents serve to show that
while the Valar have what Tolkien calls incomprehensibly great
"demiurgic" powers, 3 which they use in governing and
guarding the affairs of Middle-earth and which justify the invocation of their
help in prayer by many of its folk, they are only agents of "the One"
and defer to his direct intervention in major emergencies. Beyond this point
Tolkien does not choose to go in defining the relationship of the Valar to
their superior. Why should he? He has told us all he needs to for the
literary-philosophical framework of his tale.
    As the Fourth Age
begins, no successor of Sauron is in sight to rally the forces of evil against
civilization. But signs are not lacking that sooner or later one will arise
again on Middle-earth or out of the Undying Lands—another Morgoth, a more
vicious Fëanor, a Denethor more wholly lost to good. Gandalf has said as much
in the Last Debate: "Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is
himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the
tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years in
which we are set, uprooting the evils in the fields that we know, so that those
who live after may have clear earth to till. What weather they shall have is
not ours to rule." 4 To judge by the history of the past three
Ages evil will not be long in reviving. With brief respites Middle-earth has
always been under siege by some Dark Lord or other. There seems to be something
in the nature of things, or in the nature of the One who devises them, 5 that requires it. Sauron is Morgoth's servant, but whose emissary is Morgoth?
In one sense, nobody's. Since like everybody else, he has a will free to
choose, he is self-corrupted. In another sense, his master can only be the One,
who, while not creating evil, permits it to exist and uses it in ruling his
word—who, in truth, needs evil in order to bring on times of peril that
test his creatures to the uttermost, morally and physically, as in Sauron's
war.
    If men and their
colleagues of other races are to prove the stoutness of their fiber, such times
must come again and again in the Fourth Age and future ages of whatever number.
Evil has built-in weaknesses that make for self-defeat, and the One, with his
smiling ironies, will sometimes manipulate it to that end. But the burden of The Lord of the Rings is that victory for the good is never automatic. It
must be earned anew each time by every individual taking part. In this effort,
says Aragorn to Éomer, man has the natural ability and the obligation to
"discern" the difference between right and wrong. These are
opposites, absolutes that do not vary from year to year or place to place or
people to people. Those rational beings who would act well on Tolkien's
Middle-earth do not have to stand on the shifting sands of historical relativism.
The good is as unchanging above the tides of time as the beauty of Sam's star
over Mordor, and derives ultimately from the character of the One who placed it
there.
    But does death end
all for those