The Lord of the Rings trilogy is very much more than an adventure story. In fact, J. R. R. Tolkien intended the novels have a greater message regarding the powers of love and truth. These underlying themes run throughout all three books, and nowhere are they more apparent than in the relationship between Arwen, the elf maiden, and Aragorn the human king in the Tale of Arwen and Aragorn.
Through them Tolkein shows the reality of love as an ultimately triumphant force that has to endure many trials in order to achieve bliss. In the creation of his thoroughly believable world, Arwen and Aragorn exemplify the elements of love, loyalty, and sacrifice that Tolkein believes to be inseparably linked to the human experience. The sacrifice of loving is apparent by the choices that Arwen makes in order to pursue her relationship with Aragorn. Arwen is to leave Middle-Earth and depart to the Grey Havens, but instead gives up her family to stay with the man she loves. Arwen not only loses her family but also gives up her Elven immortality to become a mortal woman, which is a very big sacrifice. As Arwen shows the characteristics of sacrifice, Aragorn personifies loyalty.
Aragorn remains loyal to Arwen even though he is many miles away. Aragorn’s fidelity shows itself in the virtue of patience as well. He first falls in love with Arwen when he is twenty-years old, but she does not return his love until twenty-nine years later after he has grown as a warrior and leader. Despite the passage of three decades, his love never falters. When analyzing Robert Solomon’s essay “Love Stories”, I could not help but disagree with him. Robert Solomon writes in his essay about how we all are trying to lead a love life of that in a romantic typical fairy tale love story.
The Essay on Does “Love” Really Needs “Sacrifice”
Most people believe that, for a married couple, living together till old and grey is a sign of true love. Like the neighbors in the novel of “A Sacrifice”, common people will not accept a separation for a loved couple, especially for an elderly couple (283). On the other side, special examples always exist: an old woman wants to divorce with her husband in order to let him marry with a young girl ...
Solomon states that many dangers await for those whose love and marriage is formed by fiction. Solomon adds that living life with passion and romance, like a love story is not the way love is in reality and will haunt those down the road. Solomon also adds that our idealized story book romance is so different and so detached from the real story of love. That the romance and passion two people feel is unrealistic and the love we are destined to have is a dull tale of domesticity and endurance, is empty and lacks the excitement and we all long for. Solomon tries to state that the romantic story is all about the thrill of new found love, so suspenseful and full of excitement that it cannot bear the weight of the future, cannot continue and will eventually fade. I do not agree with Robert Solomon’s essay because I do believe in love stories, like the Tale of Arwen and Aragorn.
I believe this love story is truly how love is supposed to work and could if one will let it. The story is based on the reality of love, in which two people have to work together and work hard to overcome the hardships that come along with every day life to find the true love that binds them together. This love story shows that real life love can have romance and passion that could last forever, along with the reality of sacrifice, pain, trust, honesty, loyalty and patience. People need to learn that with love there comes many commitments. That just because later in a relationship there is the coping with every day life, raising kids and work, does not mean one should give up in trying to preserve the love, passion and romance in their relationship that was once there.
The Essay on Drinking a Love Story by Caroline Knapp
Drinking a love story by Caroline describes a life of an alcoholic daughter of rich parents. Excessive wealth, love and carelessness from her parents caused her to adopt life threatening habits. She later on started consuming alcohol. She indulged in alcoholism so much that her life was completely devastated. Caroline describes in details the bad outcomes of excessive consumption of alcohol. One ...
The one piece of writing I do agree with in Robert Solomon’s “Love Stories” is when he states that the truth is, all of us do have to create our own story, our own romance. Solomon could not be anymore right in saying this. For it is all upon the two people in a relationship to decide the fate of their future and what direction their own love is headed. The Tale of Arwen and Aragorn most definitely proves that finding true love is not easy, and there are many challenges and ups and downs along the way. I am one to believe that love can withstand all trials personified by ordeals in which not only Aragorn and Arwen experience, but all of us go through to hold on to the ones we know we truly love, and can never lose.
