The Unpublished Epilogue

[Coelacanth]

I apologize if this topic was covered in another thread. I couldn't find one, so I figured I'd post one here. I was thinking about it the unpublished epilogue that I'd read only relatively recently, which can be found in History of Middle-Earth volume IX: Sauron Defeated. I was curious how others viewed it. I think the published ending is satisfying, but when I first heard of the epilogue, even though it's a bit silly I felt like I was missing out on something. After reading the epilogue, I can say it is something that I would have welcomed in the published story, even if I don't think it completely necessary to be included. That might just be because I'm the kind of person who prefers more information to less for the most part, although even I recognize that things can run on longer than they need to or aught to. In one of his letters, Tolkien says that he excluded it because it was "so universally condemned" among the people that proof-read it. I was wanting to know how y'all view the epilogue. Do you think it should have been included in the main story, or maybe even the appendices? Did it seem like it made the story drag on for too long?

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

I wouldn't say it makes the story drag on too long -- not after those hundreds of pages! -- and it's good to finally have it, but it does create a kind of "distancing" coziness, in contrast with the immediacy of the published ending, with Sam returning home, and uttering what the writer Michael Swanwick calls "the most heartbreaking line in all modern fantasy".

I can say that, no matter how many times through the decades I've read and reread LOTR, I never fail to be in tears by that point. I don't know if that would have happened, had the epilogue been there.

 

[Coelacanth]

I wouldn't say it makes the story drag on too long -- not after those hundreds of pages! -- and it's good to finally have it, but it does create a kind of "distancing" coziness, in contrast with the immediacy of the published ending, with Sam returning home, and uttering what the writer Michael Swanwick calls "the most heartbreaking line in all modern fantasy".

I can say that, no matter how many times through the decades I've read and reread LOTR, I never fail to be in tears by that point. I don't know if that would have happened, had the epilogue been there.

I think I would've wanted it at least in the appendices if nothing else. It seems like he put a lot of thought and effort into it. It's interesting that one of the most emotional parts of the story, at least to me, is in the appendices. Arwen going back to Lothlorien after everyone had left and laying down to die on the hill where she stood with Aragorn is genuinely one of the saddest things (but in a perplexingly good way) that I have ever read.