Dear Frodo Baggins,

Your story is confusing, something people debate all the time even today. Were you the hero? Did you succeed in your quest, or was your failure to destroy the ring part of a tragic allegory for human existence? Everyone who has read your story has an opinion on that.

I always wondered what your opinion was. I think most people tend to be overly hard on themselves. How did you see yourself, after the ring was destroyed and you returned to the Shire and realized you were never going to be okay again?

It’s okay to not be okay. It doesn’t make you less of a hero. At least, that’s what I tell myself, what I try and tell others who are suffering. Not being okay isn’t a weakness, it’s just a part of being human, or hobbit in your case. It’s just that, well, knowing that doesn’t make it hurt less. And after a while, you start to worry that you’ll never be okay again. And you weren’t, not in the Shire that you saved anyway.

Were you okay again after you arrived in the Grey Lands across the sea? Did you find peace there? Was it the peace of death and stillness, or of life and renewal? The elves were always sort of vague on that, but there are so many different kinds of peace. I think a rapturous or joyful afterlife that some religions describe would feel wrong, fake, forced. To be honest, I’m not sure what I would even hope for, if there is some sort of “going on” waiting for us in the end.

But back to my original point- did you ever see yourself as a hero? I think you should, because I think you succeeded on your quest. The choices you made- to spare Gollum, to lean on Sam, to continue on when all seemed lost- those choices are what destroyed the ring, even if it wasn’t your hand that threw the ring into the fire. Had you acted differently, even a little, the ring would not have been destroyed and Sauron would have been victorious.

Maybe that’s the kind of peace I hope for, on a smaller scale, after my life is finished. Knowing that the choices I made were important, that even if in the end I’m not okay and I didn’t succeed the way I thought I would.

There’s one last thing I wanted to say to you- they say martyrs die alone. Regardless of whether or not you were a hero, in my opinion there is no argument against you being a martyr. And even though you felt that the Shire could never be home for you again… I hope you found home, in the end, even if it turns out you weren’t a hero. I hope you didn’t die feeling alone, if dying is something that happens in the Grey Lands or if going there is in itself dying. If an afterlife is something that exists… well, I think it should feel like the sort of peace that comes from being truly home.

Like I said, it’s okay to not be okay. But I hope you were. I hope we all are, heroes or not, at the end of all things.

 

Love always,

A Friend

 

 

Frodo Baggins is from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Dear Meg Murray,

It’s a dark and stormy night, and since yours in the only book I’ve ever read that actually starts that way, I thought of you.

You were never my favorite heroine growing up, but over the years I’ve really come to appreciate and love you more. I think you feel the same way about yourself though? Don’t we all? Sometimes loving ourselves takes age and time. Being a teenager is awkward and painful, but if we’re lucky, we get to grow out of that into something… not better, necessarily, because it’s not an awful thing to be a teenager… but more comfortable. Those years are all about trying to find yourself, and it’s nice to eventually start to settle in on a bit of an identity that feels like it fits.

Identity is what I’m trying to talk about here now. A Wrinkle in Time… a fairy tale and science fiction story. They always felt so separate, except in your world. Unicorns and mitochondria and angels and tesseracts. It’s not supposed to all fit together, but eventually, it all does, beautifully. In a way, that’s kind of what growing up is like. When you’re a kid, things are black and white, kept in separate, neat groups with clearly defined labels. Only we grow up, and we realize that things rarely fit into one neat box. Being a teenager is all about awkwardly trying to figure out what that means, and how to sort things in a world that suddenly doesn’t fit into any of your childhood expectations. It feels awkward and uncomfortable, and of course it’s all of that magnified times a thousand when you’re trying to apply these new things not to the world around you, but to yourself. Everyone is too hard on themselves, especially as teenagers.

I like who I am now, mostly, and I know you can relate. It’s complicated. But sometimes, complicated can be it’s own sort of comfortable. After all, lots of wonderful things are complicated. Dark and stormy nights. Hot chocolate with strangers. Unexpected travel. Family. Science. Magic. Belief. Love.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s because dark and stormy nights, especially in the fall, make me wistful and sentimental, but I think I’m going to pick up your book again. I hear they’re going to try and make a movie again- I hope this one turns out well. Some of the past ones, well… maybe it’s like you and me? The story needed to reach a certain age before it could really find the right portrayal? We’ll see. It’ll be an adventure either way, and there’s no better way to start an adventure then in weather like this.

 

Love always,

A Friend

 

 

Meg Murray is from the novel A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels by Madeleine L’Engle