There and Back Again, for a While—Tolkien and Mortality

*The Lord of the Rings* Reading Challenge bonus, week nine

He drew a deep breath. “Well, I’m back,” he said.

Sam gets the last words in The Lord of the Rings, and they clearly echo the subtitle of The Hobbit: “There and Back Again.” This is the way of most journeys, though of course not all, that we return to where we started. The place to which we return, however, is, as Sam himself has discovered, never exactl…