![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I finished a long re-read of Flight of the Heron last week and have been happily upset about the ending ever since. Anyway, reading the last chapter again reminded me of this association, which first occurred to me a while ago and which pleases me even though it breaks my heart:
(Actually, the imagery is kind of opposite, isn't it—sunrise vs. sunset, the image displacing the 'real' world vs. being displaced by it. And of course this is the last we get of Keith's POV, although it comes back at the end in Ewen's thought as that place 'where an enemy never entered and from whence a friend never went away').
Also, it strikes me that some of the lyrics of 'Into the West' from the LotR films (which isn't terribly appropriate in its original context, being clearly about death—despite the above comparison, sailing into the West wasn't supposed to be a literal or metaphorical death) really fit the scene on Morar sands awfully well... 'white shores are calling/You and I will meet again/And you'll be here in my arms, just sleeping...'—oh, but 'across the sea, a pale moon rises/The ships have come to carry you home' is a bit cruel in this context, isn't it?
As he was lifted, Keith came back from a moment’s dream of a shore with long green rollers roaring loudly under a blood-red sunset, to pain and difficult breath and Ewen’s arms.—from The Flight of the Heron, part 5, chapter 5
...the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.—from The Lord of the Rings, book 6, chapter 9
(Actually, the imagery is kind of opposite, isn't it—sunrise vs. sunset, the image displacing the 'real' world vs. being displaced by it. And of course this is the last we get of Keith's POV, although it comes back at the end in Ewen's thought as that place 'where an enemy never entered and from whence a friend never went away').
Also, it strikes me that some of the lyrics of 'Into the West' from the LotR films (which isn't terribly appropriate in its original context, being clearly about death—despite the above comparison, sailing into the West wasn't supposed to be a literal or metaphorical death) really fit the scene on Morar sands awfully well... 'white shores are calling/You and I will meet again/And you'll be here in my arms, just sleeping...'—oh, but 'across the sea, a pale moon rises/The ships have come to carry you home' is a bit cruel in this context, isn't it?
