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I'm very confused about the ending of the last book in the trilogy. What is the Grey Havens? Is that just a place where old, or sick people go to die, or when Frodo goes there, does it signify that he died. Please somebody explain to me what they think!!

It is Elf settlement number three, the other two being Lothlorien and Rivendell. It is led by an EXTREMELY old Elf with a penchant for making boats. He had one of the three Elven rings but gavce it to Gandalf a while back.

It is well out the way of any of the events of the books and it is mainly assumed that any charatcer who 'retires' there will live forever.

i was also confused about the Grey Havens.

grey haven is another continent in tolkien's world

Very interesting. Being that I haven't finished FOTR, I don't care at the moment. I'm going to go see the FOTR movie tonight, since I'm less than 30 pages away from finishing the book.

*Gets off the computer and reads*

i think he gave his ring to gandalf in the end....

If you read the Silmarillion I'm pretty sure it explains what the Grey Haven are.

brith is right. It is the western most port in middle earth where the major of elves go to to sail to aman. Cirdan gave the ring ro gandalf the second gandalf came to the grey havens. cirdan new where gandalf came from and new that he would need the ring for the works gandalf was sent to do.
Now my question would be, most of the fellowship sailed on to valinor, but some of them werent immortal like frodo bilbo gimli and sam. So were they granted immortallity or did they age more quickly and die. the reason i wonder if they would age more quickly is because when beren and luthien both returned from the grave and lived with the simaril its beauty and power which comes from valinor aged them more quickly then usual. but at the same time Elendil made it there and pleaded for aid against morgoth and he was granted immortality and forever sailed the heavens with a silmaril on his brow.

there seems to be some confusion here about the location of arman.
it is no longer located on middle earth .after the fall of numenor the land of aman was removed and only the first born(elves) can find the straight path to find it , ( i think)

Pretty much, yes; I think the world becomes round after the Second Age and most people sailing west will just come back to Endor again.

Everyone in Aman is immortal we are led to believe. What I don;t understand is whay that is seen as desirable for Gimli and Frodo and Sam when Tolkien describes elsewhere that this 'stretching' of your existence- as the Great Rings do likewise- is a bad thing, one of the reasons why the Numenoreans were not meant to seek it.

good point, but i guess it depends on wether it is evil strectching out ones life or good. plus i imagine that if they were granted imortality in aman then it wouldnt be a stretching of life, but a freezing of age, if you get what i mean. perhaps good things grant blissfuless at the cost of the length of your life (beren and luthien) whereas evil things extend your life at the cost of you blissfulness. i thought the only reason numenor wasnt allowed to enter aman is because only immortals can go there, maybe it was though by the gods as denying the gift that iluvatar gave the numenors of extended life by shorting it living in aman.

if the ages are frooze then bilbo will be an old hobbit forever now that is not a nice reward for his service to the world.

Well, as I say, they kind of suggested that all the Numenoreans would get in Aman was worthless, stretched life. The implication is that immortality is only for the immortal, as it were.

I am sure Tolkien never meant for us to think that Frodo et al were getting bad deals. But I don't think it was ever explained.

dam it looks like i may have to agree with you( this goes against my charicture you know) it,s an old story but immortality is only for the immortal,others who find/have/discuver it must pay a price
poor poor poor bilbo

well perhaps bilbo returns to his prime age (hopefully). Ush ya i think you are correct when you say that there is nothing for the numenors to gain by getting to aman. it is the immortal land because of who lives there not because it has the ability to grant immortality. all i was saying is that i beleive that there lives would be significantly shortened because of the blissfulness of valinor. I think it mentions it somewhere else but the only thing that comes to mind as i have mentioned earlier is with beren and luthien how there lives were shortened by the silmaril.

Well indeed, the Numenoreans are warned by the Valar that there is nothing for them out West, that its nature would harm them, but it never seemed to convince them much.

The Tolkiens had this to say about it:

JRR: "The Gods laid a ban on (man) from the beginning... they most never set foot on 'immortal' lands and so become enamoured of immortality, which was against their law, the special doom or gift of Iluvatar., and which their nature could not in fact ensure."

That final bit is the important bit. Chris picks up on it thus:

"The view is taken (as clearly reappears later in the case of the Hobbits that have taken the Ring for a while) that each 'Kind' has a natural span, integral to its biological and spiritual nature. This cannot really be increased qualatively or quantatively, so that prolongation in time is like stretching a wire out ever tauter, or 'srpeading butter ever thinner'; it becomes an intolerable torment."

And if it applies to Man and Hobbit, I assume Dwarf as well.

As far as I remember, we are led to believe that Frodo, Sam and Gimli join in the immortal joy of Aman (the alternative being, I guess, the painful death suggested by the Valar to the Men of Numenor, which we did not see because the big man blew them up first, or if that was just a way to discourage the Numenoreans then there is no alternative at all), so I do not know how Tolkien intended to get around this problem of errneous immortality.

ya who knows, but i like to think of it as the 4 of them were granted immortality.

What about Mirkwood etc. There isn't just 2 settlements for the Elves.

Geez, that was from ages ago...

The Mirkwood/Greenwood isn't accounted as one of the three Elven havens because it has half fallen to evil, hence the name. So it is more just 'a place where Elves are', even though it has an Elven King (and he hardly stands well against the leaders of the three havens)

where those elves decended from elves who had never been to aman??

Oh, most Elves on Middle-Earth are that, only the Noldor aren't. Mind you, that's Elrond and Galadriel right away!