What Does The Song Of The Last Goodbye Mean

Song of a Moment
Life can be described as a continuous song. There can be sharp moments, and there can be flats. Even when life is simple as the white keys on a piano, once the note is played there is no turning back. Songs are outlets where thoughts and emotions are expressed for both the real and fictional. “The Last Goodbye”, written and sung by Billy Boyd, is the final song of The Hobbit movies trilogy based on J.R.R Tolkien’s classic The Hobbit. This song is centered on Bilbo Baggins’s, the protagonist, as he moves on after the Battle of the Five Armies, the climatic final in the novel. “The road is now calling” Bilbo to depart, but “to these memories [he] will hold” of his fallen brothers, which he had once traveled. It is time to move on, but the past will never be forgotten.

The bitterness of having to say goodbye and the sweetness of being able to move on. The land that Bilbo has to travel after his goodbye seems bleak as he has to journey “through lands were never light has shone,” yet there is the brighter note of the wandering “by silver streams that run down to the sea.” The contrast is repeated in the next lines with “under cloud, beneath the stars.” Being under clouds typically signifies a darker, dismal day, but stars are the guides of night that entail hope. His travels seems to have lost their significance with the loss of his friends. Still, there is the importance of the road and how it calls him to continue on. Again and the Again, “The road is not calling” is repeated signifying the influence of the heart on having to continue on. Bilbo has countless experiences, both positive and negative, on his travels, “But I don’t regret nor will I forget all who took that road with me.” It illustrates how the past will remain in his heart, but at the same time, it will not hold him