Tolkien’s depiction of Niggle’s journey can be interpreted as an allegory for death and what happens after. The journey looms over Niggle’s life, and he is reluctant to prepare for it. Indeed, any preparations he does make are halfhearted and ineffective, and he ends up being forced to make the journey with only a tiny bag of painting supplies—no clothes, food, or anything particularly useful. He’s not able to finish his painting before the Driver comes to take him to the station. Similarly, the idea of death and all its uncertainty—when it will arrive, how to best prepare, and what will happen after—looms over every person’s life. The only certain element is that the “journey”—or death—will arrive at some point.
Niggle’s unwillingness to go on his journey is mainly because he wants to have enough time to complete his painting. However, when he is let out of the Workhouse and reaches the “next stage,” he sees that the land he has been trying to paint has been fully realized, and it’s more alive and beautiful than he ever could have painted it. In turn, Tolkien suggests that death is perhaps not an end point but a pathway to something even more beautiful—and, ultimately, that there’s no way to know this until we experience it ourselves.
Related Themes from Other Texts
The Afterlife ThemeTracker
The Afterlife Quotes in Leaf by Niggle
There was one picture in particular which bothered him. It had begun with a leaf caught in the wind, and it became a tree; and the tree grew, sending out innumerable branches, and thrusting out the most fantastic roots. Strange birds came and settled on the twigs and had to be attended to. Then all round the Tree, and behind it, through the gaps in the leaves and boughs, a country began to open out; and there were glimpses of a forest marching over the land, and of mountains tipped with snow.
“What was the matter with him?” said a Second Voice, a voice that you might have called gentle, though it was not soft—it was a voice of authority, and sounded at once hopeful and sad. “What was the matter with Niggle? His heart was in the right place.”
“Yes, but it did not function properly,” said the First Voice.
Before him stood the Tree, his Tree, finished. If you could say that of a Tree that was alive, its leaves opening, its branches growing and bending in the wind that Niggle had so often felt or guessed, and had so often failed to catch. He gazed at the Tree, and slowly he lifted his arms and opened them wide.
“It’s a gift!” he said. He was referring to his art, and also to the result; but he was using the word quite literally.
You could go on and on, but perhaps not for ever. There were the Mountains in the background. They did get nearer, very slowly. They did not seem to belong to the picture, or only as a link to something else, a glimpse through the trees of something different, a further stage: another picture.
