Banishment from Death?

[Androthelm]

Does anyone have a working understanding of how the status of "undead" humans (The Oathbreakers, the Nazgul, the Barrow-Wights) makes sense in a world where so much is made of the inevitability of death for the younger Children of Illuvatar? It's something I've been thinking about for a while and I'm just not sure.

[Fuin Elda]

I think the undead come into play mostly because it's showing that NOT passing on is as frightening to men if not more so than actually dying.

The barrow wights and the Nazgul terrify men utterly every time they show up in the story, and it takes an exceptional person to not be paralized with fear of them because they are so completely unnatural, and mirrors very much a few of I think it's Echo? in the Greek mythology where he slowly fades away to nothing because he asked for immortality and wasn't specific enough and he kept aging while being immortal until he was nothing.

[Androthelm]

That is Echo @Fuin Elda! I suppose that's a fair point -- event though they receive long-livedness, they aren't really immortal in a healthy, desirable way.

[Fuin Elda]

@Androthelm YEAH! as well I am not so sure that they are in fact 'deathless.' They seem very much dead and it's restless spirits that are malevolent roaming, it takes very specific things to wound or kill them, or even control them and get them to obey. It seems more like they are simply shut out from the Tolkien version of Heaven for Men - in that they can't go to the halls of their forefathers because of their corruption. they aren't evil enough to be cast into the void (though that may have happened to the Nazgul I have to admit I'm bathering from memory and not actual books atm) but they are too corrupt to go to the place set aside for them until (especially the oathbreakers in this case) redeem themselves.

[Elenhir]

The Nazgul are a pretty explicit case, though it does take some assumptions to get us to accepting the conditions we are told:

A mortal, Frodo, who keeps on the Great Rings, does not die, but he does not grow or obtain more life, he merely continues, until at last every minute is a weariness.

From Gandalf's words, it seems to work by fractional rationing. It's Xeno's Paradox for lifespan. Sauron and his Rings haven't done anything to surmount the rules that Eru laid down, but as long as you don't assume that time is the end-all be-all of what matters about mortality, he's found a miserable little way to break the spirit of the rules. The Nazgul work within the concept of mortality in the same way that the Elven realms preserved by the Three work in a world that should be changing to leave the time of the Elves behind.

The Oathbreakers are easier. It's an oath, and the consequences of breaking the oath, and the rules of Creation have been set up by Eru to allow for that sort of thing to play out. Oaths have power and there is a reckoning and necessary redress when they are not fulfilled. Coming down from Eru's authority, the inability of the souls of the Oathbreakers to pass out of the Circles of the World upon death (for they are very much dead) doesn't break anything. It's honestly less of a issue than Ar-Pharazon's earth-swallowed host.

Barrow-wights would seem to be more of a serious problem, which has led many people who think about it to reject the idea that they are Men. There's no real evidence for it. The memories of Men we encounter in the relevant chapters are clearly not from the barrow-wights, because they are from those buried there, whereas the wights are spirits that have intruded upon the mounds. Some people argue that they are Elven spirits, commanded under the sort of processes we see in 'Laws and Customs Among the Eldar'. But we don't know what they are for sure.

[Androthelm]

@Elenhir thank you a lot for those answers. That's sort of exactly what I was looking for, by means of an explanation. The comparison to Elven realms (momentarily unchanging but still not eternal) was particularly helpful.

[Boromir88]

Great questions @Androthelm. If I may chime in with a bit more about the Oathbreakers.

As @Elenhir mentions they are very much dead and that makes them different from the Nazgul. The Nazgul have a corporeal form that interacts in the physical world, because of the 9 Rings. The intro to the FOTR movies, it's often pointed out the "9 Kings of Men" line muddling things up because they weren't "Kings," but I think the line "they desired above all else power" is more bothersome. In my most recent reading (which I will gladly return to those threads shortly now that I'm feeling much better ), I would say it was immortality that Men desired the most. Sauron understood the minds of Men better than Elves and Dwarves (as evidenced in Numenor and in creating the 9 Rings). Men, did not think of their mortality as a gift, and their downfalls, in the story, were often from the desire for immortality.

The Oathbreakers were dead and I think Gimli is correct when he doubts that their blades would have any "bite." Of course, I don't know if that's for certain because the vast majority of men fled from the mere sight of them. But I think that also tells something about them, because it continues with the theme that Men fear death. So, looking at the soldiers of the Dead, is literally like looking at the face of death, which is something few Men were able to endure.

The Ringwraiths, Gollum, and to some extent Bilbo (who commented to Gandalf that he felt "stretched like butter scraped over too much bread") always sounded to me like a perverted form of immortality. It wasn't really immortality because it didn't prolong their lives, not actually. I like thinking of it as the way Bilbo does, "stretched." Gollum has to be close to 600 years old, but for simplicity (and since I'm terrible at math) a reasonable and expected age for Gollum would be 100 years. Because of the Ring, it's not that his life was actually prolonged to 600, think of it as taking that same 100 years (an expected lifespan for Gollum) and stretching it over the time-span of 600 years. In the same way the Ringwraiths, with the destruction of the Ring, their physical form just fizzled out instantly. Then with Bilbo, he is a very old hobbit, but still within an age that is physically possible for a hobbit.

Sorry for the ramblings, I just think this idea of the Rings is fascinating. In a way the 9 Men do achieve what they desired above all else...immortality. But it's at a price because it is perverted and not immortality that the Rings grant.

[Troelsfo]

I think there is a risk of conflating things here.

The Oathbreakers ... as stressed already by both @Elenhir and @Boromir88, they are called “the Dead”" (emphasis added) and so can hardly be called undead, can they?

The Ringwraiths are called undead. They are also clearly distinguished from “the living”, but the entire point of the word is that they are not dead, either. They ought to have been dead, but aren't – it appears that it is that, which qualifies them for the title of “undead.”

There is no indication that the Barrow-wights have anything to do with that particular distinction between the living and the dead. What they are is not really explained in any detail: “evil spirits out of Angmar and Rhudaur” is all that we learn about them.

Only one of these groups can therefore be described as “undead” in Tolkiens work, and there is nothing that would suggest that these three share any other significant qualities. The conflation of both dead, living, spirits, and those who ought to be dead as “undead” is, in my opinion, not appropriate for Tolkien's world (even if similar creatures would all be affected by a Priest character's “turn undead” ability in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign ... but that is a wholly different world).

[Troelsfo]

Having reduced the number of types of undead in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings to one, the Ringwraiths (or Black Riders, or Nazgûl), it is perhaps easier to understand the concept.

I do not know if the phrase undead had a life before Tolkien (someone with access to the full OED might help here?) but I think we should take the word itself seriously. The free Oxford Dictionary lists the meaning as “(of a fictional being, especially a vampire) technically dead but still animate”, but that would, I think, more appropriately have been called “unliving”. The prefix -un is a negation – it signifies something that is not dead. The reason for the word would be to stress that it is something that should have been dead, but isn't: e.g. because their ‘life’ has been stretched so thin that there is no life left, only a state in which there is not death, either. Undeath.

[Androthelm]

Thanks to all for the clarification -- I think @Troelsfo's note on the difference between the Dead and unDead especially useful. Another thing to email my advisor about -- I think she has a physical set of the OED I might be able to take a peek at.

[Rivvy Elf]

Ugh, I was too late to also directly draw comparisons to the Elven realm with how elves, when their body eventually fades away without Valinor or the elven ring's geographic power, they essentially lose their body but remain as a spirit. So with men, something like rings of power would make them more "elf-like," but that aspect being that spirits like Ringwraiths will never leave the universe of Middle Earth so long as the One Ring still existed.

[Troelsfo]

I am, of course, not certain of the intention, but if @The Elf Imperishable intended their comments to apply to Tolkien's conceptualisation of his Silmarillion mythology, then I am afraid that I will have to disagree with some of the implied interpretations ...

Some of this may – probably will – come across as quite assertive. It is not my intention to discourage discussion, but for some discussions, I think it is easier to just point out that “this is what Tolkien meant or intended.”



... they essentially lose their body but remain as a spirit ...
Tolkien's concept of Elvish fading changed numerous times – and even drastically – throughout the years he worked with his Silmarillion mythology, but even in the later versions, where we have the fëa consuming the hröa, it is not clear clear that the fading can be considered an actual disembodiment – an actual severance of fëa and hröa:

As ages passed the dominance of their fëar ever increased, ‘consuming’ their bodies (as has been noted). The end of this process is their ‘fading’, as Men have called it; for the body becomes at last, as it were, a mere memory held by the fëa; and that end has already been achieved in many regions of Middle-earth, so that the Elves are indeed deathless and may not be destroyed or changed.

Morgoth's Ring III, LQ2, ‘Laws and Customs Among the Eldar’ — ‘Of Death and the Severance of Fëa and Hrondo [>Hröa]’)

The fëa and the hröa evidently enter into a new relationship that in some ways might seem akin to disembodiment, but this is different from the slaying of the hröa, which would be the actual disembodied state (which is the meaning of being a spirit).

That should, of course, not stop anyone from envisioning this as a spirit state for other purposes than studying Tolkien's intention with his writings.

So with men, something like rings of power would make them more "elf-like," but that aspect being that spirits like Ringwraiths will never leave the universe of Middle Earth so long as the One Ring still existed.

I think we need to get a couple of things straight, as regards what Tolkien meant and intended as he wrote The Lord of the Rings: the Ringwraiths are not spirits and the “Unseen”, as Tolkien calls it, is definitely not a “spirit world” in any way, shape or form!

The Ringwraiths have physical bodies that are capable of everything that any other normal physical body is capable of, except that they are invisible (and thus can see other invisible things better than they can see things that visible). The Ringwraiths fall into the water and are swept away by it; for a demonstration of how actual spirits interact with water, see the Dead attacking the ships of the Corsairs at Pelargir ...

Wearing a Ring of Power does not make a Man in any way more “elf-like”. Wearing a Ring of Power (at least the One, the Seven and the Nine) changed the quality of the body to make it invisible, to be a part of Unseen. The body itself is not changed in any other way – not even after wearing such a Ring of Power for centuries.

Again, none of this should stop anyone from understading the Unseen as a spirit world for other purposes than studying Tolkien's writings and intention.

For more discussion of the Unseen, I refer to my Oxonmoot presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwr8sNS-5Ow

[Boromir88]

Now this thread has me thinking about the Dead Marshes. I presume since they are identified as the "Dead marshes" and the "dead faces" puts them in the same category as the Oathbreakers...

"There are dead things, dead faces in the water," he said with horror. "Dead faces!" [Sam]
...
"Yes, yes," said Gollum. "All dead, all rotten. Elves and Men and Orcs. The Dead Marshes..." (The Two Towers: The Passage of the Marshes)

But then I wouldn't say they are "spirits" floating in the marshes, the way that the movies portray. It seems like they are what Gollum says they are, "All dead, all rotten. Elves and Men and Orcs." Have the marshes somehow preserved the corpses, in a way mummification would?

[Troelsfo]

@Boromir88, that's a good question

I am not sure that that “dead faces” in the “Dead Marshes” puts these horrors on par with the Dead of the White Mountains, but there is certainly something unnatural – or magic – about these apparitions. They are, however, no more than that: apparitions. As Gollum tells the two hobbits,

‘You cannot reach them, you cannot touch them. We tried once, yes, precious. I tried once; but you cannot reach them. Only shapes to see, perhaps, not to touch. No precious! All dead.’

The Lord of the Rings, LR,4,II:70

All in all, I think we are dealing with a fundamentally different phenomenon there: not spirits, not souls, not ghosts, not undead, but some other kind of magic apparitions, memories imprinted on the land by forces beyond our ken ...

[Elenhir]

@Troelsfo, and it's a good thing too. The ramifications otherwise, if these seeming hungry dead, who by no fault of their own might be imagined to be twisted into horrible creatures purely on account of dying in the wrong place at the wrong time and so being damned, were real people, would be grave and far-reaching. Even without Gollum's words we should run from such a reading.

[Troelsfo]

Good point, @Elenhir, though I am often surprised (to put it mildly) at the willingness of people to embrace evil. Just look at the number of people who choose to decorate themselves with a symbol of utter evil – of the domination of others to the point of eradicating their own, free will – to (IMHO) even worse: to use such a symbol of evil and domination as a symbol of their marriage ... I know I'm an old fart and to some extent set in my ways, but such is outside my ability to comprehend ...

[Boromir88]

@Troelsfo @Elenhir, thank you for the responses.

I very recently finished the book and already completely forgot where Gollum said he tried to get to them. But I attribute that to if I had to get through the dead marshes, my first reaction to seeing dead faces in the water would not be "Oh don't you just want to try to reach out and touch them!"

[Boromir88]

Now thinking more about @Troelsfo's clarification of "undead" and its meaning. I don't think Gollum is ever referred to as "undead" but technically isn't he? I would say he's only kept living because of the Ring, and therefor ought to be dead. I've always agreed with the argument that if Gollum had not fallen in with the Ring he still would have died. as the Ringwraith's did. The Ringwraiths went out with a "whimper" (instead of a bang, to take a phrase from TS Eliot).

But if we accept that Gollum had a hope of redemption, as Gandalf believed and later Frodo, then I'm not sure he could be included among the "undead."

[Boromir88]

Oh, I sort of thought further on my musings of Gollum regarding whether he was undead or not. I was only thinking of how the Ring appears to sustain his life in a similar way to the Ringwraiths. While Gollum seems to fit in that box, another criteria I overlooked is that Gollum I think could still be injured in ways that have nothing to do with the destruction of the Ring. The Ringwraiths, as Gandalf says were not killed in the flood, because you could not destroy them like that. Gollum, I think must still have living flesh, since he needs food and can "starve" as he says to Frodo and Sam.

Thus the Ringwraiths are still alone in the "undead" category. Thank you @Androthelm for starting this topic. Cheers!

[Troelsfo]

Oh, I sort of thought further on my musings of Gollum regarding whether he was undead or not. I was only thinking of how the Ring appears to sustain his life in a similar way to the Ringwraiths. While Gollum seems to fit in that box, another criteria I overlooked is that Gollum I think could still be injured in ways that have nothing to do with the destruction of the Ring. The Ringwraiths, as Gandalf says were not killed in the flood, because you could not destroy them like that. Gollum, I think must still have living flesh, since he needs food and can "starve" as he says to Frodo and Sam.

Thus the Ringwraiths are still alone in the "undead" category. Thank you @Androthelm for starting this topic. Cheers!

And thank you, yourself, @Boromir88 You've sent my thoughts along a new line of pursuit, which is a gift!

Most of you will, of course, remember the footnote to that famous 1963 draft letter to Mrs. Eileen Elgar (no. 246) in which Tolkien describes what had happened to the Witch-king after his defeat by Éowyn and Merry, saying that “The Witch-king had been reduced to impotence.” (Carpenter, Humphrey; Tolkien, Christopher. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (p. 454). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition. )

The implication here is, of course, that the Witch-king's body had been slain (his hröa, to use the terminology of later work on the Silmarillion), while his soul was still bound to Middle-earth (his fëa in this terminology).

There are some notes here and there that support this thinking in both the drafts for The Lord of the Rings and in The Hunt for the Ring (parts of which have been published in various work – unfortunately I do not now remember which this was), as well as in The Lord of the Rings proper. It's been a long time since I looked up all of these references, but I do remember thinking that the most logical conclusion would be that the Ringwraiths' souls were tied to Middle-earth by their Rings (which Sauron held), and that they could, given enough time, be given, or take over, new bodies, through the necromantic arts of Sauron.

It is even possible to read the events at the Ford of the Isen as if this was what actually happened, and that the long time that passed before all Nine could ride again, was because they needed time to inhabit new bodies. Note that I do not insist that such a reading was what Tolkien intended or even considered – I merely suggest that such a reading is possible.

Regardless, if we can extrapolate from the note on the Witch-king (which I do think is reasonable), then they would be ‘impotent’, utterly powerless, when disembodied. In this they still differ from the truly dead, as we can clearly see when the Dead take the ships at Pelargir: the spirits of the Dead are far from powerless, even if they have no power to lift a sword or ride a horse.

Stretching my extrapolations – quite possibly beyond the breaking point, but please allow me to nonetheless pursue this, such an idea could add nuance to the concept of undeath – an incarnate being who still need a body to exert any power or control on the world, but whose soul is bound to Middle-earth without the ability to leave, even if the (current) body is destroyed.

That would add another argument why Sméagol / Gollum is not undead: destroying his body would send his soul out of Middle-earth, and presumably directly out of Eä.

As for sustenance, that is another interesting angle. I am trying to remember if we have any information about the Ringwraiths pertaining to this? It is tempting, of course, to claim that because we do not see them drink or eat, they do not need to, but I do not think we see their horses drink or eat either, and those are (fairly) ordinary horses, so we should be careful about concluding based on the absence of evidence (being well aware that, from a Bayesian perspective, the absence of evidence supports the “they do not need sustenance” position more strongly than it supports the “they do need sustenance” position ... but maybe I'm getting too far into statistical theory here ).

[Boromir88]

@Troelsfo

Since my last reading of Lord of the Rings, I was intrigued by the Nazgul and I had to change many of my previous conceptions about them. This was definitely a positive thing, because my previous opinions had been muddled by movies. This thread has continued my pursuit of my changing opinions on the Nazgul, as well as the dead and undead, necromancy...etc (Ok, that might be taken the wrong way, I'm not pursuing the arts of necromancy )

It lead me to reading Unfinished Tales: The Hunt for the Ring, which provides more details into the the Ringwraiths' movements:

At length they returned; but the summer was now far waned, and the wrath and fear of Sauron was mounting. When they came back to the Wold September had come; and there they met messengers from Barad-dur conveying threats from their Master that filled even the Morgul-lord with dismay.

This part stood out to me at the time because I couldn't imagine what "threats" were conveyed the even filled the Witch-King with "dismay." I'm remembering it now for this topic, because I think it suggests that Sauron has the ability to inflict some kind of punishment/pain on the Ringwraiths. It opens up, I think, an avenue I didn't consider before. The Ringwraiths weren't being threatened because of disobedience, I would say they were incapable of disobedience, but rather for incompetence (failing to find the location of the Ring after several roadblocks). This might not answer anything towards their undead status, but worthy to bring up because:

1. Even the Nazgul were capable of doing jobs lazily, or perhaps not at peak performance
2. Sauron used threats to entice them to perform better, perhaps believing they were doing jobs half-heartily

So, despite their binding loyalty, it would seem if the threats "filled even the Morgul-lord with dismay," that Sauron could inflict a feeling of pain/torment on them? Perhaps because he possessed the 9 Rings?

As for sustenance, that is another interesting angle. I am trying to remember if we have any information about the Ringwraiths pertaining to this? It is tempting, of course, to claim that because we do not see them drink or eat, they do not need to, but I do not think we see their horses drink or eat either, and those are (fairly) ordinary horses, so we should be careful about concluding based on the absence of evidence (being well aware that, from a Bayesian perspective, the absence of evidence supports the “they do not need sustenance” position more strongly than it supports the “they do need sustenance” position ... but maybe I'm getting too far into statistical theory here ).

I agree. I don't recall anything about the Nazgul (or their horses) needing sustenance, but that doesn't mean they didn't need it. As Gimli explains even if we don't come across them there are indeed dwarf-women, but because of having beards and being out-numbered 2:1, they are often mistaken for being dwarf-men.