J. R. R. Tolkien repeatedly dealt with the theme of death and immortality in Middle-earth. He stated directly that the "real theme" of The Lord of the Rings was "Death and Immortality." In Middle-earth, Men are mortal, while Elves are immortal. One of his stories, The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen, explores the willing choice of death through the love of an immortal Elf for a mortal Man. He several times revisited the Old Norse theme of the mountain tomb, containing treasure along with the dead and visited by fighting. He brought multiple leading evil characters in The Lord of the Rings to a fiery end, including Gollum, the Nazgûl, the Dark Lord Sauron, and the evil Wizard Saruman, while in The Hobbit, the dragon Smaug is killed. Their destruction contrasts with the heroic deaths of two leaders of the free peoples, Théoden of Rohan and Boromir of Gondor, reflecting the early medieval ideal of Northern courage. Despite these pagan themes, the work contains hints of Christianity, such as of the resurrection of Christ, as when the Lord of the Nazgûl, thinking himself victorious, calls himself Death, only to be answered by the crowing of a cockerel. There are, too, hints that the Elvish land of Lothlórien represents an Earthly Paradise. Scholars have commented that Tolkien clearly moved during his career from being oriented towards pagan themes to a more Christian theology.
Context
J. R. R. Tolkien was a scholar of English literature, a philologist and medievalist interested in language and poetry from the Middle Ages, especially that of Anglo-Saxon England and Northern Europe. His professional knowledge of Beowulf, telling of a pagan world but with a Christian narrator, helped to shape his fictional world of Middle-earth. His intention to create what has been called "a mythology for England" led him to construct not only stories but a fully-formed world, Middle-earth, with languages, peoples, cultures, and history. Among his many influences were his own Roman Catholic faith, medieval languages and literature, including Norse mythology. He is best known as the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, both set in Middle-earth.
A central theme
"Escape from Deathlessness"
Tolkien set out his view of "Death and Immortality" in The Lord of the Rings in a 1956 letter; Verlyn Flieger and Douglas Anderson describe this theme as "the Escape from Deathlessness":
The scholar of fantasy Charles W. Nelson writes that this seems surprising at first sight, given the prominence of other themes like "loyalty, love, [and] the importance of compassion and selflessness". But, he comments, alongside the major battles, there are "intense scenes of particular deaths which impress the reader with their impact". He gives as instances Sam Gamgee's reaction to the death of a warrior in Ithilien, and Bilbo's "moving" final farewell to Thorin Oakenshield as the Dwarf-leader dies. He argues, too, that a central event in The Hobbit is the death of the dragon Smaug, while the novel sees the three trolls turned to stone, and the deaths of many goblins and their King. As for The Lord of the Rings, Nelson writes, the dead are well represented by "the Barrowwights, the Dead whom Aragorn leads out of the White Mountains, the dead elves and men [who] Frodo sees in the Dead Marshes with their mysterious candles, and the Black Riders who are among the living dead." The deaths of major characters, including Boromir, Denethor, Gollum, Saruman, Sauron, Théoden, and Wormtongue all form "significant scenes", while Gandalf both dies and returns from the dead.
Mortality is confronted in the first chapter of The Lord of the Rings, as Bilbo Baggins states that he feels he needs "a holiday, a very long holiday... Probably a permanent holiday: I don't expect I shall return." Giovanni Carmine Costabile comments that Bilbo means he will go to Rivendell to rest; but that it is also a metaphor for death.Costabile, Giovanni Carmine, ch. 2, A.2 "Facing Death: how characters in The Lord of the Rings meet the prospect of their own demise and the loss of others", in
Immortality, too, is represented in multiple ways in The Lord of the Rings. The Elves are immortal, while other races like the Dwarves and the Ents are long-lived. There is, as Nelson states, "a complex system of otherworlds and eternal dwellings" for when members of the various races leave Middle-earth. And the One Ring tempts and corrupts partly through its promise of immortality.
Men and Elves
The medievalist Verlyn Flieger writes that nobody knows where Men go to when they die and leave Middle-earth, and that the nearest Tolkien came to dealing with the question was in his essay On Fairy-Stories. There, "after speculating that since 'fairy-stories are made by men not by fairies', they must deal with what he called the Great Escape, the escape from death. He went on to the singular assertion that 'the Human-stories of the elves are doubtless full of the Escape from Deathlessness'." Flieger suggests that two of the "human stories" of Tolkien's Elves really focus on this kind of escape, the Tale of Beren and Lúthien and The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen, where in both cases a half-elf makes her escape from deathlessness. The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey comments that "the themes of the Escape from Death, and the Escape from Deathlessness, are vital parts of Tolkien's entire mythology." In a 1968 BBC television broadcast, Tolkien quoted French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir and described the inevitability of death as the "key-spring of The Lord of the Rings".
In "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen", Tolkien exemplifies this theme, as the Elf Arwen falls in love with a mortal Man, Aragorn, and despite her father's opposition, eventually marries him, giving up her immortality in the process. The creator Ilúvatar offers Aragorn the "gift" of choosing the time of his death; the scholar John D. Rateliff has contrasted this with the way the Elves cling to the past, and are inevitably swept away with it.
Tolkien's Elves remain unwearied with age. They can recover from wounds which would be fatal to a Man, but can be killed in battle. Spirits of dead Elves go to the Halls of Mandos in Valinor, a sort of Earthly Paradise, for an afterlife. After a period of rest that serves as "cleansing", their spirits are clothed in bodies identical to their old ones. If they do not die in battle or accident, Elves eventually grow weary of Middle-earth and desire to go to Valinor; they often sail from the Grey Havens, where Círdan the Shipwright dwells with his folk. Eventually, all Elves that remain in Middle-earth undergo a process of "fading", in which their immortal spirits overwhelm and "consume" their bodies. This renders their bodily forms invisible to mortal eyes, except to those to whom they wish to manifest themselves.
The situation with Tolkien's Dwarves is unclear. In The Hobbit, the dying Thorin says "I go now to the halls of waiting to sit beside my fathers, until the world is renewed." Douglas Anderson, commenting on this in The Annotated Hobbit, writes that this may reflect the Dwarves' own beliefs – that they had an Elf-like afterlife, but that it does not accord with what Tolkien wrote in The Silmarillion or elsewhere in his legendarium.
Lothlórien: an earthly paradise
When the tired Fellowship reaches the idyllic Elvish land of Lothlórien, the land with "no stain", it is obliged to cross two rivers. Shippey writes that they first wash off the stains of ordinary life by wading the River Nimrodel. He compares this perfect place to the Earthly Paradise that the dreamer speaks of in the Middle English poem Pearl. Then the Fellowship have to cross a rope-bridge over a second river, the Silverlode, which they must not drink from or touch, and which the evil Gollum cannot cross. What place can they have come to then, he wonders: could they be "as if dead"? Shippey comments that the Fellowship "undergoes a kind of death in getting there", noting that the fact they are not allowed to touch the water seems to carry meaning. The travellers notice, too, that time seems to pass differently in Lothlórien. He comments that
Shippey at once states that this suggestion is counteracted by Sam Gamgee's earthy practicality, making the rivers "tactical obstacles and not symbols for something else." All the same, he writes, the suggestion is there, making the passage, and the novel as a whole, work simultaneously on multiple levels of Northrop Frye's classification of literary modes.
Themes from the Norse
Mountain tombs
Tolkien repeatedly adapts the Norse motif of the mountain tomb. The medievalist Marjorie Burns writes that while Tolkien does not precisely follow the Norse model, "his mountains tend to encase the dead and include settings where treasure is found and battles occur."
+ Marjorie Burns's analysis of the Norse nature of Middle-earth mountains Mountain Burial Treasure FightingLonely Mountain Thorin Smaug's dragon's hoard Battle of the Five Armies Moria(under the Dwimorberg) Balin Mithril Fellowship vs Orcs, Trolls, and the Balrog Mount Doom Gollum The One Ring Frodo and Sam vs Gollum Barrow-downs A prince of Arnor Barrow-wight's hoard Frodo vs disembodied arm;Tom Bombadil vs Barrow-wight
Destruction of the adversaries
Burns writes that multiple monstrous or evil characters in Middle-earth die deaths that would befit "the [undead] afterwalkers of Old Norse sagas", being destroyed by fire sufficient to eliminate them completely. Gollum is, she writes, "a thieving, kin-murdering, treasure-hoarding, sun-hating, underground dweller who ought to be dead," much like the Barrow-wight. As Gollum states: "We are lost, lost... No name, no business, no Precious, nothing. Only empty. Only hungry; yes, we are hungry". Flieger suggests that Gollum is Tolkien's central monster-figure, likening him to both Grendel and the Beowulf dragon, "the twisted, broken, outcast hobbit whose manlike shape and dragonlike greed combine both the Beowulf kinds of monster in one figure". Burns comments that Gollum has other attributes from the undead of Norse myth: supernatural strength, demanding that he be wrestled; he may appear to be black, but has "bone-white" skin; and he is brought to an end by fire, the final resort for "stopping the restless dead". In similar vein, the Nazgûl, already wraiths, are destroyed at the same time as the One Ring, blazing in their final flight, "shooting like flaming bolts" and ending in "fiery ruin" as they are burnt out. Burns states that Tolkien creates "quite a pattern" for characters "who would take more than their due and who have aligned themselves with death", naming Sauron, Saruman, and Denethor as instances of those who come to a "final and well-deserved destruction".
+ Marjorie Burns's analysis of the living deaths and fiery ends of evil characters in Middle-earth Evil character Actions Death Sauron Creates the One Ring to dominate Middle-earth; uses it to build Mordor and the Dark Tower; becomes the "Necromancer", communing with the dead "Virtually indestructible": undone by fire, his shadow blown awaySaruman Imitator of Sauron; creates an army in Isengard, dwells in the tower of Orthanc; has sided with death As a Maia, should be immortal; turns to "grey mist ... like smoke from a fire"; is blown away by the windDenethor Lives in dying city of Minas Tirith; plans to die, killing his one remaining son Faramir with him Burns to death on funeral pyre, holding his magical Palantír
Heroic deaths