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Originally Posted by Bb
And I'm not sure it really matters much what Tolkien said in his Letters, whether those letters were written at the time of writing or post publication. Statements of intention sometimes don't or can't outweigh the evidence of the story.
Does it really matter that later on Tolkien was in his letters a bit embarassed by the credibility of having a character return from the dead?
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The intriguing thing is Tolkien's decision to have Gandalf
return from the dead. The quotes I gave from HoM-e show there was never any point at which Tolkien considered Gandalf was going to be removed permanently from the story due to the events in Moria. The original intent was that he would
seem to the others to have died but actually not (the fall wasn't as far as they believed, he landed on top of the Balrog, etc) & we can speculate that that was his intention even
after publication (as Hammond/Scull point out the first three printings of LotR lack any mention on Gandalf's part of his having 'passed through death'. None of this denies any of
Bb's points re the subjective effect Gandalf's apparent death has on the other members of the Company.
So, at some point Tolkien decides that 'No, he did
really die'. Why? Well, clearly Gandalf had to be 'different' after his return because by that time the 'tale had grown in the telling'. When Gandalf
originally fell in Moria Aragorn was still a Hobbit called Trotter with wooden shoes, by the time he reappeared things had gotten much bigger, darker & more significant: we've moved from the fairy story world of The New Hobbit into the mythic world of The Sil. In that world you don't get to finish off a Balrog by landing on top of it & then walking away (in fact it wasn't even intended that Gandalf should face a Balrog there, it was either Saruman or a Black Rider).
Gandalf returns 'different' but he doesn't actually return 'resurrected' (because he didn't
die) for a very long time. Of course its possible that the 'knowledge' that Gandalf had 'really died' was in Tolkien's mind before hand but that he didn't realise it till later (when he writes to Father Murray that 'Gandalf
should have said to Wormtongue that he 'had passed through death'), & Hammond & Scull point out the similarity of Gandalf's appearance to the Three Hunters to the appearance of the resurrected Christ to his disciples on the road to Emmaus - in both cases the 'followers' do not recognise their leader till he chooses to reveal himself to them.
Another possibility, of course, is that Tolkien was originally unsure whether to state clearly that Gandalf had died & been resurrected - maybe he felt it was a bit too close to the Christian story & didn't want to be accused of belittling Christ's resurrection.
However, all that is merely speculation. The point, in the context of this thread, is that Gandalf was always intended to be around in one form or another, the only issue for Tolkien seems to have been whether he 'died' in the middle or not.