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If it is a flaw, it must not be too terribly great a one because my first reading I fell for it just about every single time - the big ones, anyway. Gandalf, Frodo at Shelob's lair for sure; I'm not sure about the others, but by the time it happened to Pippin I had pretty much picked up on the fact that he probably wasn't dead.
As for being afraid to kill off main characters... maybe. But not nearly so much as many other authors I have seen. Boromir, Theoden, and Denethor are the big ones, but personally I was extremely sad when Halbarad died. I just really liked the chap. And I think we can gather enough from Tolkien's other works that it probably was not because he was afraid to kill them off that he didn't. (Thorin, Fili, and Kili, anybody? The entire Sil?) I don't want to repeat what I said in the other thread, but I would say that he typically leaves his characters alive for a reason. e.g. Pippin, who was needed to help raise the Shire.
I think the thing about making the reader believe that the character is dead is that it takes the reader through emotional ups and downs (No! he can't be dead! He's alive?? Yay!) and makes the book more effective. Whether or not he had something more symbolic in mind, as you suggested, Mith, I don't know but even if it was subconscious it does make a lot of sense.
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