Quote:
Originally Posted by Inziladun
Or, maybe it was a case like Saruman: once the spirit left the body, natural decay set in so quickly that the body became (invisible) dust, which obviously could not support clothing.
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I think this is a serious possibility: the incredibly aged, invisible body simply collapsed into decomposed matter. This is similar to how I think Gollum's belief that he would "die into dust" might be taken literally. It is possible that he expects that his body will virtually disintegrate instantly if the Ring is destroyed.
At the same time, however, I can't help but feel that
jallanite has a point regarding the "nothingness" which supposedly constituted a Nazgūl unrobed. Frodo experiences the Eye of Sauron as a "pit, a window into nothing." In a metaphorical sense, this symbolises, I would argue, the idea that Sauron's tyranny and evil are symptomatic of a fundamental "emptiness" and "hollowness" which originated with Melkor and which Professor Tolkien argued had inevitably infected Sauron to a degree. This "nihilism" seems to have constituted a kind of empty, meaningless, pointless wrath and hatred for all life (and of God) which manifested as a "lust for destruction". It represents, to me, the attitude of a mind which has reached the point where it is incapable of interacting with the world except through efforts to dominate it and eventually destroy it. Fire emanates from the rim of the eye, the point of contact between nothingess and "thingness" (if you'll pardon the clumsiness of that expression).
In a metaphysical sense, I would argue that it's possible that the Ringwraiths embody that "nihilism" as a consequence of their artificially prolonged existence. Their physical forms perhaps transmute to a kind of "wraith-matter" for want of a better term: invisible, only partially substantial, and so deeply
unnatural at a fundamental level that it inspires depression, terror and loathing in mortals who encounter it. It might be compared to the Unlight of Ungoliant. Perhaps when the Wraith was killed, the "shell" of physical tangibility, like the fire which burned from the Eye, collapses, and all that remains is an invisible emptiness which expires unnoticed, at least to mortal eyes.
I was just looking at a blog which compares Ungoliant's Unlight to a Manichean account of evil as a "thing in itself" as opposed to an Augustinian or Boethian account of evil as the "absence of good". Shippey has argued that
The Lord of the Rings blends both concepts. I think the same idea could be extended to things like the Wraiths. One could combine the idea of "evil as absence" and "evil as presence" to form, if this makes sense, "evil as the absence which has presence" or "evil as the thing which is nothing". Perhaps that's redundant, but I feel as if metaphysical explanations can be quite effective in trying to understand some of Professor Tolkien's representations.
EDIT: I might add that, in a very round-about way, the "counterfeit immortality" conveyed by the Rings seems to be part of Sauron's overall arsenal of "counterfeit godhood": essentially nothing more than extremely complex spiritual/metaphysical technology which gave him a kind of makeshift, fake element of "divine power" which would suit the agenda of a would-be God-King. I would argue that having immortal servants (even terrifying, loathsome invisible ones) is not just useful to provide the tyrant with lieutenants, but also, on some level, is an expression of Sauron's underlying God complex.