I dont see how Tolkien was depressed at all. This story was an epic novel, about a great war between good and evil. You can expect to end with "..and they all lived happily ever after." You have to realize people die in wars. The way you put it was "people died, he must have been depressed." Then about 90% of authors in history would have suffered depression.
I personally feel that the deaths in LoTR were tasteful and added to the emotion of the story and were not just gratuitous.
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