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davem, when you write about the underworld as a place of light, what belief system are you referring to exactly?
Something that always stuck out at me when I read Homer was that when Odysseus encounters Achilles in the underworld, he complains about being dead and says that he would rather be someone lowly, yet still living above ground, rather than a hero in the underworld. And while I'm pretty sure the Greeks shared the idea of death and re-birth you mentioned, for the most part, their version of the underworld struck me as a relatively gloomy place, where people but are shades.
Wilwarin, in the Christian religion (or at least some versions of it, Catholicism being one, Eastern Orthodoxy being the other), the only ones to go to hell and come back are Jesus and Mother Mary, I believe. But the trip to hell had existed in symbolic language long before Christianity came along. I believe Heren provided a great post that comments on the Christian side of Frodo's journey above.
Furthermore, Heren, if hell in Tolkien is not a "place" (in the sense of Hades, for example), what are we to make of Saruman's death (thanks for the great quotation, Lalwendė)? Does he simply then cease to exist?
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~The beginning is the word and the end is silence. And in between are all the stories. This is one of mine~
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