[Lush]

I love it how this thread just died like a 90-year old grandma....Anyway...

I guess I originally started this in order to make some sense of Tolkien's ideas concerning hell. People had brought up the Void, and from my reading of the books, I always imagined to be a sort of physical place. Saruman's death may make it seem as though he was simply destroyed, but I don't think that really jives with the rest of the books. Rather it would seem to me that in painting Saruman's death the way he did, Tolkien was explaining to us how miserable it is to be separated from the West, where he originally belonged.

Re-reading over this thread now, I am beginning to think that hell in Middle Earth is first and foremost separation from the divine.