[A Little Green]

Originally Posted by Form

We don't know much (really, do we know anything?) about the worship of Sauron in Middle-earth beyond that he WAS worshipped, but I think that some comparative "religious studies" to what we know of the Melkor-worship he introduced in Númenor would, in fact, suggest that Sauron-worship in Middle-earth was heavily tied to Death and the fear of death, which, ironically, seems to have involved deaths and accelerated dying.

*raises hand* PhD researcher is sociology of religion here, do I count? I feel like, in general, there are two conversations to be had here; the conversation about cause (the mechanics and classification of different "types" of dead or undead) and the conversation about effect (the role the dead play in the story, what they do). I have very little to contribute to the first conversation, but I'll try to unpick something of the latter.

For me, all of these examples - the Dead Marshes, the Men of Dunharrow, the Barrow-Wights, and so on - are essentially making the same point, if in different ways. It has to do with what Boro so beautifully described here:

Originally Posted by Boro

I am familiar with the connection Tolkien makes between the Dead Marshes and Northern France. I believe in the letter he briefly writes the plot doesn't represent the World Wars, but perhaps the landscape did.

Which is the interpretation that made the most sense to me, because I think the descriptions of the landscape through the entire story are perhaps the most fascinating. The land has a "character" of its own, influenced by the people (or unknown things) who lived there.

What I always found so evocative about Tolkien's writing is a sense of the land having layers and layers of history that are not entirely over and done with. The scene in Hollin, and something like the Dead Marshes, may differ in terms of the internal logic of the fictional world (what the actual "mechanism" behind, or function of, the phenomenon is), but I'd argue that their effect is similar: both create this haunting sense of others having been there before, and left their imprint on the land. The sense I get from Middle Earth in general is of a place that retains remnants of past glory; the presence of the dead (or undead) from these more glorious days is a part of this theme. Additionally, all of these - and I'd include the Ringwraiths and even Gollum/Bilbo here, too - speak to a more general theme of death, fading and the passing of time that is integral to the story. In a way, they then complement story motifs like the elves going West, the gradual decline of Gondor, and so on.

Moreover, if we look at it through this kind of lens, the lack of a neat classification of the dead actually enhances their effect. I mean, imagine if the Barrow-Wights, the Men of Dunharrow, and the spirits in the Dead Marshes all appeared and functioned in the same way, and were instantly recognisable to the reader as essentially the same thing. I'd argue that they'd lose a great deal of the sense of mystery if there was an explicit logic to what they are and how they came to be there. Morthoron mentioned ghost stories, and I think that's relevant here, too. If a lot of these elements were influenced by folk tales of ghosts and spirits, then maybe they can be better understood as such, rather than phenomena to be conclusively explained?