The Dead and The Undead

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Mithadan

To add a bit to this discussion, I am linking an old thread (which, in turn, links another even older one) that touches upon some of these issues. I certainly am not doing this to discourage discussion, but rather to add more ammunition.

http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthr...ght=necromancy

Reading over the Necromancy thread, I was struck by William Cloud Hicklin speculating that at one point, Tolkien might have considered werewolves and vampires to be the spirits of the dead forced by Sauron into the bodies of animals, and presumably bound fast to his will. It's not a well-supported idea, but "Sauron the Chainer of Souls" would account for basically all of the "Undead".

• The Barrow-wights are souls pushed into human bodies other than their own.
• Werewolves and vampires, if they even count, would be human/elvish souls stuffed into wolves and giant bats.
• The Silent Watchers would be bound in stone - easy enough for Sauron, who had already stuffed part of his own spirit into a Ring.
• The Nazgul are bound in the remnants of their own bodies, and possibly even more under Sauron's control for it.
• The Dead Marshes are literally just spirits trapped in the water.
• The Ghosts of Cardolan are probably the same - the souls of the dead, 'sleeping' where they fell.
• Eilinel too? She's called a "phantom devised by wizardry", but that doesn't mean she can't have been the 'sleeping' spectre (= ghost = phantom) of the real woman.
• The Dead of Dunharrow... it would be really dumb of Sauron not to put "and your souls belong to me when you die" into his religion. The men of the Mountains had abrogated their right to pass from the world, but Sauron was defeated and unable to claim them; they had to stay where they were until either the Dark Lord rose to full power, or they fulfilled the conditions laid on them by Iluvatar's chief priest - Isildur, as High King - to reclaim their rightful fate.

There's a clear distinction between spirits which are actively doing Sauron's will (the Wights, the Nazgul) and those which are just 'sleeping' (the ghosts of the Marshes and Cardolan). Speculatively, the difference might be that the active set chose to serve Sauron after death, whereas the 'sleepers' were ensnared, by dying somewhere that was under his power. The Dead of Dunharrow would come somewhere in the middle - they're there willingly, so have an active 'fear' effect, but also have a way out provided to them by Isildur, so aren't utterly dominated slaves. Gorlim, too - he obeyed Sauron but repented, so while he may have been trapped, he wasn't (fully?) controlled. If we want a happy ending for Gorlim and Eilinel, we can assume that Sauron's 'sleeping' souls were released when Luthien broke his power.

Ar-Pharazon and his soldiers, I don't think are undead at all. Iluvatar can put His children into stasis-like sleep - he did it to the Fathers of the Dwarves for centuries! The Numenoreans are probably in the same state.

Originally Posted by Boromir88

Well, it could have simply been an old man, that is I believe the traditional reading is the face value interpretation. Some 2500 years pass from when Isildur cursed them and Baldor finds the door. Despite that I think the area was still populated by Pukel-men and the Men of Dunharrow were ancestors of the Dunlendings, who had been pushed into the White Mountains by the Numenoreans and then the Rohirrim.

(Edit: and actually the quote from The Rivers and Beacon-hills of Gondor does suggest it was a living old-man, as the end suggests enemies snuck up from behind Baldor and broke his legs. Grim!)

An earlier draft specifically says the old man looked a lot like the Pukel-men statues, which strongly implies he wasn't one. I still wonder if he might have been a Wose, though, standing guard over the ancient evil.

I actually don't much like the 'snuck up behind and broke his legs' story: the text in LotR implies a supernatural explanation, with Baldor wasting away while hacking and scrabbling at the stone door under an overwhelming compulsion to get inside. The idea that he wandered in, got beat up, couldn't find the way out so just kept trying the door in front of him while he bled out is pretty dull by comparison.

But if it did happen, given the swords of the Dead have no bite, it seems to imply either the Men of the Mountains were still a viable population thousands of years after their cursing (presumably each one who died left another ghost?), or that someone - the Woses? - was really determined that nobody be allowed to unlock their secrets.

Or, zombies. But I feel like that might have come up while Gimli was going on about them just being spooky ghosts.

hS