Can Elves kill Ringwraiths?

[Thenamir]

Repeating the same quote over and over does not bolster your case, Burra.

As I said, could Glorfindel drive off a Nazgul? Yes. Could he "hurt" one? Certainly. Could he do what Merry and Eowyn did with their respective weapons? There is no evidence to support that.

The fact that he has "great power" over both the seen and the unseen does not mean "absolute power", and does not negate Gandalf's statement that the ringwraiths stand or fall with their master. The knives of Westernesse are probably the only exception mentioned in all JRRT's works. If I picked a fistfight with Burra, his youth and strength would be pitted against my "perceived" age and skill. Each would have "great power" over the other in some ways, and yet the outcome still be in doubt. The ringwraith obviously has great power in "both planes" as well -- it is not a foregone conclusion that an elf will always defeat a nazgul one-on-one.

Another point. Burra makes great hay of both the elves and the Nazgul existing on "two planes" at once. But if elves go to Mandos' halls at death, and what happens to men after death is unspoken in JRRT's magnum opus, then how can one have any certainty that the "unseen plane" of the elves is the same as the "unseen plane" of men? Tolkien never said what happened to men in the afterlife, at least not in the major books (I will admit to a vast yawning ignorance of the HoME tomes...) .

It matters little to me one way or another. *My* real point in wasting all this bandwidth is to demonstrate (1) that no one except the man himself knows the score on this one, and (2) that where the text is ambiguous, or at least open to multiple interpretations, we should be charitable to those who hold differing opinions.

Way too much effort is being expended on this question, which is, as I noted with different verbiage in my last post, a futile exercise, a moot point, a non-issue, not worth getting worked up about.

Geez.

[ October 01, 2002: Message edited by: Thenamir ]