LotR -- Book 5 - Chapter 06 - The Battle of Pelennor Fields

[Kuruharan]

Hmm. Well, it is not my experience of the word 'fell' to say it is morally neutral.

Imagine that, you've been having a new experience all these years and you didn't even know it.

1. of animals and men, their actions and attributes: Fierce, savage; cruel, ruthless; dreadful, terrible. Also in cruel and fell, fierce and fell. Now only poetical or rhetorical.

Well, warfare requires this sort of thing and the Rohirrim were fighting a war.

However, it still seems to me that to describe both the food of the beast and the Rohirrim with the same word collapses the distance between the two at the moment of pitched battle when the difference seems so very important. They share the same quality.

A) I think you are grasping at straws in taking a rather narrow instance and making a bit much of it.

B) What do you expect? Look at it as a part of Tolkien's empathy to show that fighting against the Free Peoples was an unpleasant experience for those involved and he appreciated that as an author.