I get knocked down but I get up again - you're never going to keep me down.

[Mithalwen]

A couple of days ago I made an aside in another thread saying that if I were to be hypercritical I thought that Tolkien played the "seems dead but isn't card" rather too often" . It was a casual, spur of the moment remark but one that has led me to think that I may have misjudged the Professor.

I do not mean that the card isn't played frequently - the more I think the more examples I think of - apart from Frodo's many near death experiences and Gandalf's actual "rebirth" we have Eowyn and Pippin found by Gimli seeming dead after the battle at the Black Gate .Giving a slightly looser interpretation the trances of the hobbits in the Barrow and even Merry's experience with the Nazgul in Bree could be included. I am sure there are others in the Rings and I know there are other instances in the Hobbit and Silmarillion.

I am now begining to doubt that all these back from the brink episodes should be dismissed as a failure of Tolkien's otherwise wondrous imagination (great on creating world weak on plot twists ?) or a consequence of the book generally getting out of hand and being published too soon after completion without time for the reflection which might have resulted in a few more "elegant variations" (Tolkien seemed to only take the criticism that it is too short so I had better let that thought perish...).

Another possibility is that he was too squeamish to kill off too many of the major characters - I think that the deaths of Eowyn and Pippin were contemplated at various points if I remember HoME aright- and instead introduced a whole raft of Gondorian lordlings in order to cull them at the Pelennor.

The new option that has occured to me since my flippant little post is that it is in fact deliberate; that renewal, rebirth , and the the triumph of hope were so important to Tolkien that he was happy to reuse this device frequently even to the renewal of the White Tree against all the odds.

It might be a reflection of Tolkien's religious faith, simple optimism or influenced by his great knowledge of and interest in mythologies and fairy stories where people coming back to life in unlikely fashions also seem to be a frequent occurrence (at least as far as my limited knowledge goes). Or something else maybe just chance.

I may be making something out of nothing and trying to turn a perceived flaw into a virtue, and it is not the sort of question that can be answered definitively but I would be interested to hear other opinions on this.