[Dininziliel]

"What if they'd known what would happen" type questions are ultimately only an intellectual exercise that lead to Nietzschian voids if one does not pull out in time! At any rate, if it were possible to know the future, then we'd be in another reality and none of the premises of LotR would work.

Regarding the horror of going through hell to save the world/others only to reap the void . . .

Tolkien's tales are very much concerned with the Fall--which I characterize as the [vain] attempt to put personal self above God/Eru, nature, others. What dooms the Elves if not their attempt to stop time & tide (what Tolkien calls "embalming")? What was the original Fall if not Melkor trying to be Sinatra and do things his way? (Hmmm, wonder where that came from!)

I think in LotR and The Silmarillion we see where that sense of personal self leads--fear & loss. Two examples are: (1) fear of death, which was intended as a blessed gift from the "long defeat" and all forms of weariness, and, ironically, (2) inevitable loss of self. (Two examples that come readily to mind are Ar-Pharazon & Gollum, respectively.) Perhaps by the time Frodo returned to the Shire his "void" was the suspension between utter loss of self and whatever it was that the Ring did not take, as Davem so insightfully asked. Frodo was both in and out of light/darkness = "grey."

The horror comes from not trusting Eru's will and Love. Look at the results starting from the Valar (calling for the Elves to return to Valinor setting off a chain of events in The Silmarillion) to Frodo, who innocently (?) & unselfishly took on the Ring and was inevitably ensnared by it. (I can't recall now whose tag line this was, but it says it all perfectly--"Frodo could not live with having failed at an impossible task.")

We need not fear if we have sufficient faith in Eru's will; what Tolkien does so well is to show us how to walk through this "fallen" world where such faith is so hard to come by. No matter how complete the darkness seems, there is always light (darkness cannot exist without it!), and the most wonderful thing is that even the smallest amount of light can be enough--thus, there is always hope! Why? Because that's the way Eru made it be. The real world is in the invisible; this is inherent in the stories, and stated by their author.