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Originally Posted by bilbo_baggins
The other Valar retain him and afterwards they chain Melkor and try him on the hill. Would Tulkas have gone just to be a gently rough police officer and bring Melkor back? I think that Tulkas had the power to outright kill Melkor or at least send him beyond their present realm of existence.
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Tulkas certainly did beat Melkor in the wrestle with him and thus, allowed him to be taken back as a prisoner to Valinor, yet I still maintain my assertion that Tulkas, nor any of the Valar, could kill Melkor outright. In the wrestling match you just alluded to, Tulkas beat Morgoth in a physical sense, yet I still have doubts as to whether he can actually kill him.
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Originally Posted by bilbo_baggins
Is not exiling Melkor to the Void in a sense like killing him?
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I don't think so- Melkor was simply confined to the Void, unable to return within the circles of Arda. Certainly his own inherent power was reduced by the war and the power that he put into his armies (
Morgoth's Ring), yet he himself was not dead. You don't kill a spider just by putting it into an empty rubbish bin (unfortunately).
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Originally Posted by bilbo_baggins
Sometimes when the elves die, they go to the halls of Mandos, and the men eventually go to Eru, so why not have the Valar and Maiar that are killed just whisp away to nothingness, like the case of Melkor, Saruman, and Sauron?
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As I stated above, Melkor did not whisp away into 'nothingness', nor did Sauron. Certainly Saruman's spirit was dissipated after his body was killed by Grima; yet, I believe that the cold air that did this was summoned by, or on the command of, Eru himself. Sauron was not killed at the end of the War of the Ring- rather he was so crippled by the destruction of the Ring that he was not able to take shape again and was reduced to a mere spirit of malice. Not killed though. I don't have the books on me at the moment, either, but in
The Silmarillion, before the story starts, it tells of how Morgoth was cast into the Void and of how Sauron 'took the same ruinous path into the Void' (or something like that). However, I fear that I digress from my main point and that is that Morgoth and Sauron were both not 'killed'; the former is merely unable to enter the Circles of the World again (as well as losing a lot of his power), while Sauron was weakened to an impotent spirit of malice.
bilbo, I hope I haven't taken away from any of your points and that you can put up with a lack of canonical evidence. Perhaps I've missed your point and we
are agreeing indirectly; please feel free to tell me so
.