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Originally Posted by Form
As horror stories go, I don't think the unspecified fate of Baldor the hapless can easily be beat. For that matter, the entire journey through the Paths of the Dead, though brief in number of pages, always feels much longer, reading through it over Gimli's shoulder. It's enough in one chapter to make me reject my younger claim of being disappointed that we only get Aragorn's ebcounter with Sauron offscreen, so to speak.
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Gimli's perspective is very important here too as a measure of a "mere mortal" among the Dunedain and the Elves. It shows both the magnitude of the task and the tremendous strength that was needed for it. I don't think they would be appreciated as much if we'd seen this from an Elven or Dunedain POV.
I have to admit it took me many reads to match the identity of the corpse to Eomer's story about Baldor. Tolkien is usually fairly explicit about his hisory, but this little puzzle for the grey cells is a nice solvable mystery touch. Ever since making the connection I kept wondering if Baldor died by that door trying to get in or to get out, and I can think of several arguments for both cases. I suppose that as Aragorn said we'll never know what he sought there.