That good night: gift or punishment?

[Lalwendë]

Thinking around the issue of whether death is punishment or gift, what happens to Men who do not die? Who are these Men? There is Earendil, but he is fated to ride in his ship for ever - and he is half-Elven. The Ring Bearers are permitted to travel to the Undying Lands but we do not know what their fate might be. Tuor is the only known figure who does become immortal as the Elves are immortal, and this is speculative.

Who else gives up the gift of Death? The Nazgul. These were once mortals, but now they are fea without a hroa, they are houseless spirits. This is a reversal of what happens when a mortal dies, that their fea leaves the earth; instead, the Nazgul remain, but without their bodies.

In the following words, spoken to Eowyn, it seems that the WK is talking of a choice she can have, a choice between simple death, or something else:

A cold voice answered: 'Come not between the Nazgul and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye.'

What is interesting also in these lines is that the WK makes mention of 'the houses of lamentation'. Is this some kind of alternative Halls of Mandos? A place where, instead of fea and hroa being brought together again, they are permanently separated? If death is Eru's gift, then it might logically follow that Morgoth/Sauron might seek to take that gift away. For them to simply kill Men is no punishment at all, they must keep Men alive in some way.

So in this sense, Eowyn is either extremely brave or utterly foolish to stand in his way. In a very real sense, she could face a fate worse than death.

I remember Eomer of the Rohirrim saying many months ago that these lines were chilling, and they are! If we think of what the Nazgul are, and of what happens to the Ringbearers (at first living hale lives like Bilbo but then declining into wretched figures like Gollum), their fate is horrible enough, but from what the WK says, this can be done by other means. Whether done slowly or quickly, it still seems disturbing. It does bring to mind the horror of the Oblation Board in His Dark Materials and what they do to the children and their daemons.

So, apart from the odd example of Earendel, and the possibility that Tuor escaped 'Death', the only mortals we know about who escape death are the Nazgul and anyone they might send to 'the halls of lamentation'. It seems that death is indeed a gift from Eru looked at in these terms.