Suicide in Middle Earth

[LadyBrooke]

This might just be me, but the Kings letting go of their lives always seemed to me to be like the chronically ill person who instead of clinging to live by the use of machines and stuff lets themselves die. As somebody who is very sickly (having had meningitis, tubes in her ears due to severe ear infections that cause her ear drums to burst several times and lose of hearing, chronic tonsilitis, born premature, etc.) the distinction is very clear to me that once a person passes a certain point it stops being living and becomes merely existing. I myself have decided that as soon as I am old enough I will have a living will telling everybody to not put me on any machine. Perhaps this seems like suicide to some, but to me it is putting my fate in God’s hands and excepting that I will go when it is my time. While I hesitate to stick words in anybody’s mouth, this may possibly be along the same lines that Tolkien (and by extension the Númenorean Kings) was thinking.

Um, sorry if this isn’t very clear or anything. I’m rather nervous as this is my first post of this website, though I have posted on other websites and have lurked here for a long time.