Lord of the Rings

Dwarves believe that Aulë has places prepared for them in the afterlife and that they will be with him. But they also seem to believe that each of the Durins was a reincarnation of the previous Durin. The elves kind of throw up their hands and say "we don't really know what happens to dwarves."

In the essays on Orcs in Morgoth's Ring, Tolkien says, after saying that Orcs had independent wills:

Man imagine your other corrupted co-workers ending up as a menacing Tin Tyrant after he abused his transformations too much, or a badass fiery demon thing, and you turn into, well, a small ugly man-elf being. Damn you and your favouritism Morgoth.

It's almost like Morgoth is...evil or something.

Technically evil in this verse is Morgothian

Am I misremembering that in the Ralph Bakshi animated Lord of the Rings we actually briefly saw female orcs, or at least one female orc? It might have been during the scene where Pippin and Merry manage to escape into Fangorn.

I don't remember any that were obviously female, but in the costumes the Orc extras wore for the mixed rotoscoping/tinted filming it would be pretty difficult to tell.

IIRC Gimli ended up making the same journey as the Elves and Ringbearers due to his friendship with Legolas, so Dwarves CAN go west.

But clearly, most of them don't, which makes Dwarf afterlife a bit of a mystery.

Dwarves can try to go West, but would they find the Straight Road? We're not even sure if Gimli managed to do it (of course I like to think so).

In all fairness, by my understanding going into the uttermost west isn't really an "afterlife", as such, as souls gain after death—rather, it's a place where one doesn't die at all.

I never got the impression that Bilbo and Frodo gained immortality by going West—rather, it’s a place where they could rest and heal the insidious damage the Ring did to them, before going on the next great adventure. Of course, Bilbo was on death’s door when he left, so he had to gain some additional life to have time for that to work. Maybe they were granted a lifespan akin to the Numenoreans—an extra couple hundred years and the chance to die with dignity at a time of their own choosing. Possibly by literally walking up to the Halls of Mandos and going in.

My impression has been that whoever goes to the uttermost west gains immortality—and that hence the name "The Undying Lands". That said, I forget where that might have been written, if anywhere.

(At the least, that was the idea that Sauron sold the Numenoreans on, as I recall—but then, "things that Sauron said" are not exactly the most reliable pieces of evidence... ;P)

No, Tolkien explicitly addresses that in one of his letters - mortals do not become immortal by sailing West.

Perhaps 'Undying Lands' in the sense of where those who never die eventually go... but according to Word of Tolkien not enough to make mortals immortal, and presumably at the time the Numenoreans were being sold on the idea noone had tested that out.

They're called the Undying Lands because they're the home of the undying, not because they make people undying. I'm pretty sure the Silmarillion dismisses the latter idea as a misconception that Sauron fostered amongst the Numenorians.

,, Ah, fair enough—I stand corrected, then! ^_^

x8 IIRC, Gimli went with Legolas, so they most likely made it.

A mortal doesn't get to the Undying Lands just by hopping on a boat with an Elf going that way. Gimli seems to have received special permission from the Valar through the intervention of Galadriel (though of course it's all presented as a 'maybe').

Gimli was the first Dwarf to ever visit the Undying Lands. And he might have been the only one to do so for all we know.

Tolkien made it clear in his letters that Frodo and Bilbo went into the West so that they could find healing before they died. Neither of them was granted immortality. The appendices say that Sam and Gimli are reported to have gone to the West as well. Neither of them were granted immortality either.

In the Akkalabêth, Manwë sends messengers to the Númenóreans that say:

So in fact Frodo's lifespan was probably significantly shortened by going to the West. What he wanted was healing and rest, not immortality.

Edited by Bense on May 11th 2022 at 8:00:16 AM

It's also possible that the Ringbearers' labors, and those of Gimli, had hallowed them sufficiently to be more at home in Aman than the grasping Númenoreans would or could have been. Enough, maybe , to live out the rest of their mortal lives there without the sort of withering that the Akallabêth mentions.

Edited by Jhimmibhob on May 9th 2022 at 5:27:57 AM

I suppose it's possible Frodo or Sam or Gimli were sufficiently "pure" to not "burn out" as quickly in Aman, though Bilbo's lifespan had already been unnaturally lengthened.

In any case, the gift of going into the West was not a grant of immortality. The Valar make it quite clear that death is Illúvatar's special gift to mortals, and trying to circumvent it never ends well.

The best Sauron could achieve was to turn mortals into half-living/half-dead wraiths. He could not give them more life, just stretch what they had over a greater span of years, diminishing them to nearly shadows in the process and making their continuing existence an unending torment.

We already saw this happen to Bilbo and Smeagol. Bilbo describes it as feeling like too little butter spread over too much bread.

Such an incredibly Hobbitish simile to make, and yet to anyone who’s ever tried to butter toast it makes perfect sense.

Something I've noticed about "Shire Songs" that have shown up on Youtube—and these are songs that appeared in the movie franchise—I think they all have basis in the books, but I'm not sure about all of them—is how many of them reference journeys. The drinking song "The Green Dragon" for instance, mentions having "many miles to go," Pippin's song "The Edge of Night" talks about "home behind." It just seems odd to me that such a settled, non-travelling people as the Hobbits would have songs that talk about journeying.

The Prologue and Appendices do note that before settling in Bree and the Shire, the hobbits were nomads and that they still distantly recall the history of their "wandering days" (though not before that). A penchant for songs about travel, even if most hobbits nowadays will rarely ever do that, could well be a lingering cultural remnant of that time. Alternately, at least some of those songs - The Walking Song/Edge of Night in particular, iirc - had their lyrics composed by Bilbo to older tunes, and Bilbo did rather famously travel.