You know the faces in the Dead Marshes? Who were they? Were they men or elves or dark lords or something?

They were killed during the Battle of Dagorlad.

They were kinda creepy ghosty undeady thingies.

Oh PJ changed a lot of things for sure. But I'm thankful that LOTR hasn't turned out as bad as Harry Potter. So we can say that these changes turned out for the good.

Yes, that's right. Tolkien has been dead for so long...

JRRT destroyed Dan Zimmerman's adaptation of LOTR in his letters, though (he had allowed for the adaptation as he needed the money).

Some excerpts :










Imo, PJ has been quite lucky that JRRT never had the chance to see his adaptation.

Looks like PJ did the right thing in leaving Tom and Goldberry out of the movies.

Rowling writes her books because she has a story to tell, and people happen to like her story. The last chapter in the last book was written long before she became popular, as were the idea of seven books and seven school years for Harry. I do wonder how much she really has to say in making the movies though... The producers knows that people will watch a HP movie even if they are bad, simply becuase it is a Harry Potter movie. LOTR was a quite risky experiment which easily could flop, so they had to put more effort into it.

I have forgotten the topic of this thread... oh the dead marshes. I suppose PJ and his crew tried to show that the dead marshes where inspired by old folklore about creatures, usually people who had drowned there earlier, would try to lure people out on the marshes with lights and calls so they would drown too. Or maybe it just looked good on the screen. Easier to show why it was a dangerous place, rather than have Gollom explain why it was a dangerous place.

You just did!

PJ's "ghosts" are definitely related to Eddie, the mascot of Iron Maiden.

IMHO, there weren't any spirits actually present. The horror of that ancient battle simply inbued the landscape with hallucinatory visions of those long dead faces via the marsh gas, the tricksy lights, I believe only Frodo was pulled face first into the water, and that was due to the weight of the ring via the chain around his neck.

Grondy's explanation seems like the logical one, I cannot see how it would make any sense otherwise. The dead marshes were eerie and with the gases and lighting and such, that alone would give an already tired and anguished mind hallucinations.

I remember when I started the graveyard shift , ten hours, nine to seven in the morning at a care facility for the aged and dying, I was all alone with the seventy plus clients and I had to do reception, all the cleaning, food prep for chef as well as taking care of the needs of the patients including medic alert and lifeline. I was so tired I could barely function after a month.

One night I was worried about the steam problem , we had steam heating. Something seemed very wrong and steam was everywhere in the living room of the downstairs. I called a relative at home and asked him to come and take a look. He did and then examined the steam heating room and then he came and stood before me.

'Um, you are hallucinating because of your lack of sleep' he told me simply. It is true , I had been living on two to three hours sleep, in the nearly five years I never did sleep more, my mind couldn't adjust.

I was so embarrassed. So it is certainly possible this could be the case with Frodo.

Well said Virumor (better than my attempt), and I agree.

I think that text of Leelee's might be found during their passing through Hollin (Eregion) though I haven't time to look for it at the moment.

wonder why sauron didn't teach the dead in the water to guard hes territory...
that would have stopped frodo from getting thru..

Yes unbelievably, you are so right. Where I worked at one time I had to watch people die and it was only my faith that kept me sane, and I believe the same can be said of Tolkien. He emerged so sane and beautiful and willing to keep hopeful and loving others.
That would have been dreadful if the dead had to guard the marshes, but the One already had a plan for that as well don't you think?
Thank you Grondy, I will try to look that up and read the actual text.

I have selected a segment from the Free Library. Forster does mention what you said and said that although Tolkien admitted that an author cannot be entirely unaffected by his experiences he fiercely denied that some of his writing was an allegory of his experieinces in the war.
However, some critics took him on in this claiming this just was not so-David Lloyd George said:

official opening day casualties for the British army alone have gone down to history as 57,470, of which 19,420 were fatal. Both numbers still stand as gruesome world records for loss of life in one day's fighting. (7) By contrast, the United States lost less than 60,000 men during the entire duration of the Vietnam War. In his memoirs, David Lloyd George writes of the course of the battle:
It is claimed that the Battle of the Somme destroyed the old German
Army by killing off its best officers and men. It killed off far more
of our best and of the French best. The Battle of the Somme was fought
by the volunteer armies raised in 1914 and 1915. These contained the
choicest and best of our young manhood. The officers came mainly from
our public schools and universities. Over 400,000 of our men fell in
this bullheaded fight and the slaughter amongst our young officers was
appalling. (Lloyd George 9-10)

The addition of at least another 200,000 casualties among Allied forces by the time the campaign ended in November brings the total Allied losses to nearly 600,000 men--all lost in order to press the lines 10 kilometers closer to Germany.

Tolkien was in reserves on the day of the opening battle, but one of his best friends, Rob Gilson, was killed in the first wave (though Tolkien would not learn of his death until some weeks later). (8) And even in reserves Tolkien would have witnessed "clear signs that things had not gone according to plan on the battlefront: wounded men in their hundreds, many of them hideously mutilated; troops detailed for grave-digging; and a sinister smell of decay" (Carpenter 82). Then, on 14 July, Tolkien and his company were called into action and he saw for himself the results of what he would later call "the 'animal horror' of trench warfare" (Carpenter 84). The account of another participant in the Battle of the Somme is perhaps useful here for another perspective on the events that Tolkien witnessed. John Raws had to apply to the Australian Corps twice before he was accepted, and just weeks before his own death in the battle, he described what he saw in a letter to a friend:
The glories of the Great Push are great, but the horrors are
greater. With all I'd heard by word of mouth, with all I had imagined
in my mind, I yet never conceived that war could be so dreadful. The
carnage in our little sector was as bad, or worse, than that of
Verdun, and yet I never saw a body buried in ten days. And when I came
on the scene the whole place, trenches and all, was spread with dead.
We had neither time nor space for burials, and the wounded could not
be got away. They stayed with us and died, pitifully, with us, and
then they rotted. The stench of the battlefield spread for miles
around. And the sight of the limbs, the mangled bodies, and stray
heads.
We lived with all this for eleven days, ate and drank and fought
amid it; but no, we did not sleep. Sometimes, we just fell down and
became unconscious. You could not call it sleep.
The men who say they believe in war should be hung. And the men
who won't come out and help us, now we're in it, are not fit for
words. Had we more reinforcements up there many brave men now dead,
men who stuck it and stuck it and stuck it till they died, would be
alive today. Do you know that I saw with my own eyes a score of men go
raving mad! I met three in 'No Man's Land' one night. Of course, we
had a bad patch. But it is sad to think that one has to go back
to it, and back to it, and back to it, until one is hit. (Raws)

For the next months, Tolkien was in and out of these trenches, somehow managing to survive unscathed until he was felled by trench fever on 27 October; he was pulled from the lines and eventually sent back to England. He had survived the war, but he had not left it. On 3 December he learned that another of his best friends, Geoffrey Smith, had died from gas gangrene in northern France. By the end of the First World War, Tolkien later wrote, "all but one of my close friends were dead" (LotR I: Foreword, xvii)

That the "shadow of war" would leave marks in Tolkien's writing, then, is not surprising. And, in addition to Tolkien's admitted borrowing of geographical description in the Dead Marshes and the approaches to Morannon, critics have discovered a number of intriguing parallels between the Somme (and the First World War in general) and The Lord of the Rings. (9) Barton Friedman, for instance, points out the similarity of the faces in the bogs of the Dead Marshes to specific descriptions of the Somme, of the Noman's Lands of northern France to the "Noman-lands" (LotR IV:2, 617) between the Dead Marshes and Morannon, of the shrieking of the Nazgul to incoming mortar rounds and their respective effects on men (Friedman 121). Hugh Brogan has also seen similarities: in how the description of Sauron's destruction echoes contemporary descriptions of shell-bursts, in the polarizing of consciousness between "us" and "them," in the reversal of day and night, in the road that leads from home to the front, and in even such small details as the ore who snarls "Don't you know we're at war?"
The rest as I say is found at the site mentioned. I just wrote-tolkien, what part did he play in world war 1?

Yes thank you LeeLee

I have a few details to add, though some of this you already covered. Hammond and Scull present a quite detailed account of Tolkien's movements in the war, with some notations from his diary even, though I have used Carpenter mostly (as quoted in your source).

Tolkien survived the war by luck, especially the 'luck' of getting Trench Fever (carried by lice), and may possibly have been helped in some measure by his position as Signaling Officer.

According to Carpenter: 1 July 1916 British troops make a charge from the trenches but Tolkien's battalion remains in reserve. Tolkien's friend and fellow T.C.B.S. member Rob Gilson dies -- among very many soldiers, as the German lines and barbed wire had not been dealt with as believed -- but Tolkien will not find out about Gilson until later.

6 July the Lancashire Fusiliers go into action, but only A company. 14 July 1916, B company (Tolkien's) go into the trenches, and 15 July attack the hamlet of Ovillers. Hammond and Scull add that it remains unclear, whether, as a Signaling Officer, Tolkien would have gone 'over the top' or remained in the front line trench to manage communications.

Carpenter relates that the pattern of days to follow was that of periods of rest, back to trenches, more attacks (usually fruitless), more rest, and so on. At one point Tolkien speaks to a German prisoner, offering him a drink, and the officer corrects Tolkien's pronunciation. At another point (and I assume such details being noted in Tolkien's own diary), JRRT will note a mouse running over his fingers. In August Tolkien and his friend G.B. Smith (also of the T.C.B.S.) come under fire while eating at Bouzincourt.

Carpenter generally notes that Tolkien returns to the trenches, and though the intensity of the fighting lessens British losses continue and many of Tolkien's battalion are killed. JRRT remains uninjured, and in 27 October 1916 is reported with Trench Fever. As his fever does not relent, by 8 November he is put on a ship for England. He ultimately receives a letter informing him that G. B. Smith has died from wounds.

Tolkien remains in service of course, and is wanted back in France, but his health is not good. He is in and out of hospital often, and is never sent back. With the armistice of 1918 Tolkien contacts the Army and obtains permission to be stationed at Oxford until demobilization.

JRRT had already been writing some poetry by this time, as well as his early legends while convalescing in England. The T.C.B.S. is the Tea Club and Barrovian Society. Another member Christopher Wiseman also survived the War, having served in the Royal Navy.

Men have always needed someone to dominate them and tell them what to do since the dawn of time, since it is a sedentary creature; Men cannot think and act for themselves, they feel uncomfortable and act erratically when forced to do so and the white ravens that are capable of standing alone usually do not last long against the pecking beaks & raging talons of their black kin.

Domination by the iron fist of Sauron or the gloved hand of King Elessar the Mad: in the end it is all the same. Above all Men want order and live their daily lives along clear, set paths and both Sauron & Elessar (would) have provided that.

poor thales and the rest of d guys who came after... what in vain were they thinking and why were they even thinking tsk tsk

When elves die they abandon their body and there spirits move to the Hall of awaiting in Mandos where after a time they are allowed to return among their Kin.

The dead marshes of the movie, the part where that wraith tries to pull frodo is not found in the book. In the book it is mentioned that although the bodies can be seen they cannot be touched. Gollum once tried to reach them but fail. However it is unlikely that there spirit still linger there. The logical explanation to me seems that this is some devilry made by Sauron, defiling the graves of those who fought against him.

PJ could have been trying to show the public what happens when an elf dies. Their spirit leaves the bodies and travels to the halls. He may of thought that having them linger would show those who did not know the nature of elves completely, would see that spirits of elves do depart the bodies and live on as them after. He couldn't have displayed that information other than fading to a small tale of what happened after the elves were killed during the battle there at the time, showing them travelling west towards the halls. True, he did display the elves as scary and deformed spirits, when they should be gentle and gracious ones. We can just add that to the long list of faults in PJ's thinking

What you've said is probably the main reason why most Tolkien Readers do not want The Sil to be made. It is described so mythically and wonderous that you would really only be able to imagine it, with your imagination. I agree, it would have been an even bigger mistake to have had the Elven spirits arrive at Valinor. It is good that he kept the confinements of Middle-Earth to Middle-Earth. He didn't venture to the Helcaraxë or the South. Only the Middle part . There is just so much information that if he did go into what really happened to the Elves, then it would have strayed from the main plot. Even though we had about four separate stories to follow

For me the Dead Marshes are simply a reminder of the past, a rememberence of war and the souls left behind by it. I remember reading somewhere that the little torches, or lights, are actually witnessed occasionally by those unfortunate enough to stumble across the left overs of war. I suppose they are ghost stories which Tolkien used to make a point regarding how many souls would have been lost in the Battle of The Last Allience, and that perhaps a left over part of these souls inhabit thir resting place as a reminder of war and sacrifice. As a device, this is very effective, in book and film. I find the lighting in the film very eerie indeed. Perhaps the actual spirits were a little ghoulish. Very scary tho.

Thank you, I guess after rereading about the horror of what John Ronald went thru, the way it is described, severed heads right beside you and other body parts. And the wounded, nothing could be done for them so they suffered and then died and then rotted right beside him and others still living. To look into their vacant eyes and see also the mouths twisted in grimaces of horror would be too much. And of course nothing would honestly be real in those moments, hours and days. It would almost be like an enchantment, because horror in the first moments, at least in my life, made everything about me go super slow and everything my eyes looked upon was like a far away dream. I just wondered, because some of the wars were so far in the past that you would think that only bones would remain, not actual intact bodies and faces.

I don't think it was Glofindal in the marshes. He was destroyed by Sauron closer to Mount Doom. From memory his body was emulated by Saurons power. I could be wrong though.