Thank you for this, Mike. I’d have to agree with you that as per orthodoxy (Catholic orthodoxy, but also by tenets of wider social morality) suicide is ‘wrong’. I’m certainly not suggesting that it might be ‘right’! Still, I’d suggest the twin poles we’re talking about here, martyrdom and suicide, aren’t so neatly separated out as all that: as with the strange etymological tangle of sooth and suttee. Especially at times of war, one man’s wicked suicide-bomber or kamikaze Mohamed Atta is another man’s heroic warrior. One of the things I’m doing in this post, or trying to, is thinking aloud about a larger logic which it seems to be <em>Lord of the Rings</em> articulates, the complex relationship between <em>action</em> and <em>passivity</em>, or to give this latter word its more usual Christian phrasing, <em>passion</em> (the relationship between triumph and sacrifice). Most heroic fantasy is straightforwardly ‘active’, characters doing things, achieving things, fighting and winning and so on. Tolkien is much more fascinated by passion, in several senses, I think.

But as Charles notes below, Alan Jacobs responded to my post with one of his own, more in line with your thoughts. It’s very possible I’m wrong!