In Elvish, it means Dark Land or Black Country; in Old English, it meant "mortal crime" or "murder," and you sense the full, historical heaviness of threat in Tolkien's coinage.
Although there were some sins, called mortal sins e.g., murder, adultery, and apostasy for which certain local churches at certain times did not perform the rite, this did not mean that God did not forgive but only that good standing in the church was permanently lost.
There are very serious sins – mortal sins – certainly: murder, for example.
Murders, madness and mortal illness occur in every one of these plays.
(My favorite part is how confused he looks after ball four: it's like he's doing an acting class exercise about a father whose mortal enemy has just been murdered, on his death bed, by the father's favorite son, who will now go to prison for life).
"Fear — mortal fear, the fear of getting murdered by fanatics in the grip of a bizarre ideology — has become, for a significant number of intellectuals and artists, a simple fact of modern life".
By this point McEwan hardly needs the specter of murder to convince us that mortal stakes lie behind closed doors.
"Envy is the only mortal sin that goes toward destruction and murder, and I think there was a lot of envy there," Ms. Gabrielsson said.
While they abhor America, and no doubt rejoice at the murder of Americans, they are mortal enemies of the kind of Islamic fundamentalism represented by bin Laden and his allies.
Making multiple murders feel like just another manifestation of mortal ennui can be a conscious artistic choice of course.
At Halloween, a time when we celebrate murder and monsters, it's important to remember the real murderers and monsters who fuel our collective mortal paranoia.
