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Symbolic and Mythic Expression in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
The Invisibility of the Ringwraiths
12/7/2K6
"his face was shadowed and invisible"
-- Description of a Black Rider (Fellowship, p. 84)
Much of Tolkien's fiction deals with the nature of evil.
To a theist--and Tolkien was a theist--the mere existence of evil poses a problem. If the Creator of everything is good, how can there be evil?
In the past, there have been at least two answers to this question. One, everything was created good, but was capable of becoming bad. Two, evil is not something in and of itself, but rather an absence of something.
The idea that evil is an absence of something finds expression in the invisibility of the Ringwraiths, a.k.a. the Black Riders.
When the Hobbits first encounter one of the Riders, "his face was shadowed and invisible" (Fellowship, p. 84).
We later learn that the Ringwraiths are invisible to human eyes, and that the face was invisible because the wraiths are invisible (not because the hood overshadowed its face).