“When you’re on the barricades, all you can see is a target, not a human, which is what a writer should see. From the point of view of art, the butcher and the victim are equal as people. You need to see the people.”

Svetlana Alexievich https://www.theguardian.com/...P=Share_iOSApp_Other

Tolkien started with Mordor as the Black Land, Home of the Enemy, source of the Fire, etc. in the beginning of the book, and the subsequent references in the early books seem to link to Thangorodrim (a much more mythical Hell from the Sil) including the obvious one of the hobbits reprising the quest of Beren and Luthien. But when we get to Books IV and VI, Tolkien is forced to depict Mordor as a setting for action, not a backdrop of terror. He, I'm guessing here, couldn't help but abandon the "Hell" aspect somewhat, although the landscape certainly remains hellish, and pick up the parallel but much more modern model of the dystopia that we've been poking at in this thread. That model is more about a society than a land, and focuses on the people and the nature of evil within us rather than on the domain of a devil and the spiritual punishment that sinners have earned. Tolkien, being a man of his time (two world wars and many dictatorships), couldn't help recasting Thangorodrim into a kind of all-purpose desert-like totalitarian and militarist soldier-hive, very much more reminiscent of 'Nineteen Eighty-four' or 'Lord of the Flies' than of Dante's Inferno or the classical Underworld.

...try to see Mordor by the kinds of pleasures it offers and the kind of spirits that end up locked inside it after following their desires to the full (as if they were tempted by the One Ring itself.) ...

"He heard himself crying out: Never, never! Or was it: Verily I come, I come to you? He could not tell."

A sudden unreasoning fear of discovery laid hold of Frodo, and he thought of his Ring. He hardly dared to breathe, and yet the desire to get it out of his pocket became so strong that he began slowly to move his hand. He felt that he had only to slip it on, and then he would be safe. The advice of Gandalf seemed absurd. Bilbo had used the Ring. ‘And I am still in the Shire,’ he thought, as his hand touched the chain on which it hung. At that moment the rider sat up, and shook the reins. The horse stepped forward, walking slowly at first..

FOTR Three is Company

Frodo was hardly less terrified than his companions; he was quaking as if he was bitter cold, but his terror was swallowed up in a sudden temptation to put on the Ring. The desire to do this laid hold of him, and he could think of nothing else. He did not forget the Barrow, nor the message of Gandalf; but something seemed to be compelling him to disregard all warnings, and he longed to yield. Not with the hope of escape, or of doing anything, either good or bad: he simply felt that he must take the Ring and put it on his finger.

FOTR: A Knife in teh Dark

Frodo waited, like a bird at the approach of a snake, unable to move. And as he waited, he felt, more urgent than ever before, the command that he should put on the Ring. But great as the pressure was, he felt no inclination now to yield to it. He knew that the Ring would only betray him, and that he had not, even if he put it on, the power to face the Morgul-king –not yet. There was no longer any answer to that command in his own will, dismayed by terror though it was, and he felt only the beating upon him of a great power from outside.

TT Stair of Cirith Ungol