Thread: The House of Finwe: what's your opinion?
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I like Feanor. Tolkien must have liked him to or why would he have made him Greatest of the Children of Iluvatar?
"Like" is a word that can seem contradictory sometimes. Like can be mingled with pity sometimes. Pity and sorrow.
Most of us certainly do admire Feanor, because he did have great talent in many things, but from the beginning Prof. Tolkien had already laid down the basis for his downfall. And as we watch him make his own undoing, the more tender-hearted will percieve a tragedy perhaps, because they'll feel sorry for Feanor. But the less tender people will feel that his downfall was his own arrogance and lust for the Silmarils. Those are faults that Tolkien created in him, and so yeah, Tolkien may have shown favour to Feanor by giving him surpassing talent, but I think he's simply using Feanor as an example of arrogant geniuses who will meet their bitter ends sometime.
Most of us certainly do admire Feanor, because he did have great talent in many things, but from the beginning Prof. Tolkien had already laid down the basis for his downfall. And as we watch him make his own undoing, the more tender-hearted will percieve a tragedy perhaps, because they'll feel sorry for Feanor. But the less tender people will feel that his downfall was his own arrogance and lust for the Silmarils. Those are faults that Tolkien created in him, and so yeah, Tolkien may have shown favour to Feanor by giving him surpassing talent, but I think he's simply using Feanor as an example of arrogant geniuses who will meet their bitter ends sometime.
Let's not forget the slaying of Finwe in all this -- not to make less of some of Feanor's actions and choices (and he was not the only son of Finwe of course), but it is to be remembered that a 'god' slew his father, and it is said...
'But now Feanor ran from the concourse and fled into the night, as one mad both with wrath and with grief: for his father was dearer to him than the Light of Valinor or the peerless works of his hands; and who among sons, of Elves or of Men, have held their fathers of greater worth?' JRRT Annals of Aman
'But now Feanor ran from the concourse and fled into the night, as one mad both with wrath and with grief: for his father was dearer to him than the Light of Valinor or the peerless works of his hands; and who among sons, of Elves or of Men, have held their fathers of greater worth?' JRRT Annals of Aman
And after all tragedy that befell this tragic hero, who knows what he spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when reflecting upon the calamities of his life, and the walls of the Halls of Mandos closing in on him, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?
Then he also had that vivacious Garma Wormtooth stalking him everywhere he went.
I'm surprised he didn't just turn around and burn all the Worms alive with his glaring eyes.
Sounds like Labour's tactic of winning votes.
I think the previous post might be considered political; though what it has to do with the price of butter in Baltimore, of coal in Newcastle, or ice in Thule I haven't the foggiest.
Feanor must've left something in England, then.