But when they were landed, Maedhros the eldest of his sons, and on a time the friend of Fingon ere Morgoth’s lies came between, spoke to Fëanor, saying: ‘Now what ships and rowers will you spare to return, and whom shall they bear hither first? Fingon the valiant?’
Then Fëanor laughed as one fey, and he cried: ‘None and none! What I have left behind I count now no loss; needless baggage on the road it has proved. Let those that cursed my name, curse me still, and whine their way back to the cages of the Valar! Let the ships burn!’ Then Maedhros alone stood aside, but Fëanor caused fire to be set to the white ships of the Teleri. So in that place which was called Losgar at the outlet of the Firth of Drengist ended the fairest vessels that ever sailed the sea, in a great burning, bright and terrible. And Fingolfin and his people saw the light afar off, red beneath the clouds; and they knew that they were betrayed. This was the firstfruits of the Kinslaying and the Doom of the Noldor.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, “Of the Flight of the Noldor”
“Thus spake Mandos in prophecy, when the Gods sat in judgement in Valinor, and the rumour of his words was whispered among all the Elves of the West. When the world is old and the Powers grow weary, then Morgoth, seeing that the guard sleepeth, shall come back through the Door of Night out of the Timeless Void; and he shall destroy the Sun and Moon. But Eärendel shall descend upon him as a white and searing flame and drive him from the airs. Then shall the Last Battle be gathered on the fields of Valinor. In that day Tulkas shall strive with Morgoth, and on his right hand shall be Fionwë, and on his left Túrin Turambar, son of Húrin, coming from the halls of Mandos; and the black sword of Túrin shall deal unto Morgoth his death and final end; and so shall the children of Húrin and all Men be avenged.
Thereafter shall Earth be broken and re-made, and the Silmarils shall be recovered out of Air and Earth and Sea; for Eärendel shall descend and surrender that flame which he hath had in keeping. Then Fëanor shall take the Three Jewels and bear them to Yavanna Palúrien; and she will break them and with their fire rekindle the Two Trees, and a great light shall come forth. And the Mountains of Valinor shall be levelled, so that the Light shall go out over all the world. In that light the Gods will grow young again, and the Elves awake and all their dead arise, and the purpose of Ilúvatar be fulfilled concerning them. But of Men in that day the prophecy of Mandos doth not speak, and no Man it names, save Túrin only, and to him a place is given among the sons of the Valar.”
—J.R.R. Tolkien, The History of Middle-earth V: The Lost Road and Other Writings, “Quenta Silmarillion”
“The appearance of Túrin at the end remains profoundly mysterious…. it is said that Túrin is named among ‘the sons of the Gods’ rather than among the Gods, and also that he comes ‘from the halls of Mandos’ to the final battle; about which I can say no more than that Túrin Turambar, though a mortal Man, did not go, as do the race of Men, to a fate beyond the world.”
—Christopher Tolkien, The History of Middle-earth IV: The Shaping of Middle-earth, “The Quenta”
Feanor: “ok” is such an imprecise term. Under whose rules? The Valar who would rule us injustly?!
Maedhros: I mean. Yavanna made these trees. Are people allowed to chip off pieces of mum’s statues whenever they want just cause she is not their ruler?
Feanor: Your mother is not a tyrant who plays at benevolence while imposing arbitrary rules we are powerless to obey before her might.
Maedhros: Omg NERDINEL ISN’T MY MOTHER?! This is how you choose to tell me I’m adopted?!?!
Feanor: … You’re right, I was unclear. That’s on me. For now, we are going to hastily retreat because I have an appointment and not because we have committed any acts of blasphemy.
For a while they charitably indulge Fëanáro’s grief. The poor motherless boy, after all (even if the King’s new wife is gracious and charming and would be more than happy to be the boy’s mother, if he would only leave his grief behind.)
After a while they tire of it. It’s been years, they say. Others who loved Míriel have moved on. It’s unhealthy, they say. Surely it’s time someone encouraged him to move on. Surely we’re just enabling him. It’s attention-seeking. It’s bratty. Perhaps if his father was a little firmer with discipline, they mutter.
Finwë is not perfect – is acutely aware, lately, that he’s made a lot of decisions that hurt the people he loved – but he realizes what none of his courtiers can possibly understand, which is that grief cannot be squashed into a more convenient attitude via discipline.
No, his mistake is not that he doesn’t give Fëanáro a scolding when some thoughtless comment drives his son away from a festival in tears.
His mistake, if we are busy assigning blame, is that he doesn’t try hard enough to keep the gossip from reaching his son’s ears.
Fëanáro is not old enough to understand that this is the nature of politics, that the price of the crown is that his every foible is a matter for public comment and his grief an acceptable subject of dinner conversation. He is old enough to understand that he has become a liability for his father, his pain somehow proof of Finwë’s failure, additional proof of his gaping inadequacies that drove Finwë to remarry in the first place.
The pain does not lessen – the repeated insistence that it is unhealthy, that he really ought to be over it already, does not help. He cannot learn to cope, not when any public mention is apparent proof that he is a petulant brat in need of a firmer hand. Instead he learns that it is shameful, and he learns to keep it hidden.
Míriel’s name is never spoken in their home again.
//Reasons why I love lintamande. Also if I read somewhere ever again that Finwe had just to scold him more, I’m going to set that person on fire.
Wait. He walked away and then was chased down then had the sword drawn on him?
Basically yes. After been told to be gone and he actually did, then he was chased. I just wondering what in Fëanor’s mind? Uhhh you ask him to GTFO and when he did you actually chased him?
I think Nolwe not responding was sort of like a way for him to save face, not get drawn in - and Feanor wanted to provoke a response, whether a submissive one or a “yeah I want to take your place!“ one, both of which would benefit Feanor’s position.
I agree on Nolofinwë’s reaction is to save face, the thing is about Fëanor’s reaction here that I don’t get:
Then as a flash of flame he drew his sword. ‘Get thee gone and dare my wrath no longer!’’
basically my take is that “GTFO before I use this sword on you”. What makes him angry about Nolofinwë’s choice to actually get out? He basically did what Fëanor told him. If Fëanor wants to provoke any response from him, shouldn’t he stayed him at swordpoint in the council room instead?
(Sorry if I’m being slow/daft, I just often find it hard to get into Fëanor’s head, so if you think I get it wrong just let me know!)
//What I need to add and clarify: the fact the Fingolfin actually doesn’t dare his wrath no longer and leaves proves nothing. He doesn’t excuse, he doesn’t satisfy Feanor’s need of hearing “no, there’s no betrayal”, bowing only to Finwe doesn’t acknowledge him. Feanor actually asks him to leave, but in the process he is basically ignored, his authority again questioned as it has been for 90 Valarin years, basically. Fingolfin leaving is better than fighting, but from Feanor’s point of view is not a reassurance that he won’t try to do what he is accused of. In fact, the next sentence doesn’t repeat “don’t dare me” or “leave”, the next threatening has a different phrasing, “this is sharper than thy tongue, try no more to usurp my place or the love of my father”. Because, what Fingolfin did the first time? He left and ‘ignored’ the important part, stealing from Feanor what is his (and the love of Finwe is also an important bit.) Feanor needs to point out again that, no, twisting what he says (leave and don’t dare me) in order to take an advantage (ignoring his right by bowing only to Finwe and demonstrating that he isprone to anger and sometimes might need to be restrained) is not going to work. So, he continues with “you have to fucking understand what I’m saying here”, chasing him. I have ideas also concerning Fingolfin’s reasoning, here, but he is not always my field of competence. XD So I’ll stop here because sometimes Fingolfin for me is harder to perfectly understand than Feanor.
I don’t know if anyone else has written on this topic in the past few months that I’ve been away from tumblr/fandom, so I can’t speak to recent opinion trends about Fëanor, but from what I came to understand, in the Silmarillion/Tolkien fandom, even among members who were partial to the Fëanorians, most seemed to regard Fëanor himself as,at worst the most morally repugnant and objectionable character bar Morgoth ( “the absolute worst”, I distinctly remember someone calling him) or with disinterest/ambivalence at best. This is probably my own personal bias, but I felt the former opinion more represented in my experience and, admittedly, that was partially what drove me out of the fandom in the first place, as from the very beginning, Fëanor had been my favorite. *
Anyway, “thesis”: Being intellectually and creatively gifted, Fëanor was predisposed towards mental illness and a strong sense of “justice”; his lack of trust in others, lack of “distracting” work after the Silmarils, and self- and Valar-imposed social isolation exacerbated some symptoms of his (undefined) mental illness and led him to tunnel-vision rebellion and violence as viable solutions.
And I feel like I need to get the disclaimer out of the way because this is Tumblr and you can never know how people are going to react and attack you: This is NOT Fëanor ‘apologism’. I’m not condoninganything he did post-flight. Alqualondë=bad. I also feel the need to say that I am in no way trying to make the case that mentally ill=violent, not at all. What I’m trying to convey is the particular set of internal and external circumstances that allowed Fëanor to rationalize violence.
(Even though I’ve seen Fëanor as mentally ill for a while, I have to give credit to James in part for suggesting that Miriel may have had post-partum depression – in the scenario where that was the case, the notion that Fëanor was mentally ill would make even more sense.)
Fëanor was my favorite from the start too because I could relate to a lot of traits of his personality ( 99% of them, really) and although I find your point very interesting I can’t see Fëanor as mentally ill. I see him more as a person tired of being wronged living under a double standard society. For a person with a high sense of justice to live in a society where the rulers are weak and the people can’t see anything wrong with it….it’s maddening. Also, it’s really easy to understand him when you live in those same circunstances.
The mental illness doesn’t appeal me so much, because it sort of seems… way too excusable? It is strange to say from me because I cannot even start to explainhow much I like him and try to understand him in every shade, so sometimes I just… mingle together various ideas in order to find a certain kind of balance. In order to be not too apologetic but also very, very sympathetic, because I use Fëanor’s point of view and that means that out of his point of view I need to be as much objective as possible. I don’t always succeed because this character makes me very emotional – but that doesn’t excuse him of anything. Yeah though, I don’t like that much the idea of the mental illness, for how much interesting and reasonable it is (because yes, it is). The fact of feeling very strong emotions, led by a lot of happenings as you pointed out, is not necessarily a mental illness (I do not mean to offend anyonewith this statement, I’m talking about the character and only the character, and not the general state of mind.) There is a thing, though, that I really, really like in this analysis (despite the general considerations that are very good), and that is the idea that, after the Silmarilli, he knewthere was nothing more able to distract him. It is like reaching the apotheosis of your life and what else can keep your mind so eagerly at work after that? It is like finishing that work of decades that makes you cry as you look at it and you wonder if you will ever be able to best yourself again. Another consideration: is it just mistrust that makes him so incapable of seeking counsel? I think he is also quite aware of the greatness of his mind. I think he can even imagine what people will tell him before they finish talking and he can find solutions quickier than others, bettersolutions. Being so stubborn and so strong, and so prone to question authority, might be also something to remember. One do not seeks counsel from people they don’t hold in a high regard or are way less intelligent.
So there’s this Korean show about kids going through a difficult phase and the doctor tries to help the parents understand their child&improve relationship. They have this elephant mascot that asks kids if they want to say anything to their mom&dad, etc.
I don’t think any doctor can help Feanor though :P
Feanor hugs his wife. He’s fearless but not here- his fiery heart worries that she can fade away like Miriel. But everything’s fine. Nerdanel laughs, makes her husband and Maitimo smile, by telling how she chose the name for her future son. Warm family order for Myn Donos =)
