#such a good story
On Aerin and Túrin
I’ve been storing up a rant on this subject for a while, and International Women’s Day seems like a good time for it.
Aerin stands out to me in part because of books I read as part of a university course about different forms of resistance among slaves and subject peoples. There’s a temptation, when talking about conditions like slavery, to regard any actions other than escape or violent rebellion as inaction, and disregard or overlook the smaller daily rebellions that can happen beneath the surface. Aerin’s rebellions are of this latter type; although she has very little power and is in a terible situation, taken in forced marriage by an occupier, she still uses the little leeway that she has to protect and shelter and help her people; even people like Sador, who are of no use or value to the slavemasters. She is showing exceptional courage and resilience under dreadful conditions.
And then Túrin shows up and breaks everything. It’s easy enough to understand his actions - who doesn’t love a good revolution against oppression? It’s impressive, it’s cinematic, it’s emotionally satisfying - all the things that quiet, careful, piecemeal resistance isn’t. What makes it harder to sympathize with him is that he’s only just showed up, knowing nothing about the situation, and is acting on impulse out of his own emotions without any thought for the consequences of his actions.
And then, when Aerin calls him on this, he calls her ‘fainthearted’.
She’s been little better than a slave for some twenty years, and has despite that risked her life and safety to help others. She had no defenses or weapons, and yet she founds ways to resist, and suffered for it, and yet kept resisting. He was raised in safety and ran away from his home - and stayed away - out of arrogance and stubbornness. And while he’s often been in danger, he’s rarely been defenseless. She has a courage Túrin can’t even comprehend.
And he calls her‘fainthearted’.
This is why I love the rebuke he recieves from one of Aerin’s men. “Many a man of arms misreads patience and quiet. She did much good among us at much cost. Her heart was not faint, and patience will break at the last.”
It’s narratively fitting that Túrin’s actions lead to the death of Sador, the servant he befriended as a child. Their friendship displayed off one of Túrin’s better qualities in his youth: his attachment to and compassion for the weak. It’s something he progressively loses over the course of his life, with his disregard of Gwindor, his dismissal of Aerin, and his killing of Brandir all being stages in that downward spiral. In all three cases, he treats the ability to swing a sword as the most important thing a person can do, and behaves disdainfully towards people who lack the ability to fight their enemies directly. He does this even when his own attempts at direct combat have repeatedly brought nothing but suffering. It’s his single most unsympathetic trait.
