[davem]

Originally Posted by burrahobbit

But I am clearly not a horse.

And I'm clearly not wrong

I'm thinking that Feanor would be so nice, though, that he couldn't even bear to kill an orc if he had to, so he just stayed in Aman with the ladies and the children. Pacifism, you know? Besides, somebody has to be in charge while all of the other leaders are out killing things.

Why are you thinking that? We've no evidence that he would choose pacifism over obeying the will of the Valar. If his fate was to die in Endor he would go there & die, the issue is how he would get there & he clearly had the freedom to choose that. there are many ways he could have ended up there. As an Elf he is bound by the constraints of the Music to do certain things.[/QUOTE]

Thus was the fate of Túrin woven [...] with the fate of the Silmarils and of the Elves -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion chapter 21

But who 'wove' his fate? Eru, or he himself?

But Illuvatar knew that Men, being set amid the turmoils of the powers of the world, would stray often, and would not use their gifts in harmony; and ie said, These too in their time shall find that all that they do redounds at the end only to the glory of my work.' Yet the Elves believe that Men are often a grief to Manwe, who knows most of the mind of Illuvatar; for it seems to the Elves that Men resemble Melkor most of all the Ainur, although he has ever feared and hated them, even those that served him.
It is one with this gift of freedom that the children of Men dwell only a short space in the world alive, and are not bound to it, and depart soon whither the Elves know not. (Of the Beginning of Days)

So, Men have the 'gift of freedom' to act beyond the Music within Arda. Their gift of freedom, like the Gift of Death (of which it is probably a part, as I said), is what makes them unique among all the inhabitants of Arda. They are free to act beyond the confines of the Music, but the price they pay for that freedom is that they cannot remain forever within the Circles of the World.