Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivriniel
It was about Eol's sex offending and creepy tree house. Developmental delay  What's a full grown elf doing playing in tree houses? |
I think Professor Tolkien was concerned by extremes and extremist philosophies. Fėanor held sway over many of the Noldor and a great deal of destruction ensued from his belief that Morgoth could be defeated militarily by his own means. One might as well have tried to hunt down and destroy the very concept of evil. By contrast, Eöl was a loner, self-isolated and reclusive. His covetousness of his family was another extreme attitude, the opposite one might say of kingly Fėanor, which also brought about a great deal of suffering in the long term.
Characters in Professor Tolkien's work always fail when they are unwilling to compromise, when they operate only in extremes and absolutes. Arda was a fallen world; having one's cake and eating it too was not just unlikely, it was a metaphysical impossibility. Relating to the topic of this thread, the Elves and the Ringwraiths are exactly the same case. The Elven-smiths believed they could build Aman in Middle-earth. This failed. Sauron believed that, with the forging of One Ring, he could in a single master-stroke instantly and irrevocably dominate forever the population of Middle-earth. Such an extremist plan could never hope to succeed. Nothing is ever 'consequence free' in Middle-earth. Nothing succeeds one hundred per cent.