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Originally Posted by littlemanpoet
The description here of admiration reads like sympathy. Which brings to mind the way many of us are sympathetic to Sméagol, and for the same reasons. Maybe a new thread ought to be started on it, but I'll broach the question anyway: Is Túrin most like Sméagol of all the characters in LotR?
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Don't think so, but I'm not sure in what way you mean 'like' Smeagol. I could see the argument that he is 'like' Boromir, who is also a flawed hero. Yet Boromir repents at the end, admits he was wrong. Turin never does, even at the very end. He admits he failed, but he never, unlike Boromir, repents of his 'sin', & doesn't see his death as either punishment or atonement. Boromir gives his life, Turin takes his. I suppose one could also argue that Boromir loses his life while Turin casts his away. Yet....
Turin, it seems to me, realised at the end that he would never be the hero he wanted to be, that as long as he lived he would be Morgoth's fool, & ended his life almost as an act of defiance. Its perfectly correct to say that he was mastered by his doom, yet in another way he did master his doom - by ending his life he put an end to his doom. Hence even his suicide could be seen as an act of defiance as much as one of despair.