Unorthodox Heroes?

[Gurthang]

Well, one person I think deserves a little more repute is Feanor. He was possibly the greatest elf ever to live, and he made the Silmarils. Besides that, he was very strong willed, stood up for himself, knew what he was about, and generally did a job to completion.

He's usually set up as a bad buy for being the scapegoat for the Kinslaying and for leading the elves out of Aman. Yet I think most people stop close to that and don't see the depth of his character. True, he was a bit of a hot-head, but so was Gimli for that matter, and Feanor had a great tactical mind. I think he was given a rather poor lighting in the Silmarillion, and if you knew him better, there is a lot of good under the initial badness.

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

Well i do not know if we ar supose to discuss each others post.
so i will try to make it quick.

Originally Posted by Gurthang

Feanor had a great tactical mind.

I agree that he was not so bad as he is made out to be, but a great tactical mind.
I do not think that leaving Fingolfin and the main Noldor host behinde and rushing agains Balrogs shows great tactical ability!

[the guy who be short]

Feanor is one of my "Unorthodox Heroes" too. I agree with a lot of what Gurthang said, but as Rune pointed out, he cannot be considered a good tactician. Note his death, please.

One of his particularly endearing aspects to me is his skill with words and minds. His beauty and skill in the arts and crafts also makes me look up to him. Add copious charisma, and voila - amazing character.

Yes, he represents the Fall of the Eldar. So what? He's still cool.

[Lalwendë]

Very few of the characters are presented as either 'good' or 'bad'. Yes, a character may be on the side of 'good' or 'bad', but few are wholly perfect or entirely evil. What I find interesting is that Tolkien is not didactic about how we 'read' a character; he presents us with what they do and how their behaviour impacts on other characters, but he does not tell us what to think.

One of Tolkien's tricksy methods is to alter our perceptions of 'good' and 'bad' by having us view characters through the eyes of others within the book. Until the end of Book 3 we only see Saruman as others have seen him, so our opinions are already coloured by the opinions of characters such as Gandalf. Then we also get to hear the words of Orcs, and how they long to 'retire' from soldiering, how they view Men as 'filthy tarks'; hearing their point of view and paying attention to it skews our preconceptions.

Tolkien can also manage to make us feel sorry for some characters who we ought to feel pleased about getting hurt or being killed. The sad ending to Grima's life is just one case; brought low he finally 'snaps' but all for nothing. I know I also feel very sorry for the previously horrible Lobelia Sackville-Baggins at the end of the story. And then there is Gollum, who in the end turns out to be the one to 'save' Middle-earth, albeit inadvertently; I always think that his death is the only way he could have ended up, and that makes me sorry for him. With a character such as Gollum, Tolkien makes us think about 'good' and 'evil' and makes us see that we need to think about these concepts.

But as a mirror to this, his 'good' characters are usually flawed. Galadriel has a dark past, Frodo yields to temptation, Gandalf is sometimes impatient. In particular, Aragorn is a well crafted character in this respect. He is noble, but he can also sometimes be pompous in his words, and he even has something of the 'snob' about him as he almost refuses to give up his sword before entering Meduseld. If a 'good' character is all good, then they would just be boring, learning little along the way, and possibly making us hate them for their perfectness.

Tolkien's not alone in doing this though, it's the mark of a good writer to make his or her characters believable. A lot of stories are even centred on how characters change and learn to deal with their flaws - Pride & Prejudice being a good case in point. I think where Evelyn Waugh differs is that he was a satirist, and such work often gets its humour and finds its purpose through exploiting stereotypes, so the characters often have to be more of a 'cardboard cut out'.

[Elladan and Elrohir]

Feanor was a jerk, plain and simple. I spit upon his grave. OK, that's disrespectful, I apologize.

I also like Boromir. Actually, I think I like him better now that I've seen the movies, because Sean Bean's performance is incredible. He finishes well, of course, and that seems to be a chief Tolkien criterion for determining one's moral nature.

Gollum, on the other hand, finishes in evil, and even though his fall saves Middle-earth, he is in the end an evil character. I think it is however fascinating to watch the changes that come over his character in Book Four.

This is one of the things I don't like about the movie TTT: They oversimplify and somewhat change Gollum's character. As they portray it, Smeagol orders his Gollum side out, then he lets "Stinker" back in after his "betrayal" by "wicked tricksy Master." After the departure from Osgiliath, Stinker takes over completely.

The book is, to my mind, more complex than this. It's a matter of opinion as to whether Gollum is quote unquote "schizophrenic". Also, Stinker doesn't take over completely until just before Shelob's lair, when Gollum returns from his visit to Shelob and nearly has a complete change of heart, only to be met by rough words from Sam. Tolkien wrote that he saw that moment as the supreme tragedy of that story.

Well, this post has turned into a discussion of Gollum, and for that I apologize. Hopefully someone else can come along and steer the topic back in the right direction.

[The 1,000 Reader]

In my opinion, Turin was more of a villian than Sauron. At times, however, his good personality shone through and we could imagine what he would be like if he wasn't cursed by Morgoth. Also, Denethor was already a broken man by the time he contested Sauron, and if he was not withered he might have proven a formidable adversary to the second Dark Lord.

[Firefoot]

In my opinion, Turin was more of a villian than Sauron.

Hm... could you explain that a little bit more? Turin made some bad decisions and listened to some of the wrong people, but he was cursed, and generally I'd say he acted according to his best judgment. Sauron's goal was domination of Middle-earth. I'm having trouble balancing the scale in the other way.

I must say that Fëanor could possibly be my favorite character in the Sil, and is almost certainly my favorite Elf of all time. He really fascinates me as a character, even if he isn't exactly 'nice;' indeed, sometimes "you're an idiot" would best describe his actions. His whole story is rather tragic, and I can't say whether he ultimately brought about more bad or good. But that's the best part: like Ang said, Tolkien doesn't tell us characters are "good" or "bad;" the Reader ( ) has a choice in that. Fëanor is a classic example of a basically good character whose faults and bad choices lead to his down-fall.

I've always rather liked Shagrat and Gorbag. Yes, they're Orcs, and yes, they're prone to the same, ah, flaws that tend to run in the race (e.g. killing each other...), but in they're conversation we can see a more human side to them. What they really want is to get away from it all and set up a place from themselves with a few trusty lads. They don't want to fight this war; they feel no loyalty towards Sauron. It isn't hard for me to feel sympathetic for them. The initial human reaction is to say "Orcs=evil," but they aren't wholly so. They do have some more human qualities to them, and exploring these qualities is what makes Orkish characters interesting to RPG. It's what makes all baddies fun to RPG, in fact, is that they do have good traits. It seems like the tendency in many fantasy books is to paint the bad guy as all evil without redeeming qualities. But in Tolkien's books (and several others, I'm not generalizing the genre completely), the bad guys have depth and motives and good qualities. It's what makes Saruman or Grima more interesting to analyze than Aragorn or Faramir.

Posted by Ang
I would prefer to call it another kind of power; power to create a crossroads but let us pick the path.

Exactly. I love that image.