Cursing In the Books

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

About Morgoth's curse - if we accept that he had the power to make his curse come true, don't we thereby agree that he was indeed, as he claimed in the Narn, "Master of the fates of Arda", and that Húrin's defiant words "You cannot see them, or govern them from afar: not while you keep this shape, and desire still to be a King visible upon earth" were mistaken?
As I see it, all Morgoth could do was, so to speak, set the frame conditions for his curse to be fulfilled - but Túrin had lots of chances to escape it at every turn of the way, if he had made some better choices. (Btw, the fact that he didn't still doesn't make him a jerk for me!)

Morgoth may have had enough power to make some of his curses real, but not enough, necessarily, to make him truly "Master of the Fates of Arda." A short-term curse, so to speak, on one individual, may not require the same kind of power as a long-term curse, on an entire race, for instance. To become Master of Arda, Melkor had to pour his power into the very fabric of the world, losing it for himself -- and even though he succeeded in tainting Arda, it was not enough to completely eradicate the world, or even the good in it.

With Turin, I tend to think that it was a little bit of Morgoth's curse genuinely in action, nudging some circumstances so that what was really the worst choice seemed like the best. Morgoth didn't need to keep this up forever; after a while, making bad choices can become a habit (and lord knows, my own family's history is adequate proof of that! ). To Hurin, watching this, he would certainly believe that this was all Morgoth's doing, and Morgoth would have done nothing to disabuse him of this notion. And even so, Morgoth could not take away Turin's gift of free will. He could only point him in the wrong direction, which sometimes is all the curse a person needs to make it come to pass.