This was touched upon in another thread.
Fëanor is held to be the greatest of the Noldor. He is well known and respected for his great deeds - capturing the Light of the Trees in the Silmarils and his Oath, as well as his wisdom and skill in combat.
But in pursuit of fulfilling his Oath, he did many many terrible things, to the extent that when Fëanor's eldest sons Maedhros and Maglor finally reclaimed the remaining Silmarils "because of the evils they had committed in recovering them, they found that they could no longer touch the holy Jewels without enduring searing pain" (Encyclopedia of Arda).
I was wondering what other Tolkien scholars take on Fëanor is - king of the castle, or a dirty rascal?
"Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot."- Charles Chaplin
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Good post Lian! And far from persuming myself to be a Tolkien scholar, here is my take on arguably the greatest character in all of Tolkiens works: Fëanor.
To me, he represents a Tolkienesque version of the great tragic hero, that persists throughout the literary tradition of England and Europe. There are echoes of Oedipus in Fëanor, of Macbeth, of Hardy’s ‘Mayor of Casterbridge’ even. All these figures have experienced a dramatic parabole... surging upwards to a brief moment of splendor, soon followed by a crushing downfall as a result of a ‘tragic flaw’ they made in their past. In perpetrating this tragic flaw, they seal their own doom. Fate creeps up on them and slowly but surely catches them all. Oedipus killed his own dad by accident, Macbeth kills Duncan, the Mayor of Casterbridge gambles away his own wife, and Fëanor swears an oath against the Valar and then proceeds to shed the blood of the Teleri elves in Alqualondë.
Yet, Tolkien, like Sophokles, Shakespeare and Hardy, never demonizes his main protagonist. On the contrary, he shows great compassion towards Fëanor. He makes us, the reader, mourn with him when his father is murdered by Morgoth on the steps of Tirion. He makes us rage against the Valar for letting this happen. And he makes us understand Fëanors choices, even if it leads him to desperate, awful acts. In the end, Fëanor and his sons pay the price for the tragic flaw, as Fate, like a hunting bird of prey, swoops down and deals with them, one by one.
Tolkien makes it very clear that the actions of Fëanor and his sons are not so much defined by their good or evil character, but by their CHOICES. That is an almost gnostic concept… but it serves a good purpose in making a distinction between the understandable if tragic evil of Fëanor and his sons, and the deliberate, meaningless evil from Morgoth. Fëanor is much, much more than a good guy gone mad or bad. He represents the internal struggle between good and evil that takes place within each and everyone of us. Perhaps that is why he, and tragic heroes like him, are such enduring emblems of world literature.
Begone foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion!
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I agree with Tarlonniel -- I've never felt sympathy for Fëanor, and I sometimes wonder at that. If one reads the texts and what they say then obviously Fëanor was a Noldo of masterful power and skill, perhaps the greatest of all. But I've never been inspired by those words to hold him in as high regard as, say, those of the house of Fingolfin, like Fingon or Turgon or Fingolfin himself.
Almost from the very first introduction of Fëanor we're given a foreshadowing that he's bad news. I believe in the very first paragraph, or close to it, Tolkien (either J.R.R. or Christopher, take your pick) refers to Finwë's decision to remarry and postulates that if he'd instead put all his energies into fathering Fëanor much disaster may have been averted. For myself, I don't think I ever overcame that intro.
It cascades down to the sons of Fëanor, too, who always seem to be scheming. The only one that left me with even a vaguely positive impression was Maedhros.
Tolkien makes it very clear that the actions of Fëanor and his sons are not so much defined by their good or evil character, but by their CHOICES.
That's an excellent way of looking at it, and in fact is the way I look at things a lot, as well. I don't care what you say, I care what you do (though there are instances where the saying and the doing are one and the same). A native goodness that does not hold back the extremely evil deeds that Fëanor does might as well have not been there, though that sounds extremely cynical of me now that I type it out. But even his most puissant acts seem motivated by desire for take for himself rather than to give of himself. He's bad news.
Is he a rotten egg? That depends -- was he the last one in the pool?
Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.
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Wajz, my friend
I was looking forward to responding to Lian, but then I read your post and it is ruined...
You made all my points, except pointing out that Feanor's tragic flaw is his pride...a recurring theme in Tolkien's works...
You expressed yourself better than I could have saying the same things...very well answered.
Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow,
Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow.
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Thank you Sir... I am really happy that I am not the only one who sees Fëanor as possible the grandest figure Tolkien ever created. A hero in the true sense, but one whose superhuman abilities and immortality are balanced by his oh-so-human, recognizable flaws.
Begone foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion!
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Fëanor is fantastic, as far as characters go, but I've never liked or sympathised with him. Dunno why - I'm a big fan of the tragic hero types that Wajz described. I guess Fëanor is too directly and repeatedly responsible for the horrors which dogged him and the Silmarils. Oedipus, Agammemnon, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, etc. were all bound up in a web of fate caused primarily by other people's actions and their own "fatal flaw"; Fëanor was just a loose cannon raining destruction upon those unlucky enough to be in the vicinity.
Aurë entuluva!
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I have a certain sympathy for Feanor, as in my opinion, his course was set when his mother abandoned him and his father. This was an unthinkable act for an Elf, to choose to die. This was followed by his father's breaking of Elven tradtions by seeking to marry while his wife still lingered alive in spirit in the Halls of Mandos. Feanor "drank from a poisoned well" at the very beginning of his life and it affected his every act. His was the ultimate dysfunctional family.
One reason why this may have happened could be due to the unique manner in which Melkor integrated his essense into the being of Arda from the very start. In Morgoth's Ring, there's a discussion of the difference in how Morgoth and Sauron used their power. Sauron created a single artifact and imbued it with his immense power. Morgoth, however, dispersed his power throughout the very atoms of Arda, with nothing on Arda being free from the taint. Arda was Morgoth's 'Ring'. Morgoth's power was then was the ability to prevent the Valar's dream world from ever occuring because the world with which they worked was subtly filled with resistence and opposition.
The disintegration of Feanor's family, the distraction of his own skill and powers into selfishness and recalcitrance, the resulting inevitability of conflict and hatred that severed the Elven peoples- all of this could be seen as the action of Morgoth's disrupting power upon Arda. Feanor was then the device by which Tolkien could demonstrate the divisiveness and disunity that permeated Arda because of Melkor's presence.
"I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew..."
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CTS-1
(Fri Jul 11 08:03:50)
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The answer is "both."
Like many of Tolkien's entities that specialize in works of craft (Eol, Celebrimbor, Melkor, almost all Dwarfs), the creative force in Feanor is linked to a self-absorbed personality. The two traits are often proportional: just as Feanor is the greatest creator amongst the Elves, he is also notorious for being headstrong and self-absorbed to the point of megalomania.
So, on the one hand, the reader has the Silmarils: the single finest work of craft any Elf made. On the other hand, the reader has Feanor refusing Yavanna permission to use the Silmarils to re-create the trees and the Oath, which was not made with evil intent per se, but with a monomaniacal disregard for the fallout and damaging consequences of the Oath. The reader also has the kinsllaying and the burning of the ships, both of which were ultimately Feanor's responsibility.
Look- he's trying to think!
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I think he was just messed-up from the beginning. Athene once pointed out that he may have been different from other Elves because of his upbringing. Most of us know that Elven parents stick together (with a few exceptions) and that Tolkien disliked one-parent families. Feänor's mother Míriel left Finwë and Feänor after she gave birth; then Finwë wed what's-her-name a few years later. Perhaps Feänor's uniqueness can be credited to his atypical upbringing.
Yes, he was gifted. Yes, he was accounted as the best smith of the Noldor. Yes, he made the Silmarils. However, I believe that his talents were inborn gifts, while his irregularities (his pride and impulsiveness) were results of his upbringing. So, if he had been raised in a "normal" family, I think he'd still have created the Silmarils but would have surrendered them to Yavanna when she asked to use the Light of the Trees within the jewels.
In other words... he was a gifted smith with bad character.
 You are a daughter of kings. A shieldmaiden of Rohan.
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"I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew..."
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sinaes
(Tue Aug 5 01:53:07)
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I'm like a good haines t-shirt: tagless 
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 Oog make mission statement.
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