lintamande:
One trap I’ve noticed I sometimes fall into when thinking about the Silmarillion is interpreting everything else I learn about a character in light of my initial impression. On my first read-through, for instance, I started thinking of Curufin and Celegorm as “the villains” mostly because of what they did to Lúthien, and so I interpreted everything else they did earlier in the story in terms of how it fit with my villain-narrative.
Eventually I forced myself to consciously rethink their characters, and once I did that I realized it no longer made sense to think of Losgar as “well, of course, they were villainous”, or of Curufin’s interaction with Eöl as “well, of course, he’s a villain” and I ended up arriving at completely different interpretations of their characters – even though my interpretation of the situation with Lúthien didn’t actually change.
On my first read-through of the Silmarillion, I tagged Finrod as “shining good guy”. And that meant that I was inclined to interpret everything else he did as charitably as possible, which reinforced my positive impressions of him, which made me more inclined to interpret his character charitably, and to dismiss the disturbing things he does and attitudes he shows as “out of character”.
When I stopped that, and started looking only at Finrod’s actions without trying to make excuses for them, I came to the conclusion that he is a usually well-intentioned but not especially kind person, that he’s not half as wise as he’s given credit for, that he doesn’t really value the lives of the people who swear him loyalty all that much, and that his attitude towards Men is disturbing, condescending, and outright awful in places.
Also, he might have authorized the annihilation of the Petty-Dwarf civilization.
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I don’t care how old this is, I’m reblogging it.
A wonderful way to explore the crevices in the stories Tolkien wrote about Middle-earth, especially considering how he envisioned himself as Middle-earth’s historian and linguist, not its creator.
In other words, a more accurately historical reading of the “facts” we get in the stories.