Fëanor

Fëanor's mother, Míriel, died, exhausted, shortly after giving birth.[1] As a result, Fëanor "was made the mightiest in all parts of body and mind: in valour, in endurance, in beauty, in understanding, in skill, in strength and subtlety alike: of all the Children of Ilúvatar, and a bright flame was in him." Finwë would remarry and had several children, including Fëanor's half-brothers Fingolfin and Finarfin, who became prominent leaders among the Noldor.

Fëanor was the student of his father-in-law Mahtan, who was a student of the Vala Aulë. He was a craftsman and gem-smith, inventor of the Tengwar script, and the creator of the palantíri.[note 1]

Fëanor, "in the greatest of his achievements, captured the light of the Two Trees to make the three Silmarils, also called the Great Jewels, though they were not mere glittering stones, they were alive, imperishable, and sacred."[T 2] Even the Valar could not copy them. In fact, Fëanor himself could not copy them, as part of his essence went into their making. Their worth was close to infinite, as they were unique and irreplaceable. So "Varda hallowed the Silmarils so that thereafter no mortal flesh, nor hands unclean, nor anything of evil will might touch them, for it would be scorched and withered."[T 2]

Fëanor prized the Silmarils above all else, and grew suspicious of the Valar and Eldar who he believed coveted them. Melkor, recently released from imprisonment and now residing in Valinor, saw an opportunity to sow dissent among the Noldor. Fëanor refused to communicate with Melkor, but was still caught in his plot. Melkor told Fëanor that his half-brother Fingolfin was planning to usurp his place as heir to Finwë, prompting Fëanor to threaten Fingolfin. As punishment, the Valar exiled Fëanor to Formenos. He took a treasure with him, including the Silmarils, which he put in a locked box. In a show of support, Finwë also withdrew to Formenos.[T 2] Fingolfin took their place as king.

The Valar learnt that Melkor was manipulating Fëanor, and sent Tulkas to capture Melkor, but he had already escaped. Fëanor realised that Melkor's goal was to obtain the Silmarils, "and he shut the doors of his house in the face of the mightiest of all the dwellers in Eä."[T 2] The Valar invited Fëanor and Fingolfin to Valinor to make peace. Fingolfin offered a hand to his half-brother, recognising Fëanor's place as the eldest. Fëanor accepted, but The Two Trees were destroyed by Melkor with the aid of Ungoliant.[T 3] The Valar, realising that now the light of the Trees survived only in the Silmarils, asked Fëanor to give them up so that they could restore the Trees. Fëanor replied: "It may be that I can unlock my jewels, but never again shall I make their like; and if I must break them, I shall break my heart."[T 4] He refused to give up the Silmarils of his own free will. Messengers from Formenos told him that Melkor had killed Finwë and stolen the Silmarils. Yavanna was thus unable to heal the Two Trees.[T 4]

Fëanor named Melkor "Morgoth", "Black Enemy".[T 4] Fëanor railed against the Great Enemy, blaming the Valar for Morgoth's deeds. He persuaded most of his people that because the Valar had abandoned them, the Noldor must follow him to Middle-earth to wrest the Silmarils back from Morgoth and avenge Finwë. Together with his seven sons, they swore the fateful Oath of Fëanor:[T 4]

They swore an oath which none shall break, and none should take, by the name even of Ilúvatar, calling the Everlasting Dark upon them if they kept it not... ...vowing to pursue with vengeance and hatred to the ends of the World Vala, Demon, Elf or Man as yet unborn or any creature, great or small, good or evil, that time should bring forth unto the end of days, whoso should hold or take or keep a Silmaril from their possession. — Quenta Silmarillion

Arda in the First Age. The Elves migrated across Middle-earth; many of them travelled to Valinor (green arrows to the left). Finwë's killing by Melkor led in turn to the Flight of the Noldor (red arrows to the right) back to Beleriand in Middle-earth.[2]

To get to Middle-earth, Fëanor went to the shores of Aman, and asked the seafaring Teleri for their aid. When they refused, Fëanor ordered the Noldor to steal the ships. The Teleri resisted, and many of them were killed. The battle became known as the Kinslaying at Alqualondë, or the first kinslaying.[T 4][3] His sons would commit two other acts of warfare against elves in Middle-earth in his name. In repentance, Finarfin, Finwë's third son, took his host and turned back. They were accepted by the Valar, and Finarfin ruled as High-King of the Noldor in Valinor. The remaining Elves, those who followed Fëanor and Fingolfin, became subject to the Doom of Mandos. There were not enough ships to carry all of the Noldor across the sea, so Fëanor and his sons led the first group.[T 4] Upon arriving at Losgar, in Lammoth in the far west of Beleriand, they decided to burn the ships and leave the followers of Fingolfin behind. Fingolfin led his people for many months to reach Beleriand, travelling by the northern ice.[T 4]

Morgoth summoned his armies from his fortress of Angband and attacked Fëanor's encampment in Mithrim. This battle was called the Battle under the Stars, or Dagor-nuin-Giliath, for the Sun and Moon had not yet been made. The Noldor won the battle. Fëanor pressed on toward Angband with his sons. He came within sight of Angband, but was ambushed by a force of Balrogs, with few elves about him. He fought mightily with Gothmog, captain of the Balrogs. His sons came upon the Balrogs with a great force of elves, and drove them off; but Fëanor knew his wounds were fatal. He cursed Morgoth thrice, but with the eyes of death, he saw that his elves, unaided, would never throw down the dark towers of Thangorodrim. Nevertheless, he told his sons to keep the oath and to avenge their father. When he died, his body turned to ashes.[T 5]

The Oath of Fëanor affected the lovers Beren and Lúthien. They recovered a Silmaril from Morgoth. Their son Dior inherited it, but it awoke the oath and caused the Sons of Fëanor to make war on the Elves of Doriath when Dior refused to give up the Silmaril. The brothers killed Dior and sacked the halls of the Sindar, the second Kinslaying, where three of their number—Celegorm, Curufin, and Caranthir—died. The Silmaril escaped the destruction of Doriath, and the oath drove the remaining sons onwards. When the Sons of Fëanor learned that it was possessed by Elwing, daughter of Dior, they attacked after Elwing also refused to return the Silmaril to them, the third and final Kinslaying where Amras was slain.[T 6]

The Silmaril escaped them again and was borne by Eärendil into the West.[T 7] That Silmaril was lost to the Sons of Fëanor, but two more remained inside the crown of Morgoth. At the end of the War of Wrath the two surviving oath-takers, Maedhros and Maglor, stole the two Silmarils from the camp of the victorious Hosts of Valinor. Due to the terrible deeds committed by the brothers in their retrieval of the Silmarils, they could not handle the Silmarils without enduring searing pain. The two brothers parted: in their anguish Maedhros threw himself and his Silmaril into a fiery chasm, while Maglor cast his Silmaril into the sea, spending eternity wandering the shore, lamenting his fate.[T 7]

According to Mandos' prophecy, following Melkor's final return and defeat in the Dagor Dagorath, the world will be changed and the Valar will recover the Silmarils. Fëanor will be released from the Halls of Mandos and give Yavanna the Silmarils. Depending on the version of the story, either she or Fëanor will break them, and Yavanna will revive the Two Trees. The Pelóri Mountains will be flattened and the light of the Two Trees will fill the world in eternal bliss.[T 8][T 9]

Mahtan

Míriel

Finwë of the Noldor

Indis of the Vanyar

Nerdanel

Fëanor maker of Silmarils

Findis

Fingolfin

Írimë

Finarfin

Maedhros

Maglor

Celegorm

Caranthir

Curufin

Amrod

Amras

Celebrimbor maker of Rings

Kings of the Noldor in Valinor

High Kings of the Noldor in Exile (in Middle-earth)

All the characters shown are Elves.

The Tolkien scholar Jane Chance sees Fëanor's pride as Biblical, writing that Morgoth's corruption of elves and men "mirrors that of Adam and Eve by Satan; the desire for power and godlike being is the same desire for knowledge of good and evil witnessed in the Garden of Eden."[6] She treats the Silmarils as symbols of that same desire, identifying Fëanor's wish to be like the Valar in creating "things of his own" as rebellious pride, and pointing out that his rebellion is echoed by that of the Numenorean man Ar-Pharazon, and then at the end of The Silmarillion by the (angelic) Maia, Sauron, who becomes the Dark Lord of The Lord of the Rings.[6]

The philologist Elizabeth Solopova suggests that the character of Fëanor was inspired by Byrhtnoth from the Anglo-Saxon poem "The Battle of Maldon" who is slain in battle. Tolkien has described Byrhtnoth as misled by "pride and misplaced chivalry proven fatal" and as "too foolish to be heroic",[T 11] and Fëanor is driven by "overmastering pride" that causes his own death and that of countless followers.[5]

The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey comments that Fëanor and his Silmarils relate to The Silmarillion's theme in a particular way: the sin of the elves is not human pride, as in the Biblical fall, but their "desire to make things which will forever reflect or incarnate their own personality". This elvish form of pride leads Fëanor to forge the Silmarils, and, Shippey suggests, led Tolkien to write his fictions: "Tolkien could not help seeing a part of himself in Fëanor and Saruman, sharing their perhaps licit, perhaps illicit desire to 'sub-create'."[7]

Fëanor's self-destructive pride in his own creation has been likened to that of Thomas Mann's "Doctor Faustus", in the person of the fictional 20th century composer Adrian Leverkühn, a reworking of the Faust legend.[8] 1740 English print of Doctor Faustus's pact with the devil.

John Ellison, writing in Mallorn, draws a comparison between Fëanor's ultimately self-destructive pride and that of Adrian Leverkühn, the protagonist in Thomas Mann's 1947 novel Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn, Told by a Friend. In his view, the life history of both characters is of "genius corrupted finally into insanity; the creative drive turns on its possessor and destroys him, and with him a good part of the fabric of society."[8] He describes as parallel Mann's depiction of Leverkühn in a collapsing Nazi Germany and Tolkien's starting his mythology amidst the collapse of pre-1914 Europe: he likens the "Good German" narrator Zeitblom (who does not support the Nazis) to one of "the Faithful" (like Elendil) among the gone-to-bad Númenóreans. Fëanor is, he writes, not an exact equivalent of Doctor Faustus: he does not make a pact with the devil; but both Fëanor and Leverkühn outgrow their teachers in creative skill. Ellison calls Leverkühn "a Fëanor of our times", and comments that far from being a simple battle of good versus evil, Tolkien's world as seen in Fëanor has "the creative and destructive forces in man's nature ... indivisibly linked; this is the essence of the 'fallen world' in which we live."[8]

Like Shippey, Ellison relates Fëanor's making of the Silmarils to what he supposes was Tolkien's own belief: that it was "a dangerous and impermissible act" that went beyond what the Creator had intended for the Elves. Further, Ellison suggests that while Fëanor does not directly represent Tolkien, there is something about his action that can be applied to Tolkien's life. Tolkien calls Fëanor "fey"; Ellison notes that Tolkien analysed his own name as tollkühn, with the same meaning. Further, Tolkien seems, Ellison writes, to have felt a conflict between his own "sub-creation" and his Catholic faith. He worked out and justified his fantasy writing in his essay On Fairy-Stories: the creative artist may have had a subordinate role but all the same, sub-creation was "supremely important". Ellison notes that Tolkien was disinclined to finish any of his works: he had to be pushed to complete The Hobbit and "did not think of The Lord of the Rings as something independently complete in itself", but as the last part of "a triptych", the rest of which (his legendarium) "remained unfilled" in his lifetime.[8]

This list identifies each item's location in Tolkien's writings.

• Tolkien, J. R. R. (1966), The Tolkien Reader, New York: Ballantine Books, ISBN 0-345-34506-1
• Tolkien, J. R. R. (1977), Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Silmarillion, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 978-0-395-25730-2
• Tolkien, J. R. R. (1986), Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Shaping of Middle-earth, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 978-0-395-42501-5
• Tolkien, J. R. R. (1994), Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The War of the Jewels, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 0-395-71041-3
• Tolkien, J. R. R. (1996), Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Peoples of Middle-earth, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 978-0-395-82760-4