BIBLICAL PARALLELS TO MIDDLE-EARTH VIII. THE TRAGEDY OF TURIN TURAMBAR
(SPOILER ALERT! This blog summarizes the chapters "Of the Fifth Battle" and "Of Turin Turambar" from The Silmarillion.)
The Story
After Beren and Luthien had stolen the Silmaril from Morgoth, King Fingon of the Noldor and Feanor's sons felt that they might take Angband. They formed an alliance of Elves, Dwarves, and Men to attack Morgoth. The Elves of Nargothrond and Doriath, though, angry with Feanor's sons for their ill-treatment of Beren and Luthien, stayed home.
In the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, the alliance was betrayed by the men of the East, who would later fight for Sauron in the War of the Rings. The faithful Elves, Dwarves, and Men fell to an army of Balrogs, Orcs, and wolves, led by the Dragon Glaurung.
The leader of the faithful men in the battle was Hurin, of the House of Beor, to which Beren belonged. Hurin had once gone to the hidden city of Gondolin. Capturing Hurin, Morgoth tried to make him betray the hidden city. When Hurin refused to, Morgoth chained him to Thangorodrim and cursed him to watch through a Vala's eyes the grief that would befall his family.
Hurin had left at home his wife, Morwen, pregnant at the time, and a young son, Turin. Morgoth gave the Easterlings the lands that had once belonged to the House of Beor. The Easterlings feared Morwen, whom they suspected of being an Elvish witch. She gave birth to a daughter, Nienor. The life of Morwen, Turin, and Nienor was miserable, both from the loss of Hurin and from the Easterlings' evil behavior.
After a while Morwen sent Turin for fostering by King Thingol of Doriath. Turin begged his mother to come with him. She refused, hoping that Hurin would still return to her. In Doriath, Thingol became a mighty warrior against the Orcs. He wore a dragon-helmet, an heirloom of the House of Beor.
One of Thingol's Elves envied Turin his honor from the king. When Turin came home unkempt from the woods one day, the Elf asked him whether his mother was as wild as he was. Turin, responding to the Elf's insult, inadvertently caused his death and, fearing the King's vengeance, fled Doriath.
In the wild Turin became an outlaw, leading a band of Men and Elves against all around them. In Doriath, though, Thingol, learning the truth of the Elf's death, pardoned Turin and sent an Elvish warrior named Beleg to find him. Turin, from pride, refused Thingol's pardon and convinced Beleg to join the band. Thereafter it fought only Orcs.
When Beleg returned to Doriath to give Thingol news of Turin, Turin sought a new stronghold. After meeting a Dwarf named Mim and killing Mim's son, Turin agreed to spare Mim's life in exchange for shelter in the Dwarf's caves. There, Turin became a terror to Morgoth's Orcs. There, in time, Beleg returned, bearing from Doriath the Dragon-Helm and Anglachel, a black sword of meteoric iron.
One day, while Beleg was scouting, Mim went into the woods to gather herbs and was seized by Orcs. To save his life, he offered to lead them to Turin's lair. Turin's men were killed; he himself was captured. The Orcs, fearing no pursuit, took him slowly on to Angband.
Beleg, returning to the caves, learned of Mim's betrayal and set out in pursuit of the Orcs. On the road he met a bent and broken Elf, Gwindor of Nargothrond, an escaped prisoner of war. Gwindor led Beleg to the Orcs' camp. There, in a terrible thunderstorm, Beleg, with skilled and stealthy archery, killed the Orcs. When Beleg freed Turin of his bonds, though, he cut Turin in the darkness. Turin, thinking that an Orc was assaulting him, seized Anlachel from Beleg and slew him with it. When a flash of lightning revealed to Turin that he had killed his friend, Turin grew senseless with grief.
With great difficulty Gwindor got Turin to Nargothrond. There, the Elves treated GWindor with distrust as one who had been in Morgoth's power. Turin, though, became a hero to the Elves and was honored by the king. Finduilas, the king's daughter, who had once loved Gwindor, found her heart turned against her will to Turin.
Till then the Elves of Nargothrond had been hiding from Morgoth's forces and fighting them from ambush. Turin convinced the king to turn to open war, and to bridge the river before Nargothrond's gates so that his army could easily leave it.
For a while Turin's policy brought safety to the Elves and Men of the North. During the time of safety Morwen and Nienor fled from the Easterlings to Doriath. Because, though, Turin insisted on keeping his name secret, and being known only as Dragon-Helm, his mother and sister could not learn where he was.
Morgoth, on the other hand, knew well who Dragon-Helm was, and sent against Nargothrond an army of Orcs and wolves led by Glaurung. The Elves, caught in the open, all died. Turin, protected by the Dragon-Helm's power of, barely escaped with his life. The Orcs and Glaurung sacked Nargothrond and took its women and children as prisoners to Angband.
Turin, reaching Nargothrond, tried to attack Glaurung. The Dragon, though, with the power of the evil spirit in his eyes, held Turin immobile and taunted him for leaving his mother and sister as slaves of the Easterlings while he was a lord of Nargothrond. Glaurung forced Turin to listen to Finduilas's pleas for help as the Orcs led her off to a life of slavery. Glaurung then gave Turin a terrible choice, to pursue Finduilas, or to try to rescue his mother and sister.
Turin chose to go to the Easterlings' land to save his mother and sister. Learning there that Glaurung had lied to him, and that his mother and sister were safe in Doriath, Turin slew the Easterlings' king in his own hall, then sought Finduilas. In the forest of Brethil he found her grave. To prevent her escape during an attack by the Men of Brethil, the Orcs had slain her. Turin wept on Finduilas's grave, then accepted the call of the Men of Brethil to lead them. Among them he took the name Turambar, Master of Fate.
Meanwhile, word had reached Doriath that the Dragon-Helm was Turin, and that Nargothrond was in the Dragon's power. Morwen and Nienor, with a party of Elves, went to Nargothrond to learn Turin's fate. There, Glaurung, now the Dragon-King of Nargothrond, attacked the party and killed or scattered it, except for Nienor. Glaurung, reading in her mind that she was Hurin's daughter and Turin's sister, stripped her of her memory and power of speech, and sent her off into the wild.
Nienor wandered to Finduilas's grave, where she fell senseless from hunger. There, Turambar found Nienor, a beautiful maiden in place of a beautiful maiden. When he spoke kindly to her, she was drawn to him, but wept for frustration at being unable to speak. Moved by her tears, he named her Niniel, Tear-Maiden. Not having seen her since her early childhood, he did not recognize her as his sister.
In time Turambar and Niniel married, and Niniel was with child. Glaurung, hearing news of the Black Sword that guarded Brethil, set out for there. Turambar, to guard his people, went out against Glaurung alone and sought to slay him from ambush. Catching the Dragon crossing a ravine near a waterfall, Turambar stabbed him in the belly with the blade Anlachel to its hilts. As Turambar tried to pull out the blade, the Dragon's venomous blood spurted onto him. He fell to the ground as if he were dead.
There, beside the dying Dragon, Niniel found Turambar. She bound his wound and called on him to awake, but awoke only the Dragon. Glaurung, with his last breath, told her that she was really Nienor, daughter of Hurin, and that her husband, Turambar, was really her brother, Turin. As the Dragon died, Nienor's memory returned, and she recognized her brother. In despair she flung herself over the waterfall.
When Turin awoke, he learned what the Dragon had said, and how Nienor had died. Turin flung himself onto the point of his sword. The Elves of Doriath, learning of his fate, called his torment the worst of all of Morgoth's deeds. It was whispered that Turin did not pass beyond the world, but waited in the Halls of Mandos for the Great End, when he would deal Morgoth his deathstroke.
The Parallels
Dark fantasy is no new thing. Tolkien wrote a fine example of it over eighty years ago.
The Tale of Turin Turamabar, another of Tolkien's oldest works, is again mainly pagan in origin. It owes most to the story of Kullervo in the Finnish epic, The Kalevala. Kullervo, like Turin, unwittingly mated with his sister, and suffered a terrible doom for the sin of incest. Turin's story also has overtones, in terms of unwitting incest, of the Greek tragedy, Oedipus Rex, and, in terms of tragic lovers committing suicide, of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The Dwarf, Mim, and the Dragon, Glaurung, owe much to characters of the Norse saga of the Volsungs and the German epic, The Nibelungenlied. The deeds of Mim and Glaurung will play a major role in the next of Tolkien's Tales, The Necklace of the Dwarves.
Turin Turambar, though, does have parallels to two of the Bible's tragic figures, Samson (Judges 13-16) and King Saul of Israel (I Samuel 9-31). Like both men, Turin has gifts of physical prowess and courage beyond those of ordinary men, and is his people's deliverer. Like both men, though, Turin is also proud, impulsive, and vengeful. Like both men, too, Turin is destroyed by a fatal flaw in his character, the essence of tragedy. As Samson is destroyed by his lust for Delilah, and Saul is destroyed by his fear of David and his superstitious trust in the witch of Endor, Turin is destroyed by his blind trust in his own destiny as a peerless warrior.
Finally, like both Samson and Saul, Turin dies by his own hand. For Tolkien as a devout Roman Catholic, Nienor's and Turin's suicides would have been terrible deeds. He would've known that in the Bible just four men, all outside God's will -- Saul (I Samuel 31:4-6), Ahithophel (II Samuel 17:23), Zimri (I Kings 16:18), and Judas Iscariot (Matthew 27:3-5) -- had killed themselves. Samson's death at his own hands (Judges 16:25-30), in which he slew a multitude of Israel's enemies, the Philistines, falls into a gray area between suicide and honorable death in battle, and is worthy of discussion in itself in light of modern instances of one's killing oneself to kill one's enemies.
Roman Catholicism has taught that suicide is a mortal sin for two reasons. First, it is murder, the unjustified taking of life in God's image (Genesis 1:26-27; 9:5-6). Second, it is despair, hope's final rejection. As the mortal sin of suicide leaves no chance for the Church to grant absolution in this world, it must lead to final separation from God in the world to come.
Other Christian traditions, by no means encouraging suicide, recognize that a person covered by God's grace might, through special circumstances in one's life that overwhelm one's ability to endure, take one's own life, yet be received into God's presence in the world to come. Such traditions believe that God's grace can forgive every sin except that of blaspheming the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:31-32).
In Nienor and Turin's case, the special circumstance that drives them to suicide is guilty knowledge of their having committed incest. Brother-sister matings horrified the pagan Finns (The Kalevala) just as much as mother-son matings horrified the pagan Greeks (Oedipus Rex). In neither society would Nienor and Turin's ignorance of their incest have freed them of guilt. The Law of Moses, too, condemned mother-son and brother-sister matings and judged them worthy of death if committed willfully (Leviticus 16:6-9; 20:10-17). Incest appears in Scripture in the account of King David's chidren, Amnon and Tamar (II Samuel 13:1-29). Tamar's rape by her brother Amnon, and Amnon's death at the hands of his and Tamar's brother Absalom, set in motion a cycle of suffering for David's family with devastating consequences for it.
The tale of Nienor and Turin, then, reflects both a pagan and a pre-Christian view of justice. Under the Christian Law of Love (Romans 13:8-10; I John 4:7-12), however, one who is guilty of incest can, like any other sinner, turn from his sin to serve Christ, and be received into the fellowship of the Church (I Corinthians 6:9-11; 5:1-5; II Corinthians 2:3-11).
Finally, Glaurung is yet another of Tolkien's Satan-figures. Although he comes from Fafnir, the Dragon of The Volsunga Saga and The Nibelungenlied, Glaurung, in his role as destroyer, deceiver, and tormentor, is a type of Satan as the Great Dragon (Revelation 20:2-3). In one respect, Glaurung is the worst of Tolkien's Satan-figures. Whereas Morgoth's and Sauron's cruelty is often impersonal, a matter of policy, Glaurung inflicts his cruelty on his victims face to face out of a clear desire to make them suffer. Glaurung is thus like Satan as "a roaring lion ... seeking whom he may devour" (I Peter 5:8-9).
The Story
After Beren and Luthien had stolen the Silmaril from Morgoth, King Fingon of the Noldor and Feanor's sons felt that they might take Angband. They formed an alliance of Elves, Dwarves, and Men to attack Morgoth. The Elves of Nargothrond and Doriath, though, angry with Feanor's sons for their ill-treatment of Beren and Luthien, stayed home.
In the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, the alliance was betrayed by the men of the East, who would later fight for Sauron in the War of the Rings. The faithful Elves, Dwarves, and Men fell to an army of Balrogs, Orcs, and wolves, led by the Dragon Glaurung.
The leader of the faithful men in the battle was Hurin, of the House of Beor, to which Beren belonged. Hurin had once gone to the hidden city of Gondolin. Capturing Hurin, Morgoth tried to make him betray the hidden city. When Hurin refused to, Morgoth chained him to Thangorodrim and cursed him to watch through a Vala's eyes the grief that would befall his family.
Hurin had left at home his wife, Morwen, pregnant at the time, and a young son, Turin. Morgoth gave the Easterlings the lands that had once belonged to the House of Beor. The Easterlings feared Morwen, whom they suspected of being an Elvish witch. She gave birth to a daughter, Nienor. The life of Morwen, Turin, and Nienor was miserable, both from the loss of Hurin and from the Easterlings' evil behavior.
After a while Morwen sent Turin for fostering by King Thingol of Doriath. Turin begged his mother to come with him. She refused, hoping that Hurin would still return to her. In Doriath, Thingol became a mighty warrior against the Orcs. He wore a dragon-helmet, an heirloom of the House of Beor.
One of Thingol's Elves envied Turin his honor from the king. When Turin came home unkempt from the woods one day, the Elf asked him whether his mother was as wild as he was. Turin, responding to the Elf's insult, inadvertently caused his death and, fearing the King's vengeance, fled Doriath.
In the wild Turin became an outlaw, leading a band of Men and Elves against all around them. In Doriath, though, Thingol, learning the truth of the Elf's death, pardoned Turin and sent an Elvish warrior named Beleg to find him. Turin, from pride, refused Thingol's pardon and convinced Beleg to join the band. Thereafter it fought only Orcs.
When Beleg returned to Doriath to give Thingol news of Turin, Turin sought a new stronghold. After meeting a Dwarf named Mim and killing Mim's son, Turin agreed to spare Mim's life in exchange for shelter in the Dwarf's caves. There, Turin became a terror to Morgoth's Orcs. There, in time, Beleg returned, bearing from Doriath the Dragon-Helm and Anglachel, a black sword of meteoric iron.
One day, while Beleg was scouting, Mim went into the woods to gather herbs and was seized by Orcs. To save his life, he offered to lead them to Turin's lair. Turin's men were killed; he himself was captured. The Orcs, fearing no pursuit, took him slowly on to Angband.
Beleg, returning to the caves, learned of Mim's betrayal and set out in pursuit of the Orcs. On the road he met a bent and broken Elf, Gwindor of Nargothrond, an escaped prisoner of war. Gwindor led Beleg to the Orcs' camp. There, in a terrible thunderstorm, Beleg, with skilled and stealthy archery, killed the Orcs. When Beleg freed Turin of his bonds, though, he cut Turin in the darkness. Turin, thinking that an Orc was assaulting him, seized Anlachel from Beleg and slew him with it. When a flash of lightning revealed to Turin that he had killed his friend, Turin grew senseless with grief.
With great difficulty Gwindor got Turin to Nargothrond. There, the Elves treated GWindor with distrust as one who had been in Morgoth's power. Turin, though, became a hero to the Elves and was honored by the king. Finduilas, the king's daughter, who had once loved Gwindor, found her heart turned against her will to Turin.
Till then the Elves of Nargothrond had been hiding from Morgoth's forces and fighting them from ambush. Turin convinced the king to turn to open war, and to bridge the river before Nargothrond's gates so that his army could easily leave it.
For a while Turin's policy brought safety to the Elves and Men of the North. During the time of safety Morwen and Nienor fled from the Easterlings to Doriath. Because, though, Turin insisted on keeping his name secret, and being known only as Dragon-Helm, his mother and sister could not learn where he was.
Morgoth, on the other hand, knew well who Dragon-Helm was, and sent against Nargothrond an army of Orcs and wolves led by Glaurung. The Elves, caught in the open, all died. Turin, protected by the Dragon-Helm's power of, barely escaped with his life. The Orcs and Glaurung sacked Nargothrond and took its women and children as prisoners to Angband.
Turin, reaching Nargothrond, tried to attack Glaurung. The Dragon, though, with the power of the evil spirit in his eyes, held Turin immobile and taunted him for leaving his mother and sister as slaves of the Easterlings while he was a lord of Nargothrond. Glaurung forced Turin to listen to Finduilas's pleas for help as the Orcs led her off to a life of slavery. Glaurung then gave Turin a terrible choice, to pursue Finduilas, or to try to rescue his mother and sister.
Turin chose to go to the Easterlings' land to save his mother and sister. Learning there that Glaurung had lied to him, and that his mother and sister were safe in Doriath, Turin slew the Easterlings' king in his own hall, then sought Finduilas. In the forest of Brethil he found her grave. To prevent her escape during an attack by the Men of Brethil, the Orcs had slain her. Turin wept on Finduilas's grave, then accepted the call of the Men of Brethil to lead them. Among them he took the name Turambar, Master of Fate.
Meanwhile, word had reached Doriath that the Dragon-Helm was Turin, and that Nargothrond was in the Dragon's power. Morwen and Nienor, with a party of Elves, went to Nargothrond to learn Turin's fate. There, Glaurung, now the Dragon-King of Nargothrond, attacked the party and killed or scattered it, except for Nienor. Glaurung, reading in her mind that she was Hurin's daughter and Turin's sister, stripped her of her memory and power of speech, and sent her off into the wild.
Nienor wandered to Finduilas's grave, where she fell senseless from hunger. There, Turambar found Nienor, a beautiful maiden in place of a beautiful maiden. When he spoke kindly to her, she was drawn to him, but wept for frustration at being unable to speak. Moved by her tears, he named her Niniel, Tear-Maiden. Not having seen her since her early childhood, he did not recognize her as his sister.
In time Turambar and Niniel married, and Niniel was with child. Glaurung, hearing news of the Black Sword that guarded Brethil, set out for there. Turambar, to guard his people, went out against Glaurung alone and sought to slay him from ambush. Catching the Dragon crossing a ravine near a waterfall, Turambar stabbed him in the belly with the blade Anlachel to its hilts. As Turambar tried to pull out the blade, the Dragon's venomous blood spurted onto him. He fell to the ground as if he were dead.
There, beside the dying Dragon, Niniel found Turambar. She bound his wound and called on him to awake, but awoke only the Dragon. Glaurung, with his last breath, told her that she was really Nienor, daughter of Hurin, and that her husband, Turambar, was really her brother, Turin. As the Dragon died, Nienor's memory returned, and she recognized her brother. In despair she flung herself over the waterfall.
When Turin awoke, he learned what the Dragon had said, and how Nienor had died. Turin flung himself onto the point of his sword. The Elves of Doriath, learning of his fate, called his torment the worst of all of Morgoth's deeds. It was whispered that Turin did not pass beyond the world, but waited in the Halls of Mandos for the Great End, when he would deal Morgoth his deathstroke.
The Parallels
Dark fantasy is no new thing. Tolkien wrote a fine example of it over eighty years ago.
The Tale of Turin Turamabar, another of Tolkien's oldest works, is again mainly pagan in origin. It owes most to the story of Kullervo in the Finnish epic, The Kalevala. Kullervo, like Turin, unwittingly mated with his sister, and suffered a terrible doom for the sin of incest. Turin's story also has overtones, in terms of unwitting incest, of the Greek tragedy, Oedipus Rex, and, in terms of tragic lovers committing suicide, of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The Dwarf, Mim, and the Dragon, Glaurung, owe much to characters of the Norse saga of the Volsungs and the German epic, The Nibelungenlied. The deeds of Mim and Glaurung will play a major role in the next of Tolkien's Tales, The Necklace of the Dwarves.
Turin Turambar, though, does have parallels to two of the Bible's tragic figures, Samson (Judges 13-16) and King Saul of Israel (I Samuel 9-31). Like both men, Turin has gifts of physical prowess and courage beyond those of ordinary men, and is his people's deliverer. Like both men, though, Turin is also proud, impulsive, and vengeful. Like both men, too, Turin is destroyed by a fatal flaw in his character, the essence of tragedy. As Samson is destroyed by his lust for Delilah, and Saul is destroyed by his fear of David and his superstitious trust in the witch of Endor, Turin is destroyed by his blind trust in his own destiny as a peerless warrior.
Finally, like both Samson and Saul, Turin dies by his own hand. For Tolkien as a devout Roman Catholic, Nienor's and Turin's suicides would have been terrible deeds. He would've known that in the Bible just four men, all outside God's will -- Saul (I Samuel 31:4-6), Ahithophel (II Samuel 17:23), Zimri (I Kings 16:18), and Judas Iscariot (Matthew 27:3-5) -- had killed themselves. Samson's death at his own hands (Judges 16:25-30), in which he slew a multitude of Israel's enemies, the Philistines, falls into a gray area between suicide and honorable death in battle, and is worthy of discussion in itself in light of modern instances of one's killing oneself to kill one's enemies.
Roman Catholicism has taught that suicide is a mortal sin for two reasons. First, it is murder, the unjustified taking of life in God's image (Genesis 1:26-27; 9:5-6). Second, it is despair, hope's final rejection. As the mortal sin of suicide leaves no chance for the Church to grant absolution in this world, it must lead to final separation from God in the world to come.
Other Christian traditions, by no means encouraging suicide, recognize that a person covered by God's grace might, through special circumstances in one's life that overwhelm one's ability to endure, take one's own life, yet be received into God's presence in the world to come. Such traditions believe that God's grace can forgive every sin except that of blaspheming the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:31-32).
In Nienor and Turin's case, the special circumstance that drives them to suicide is guilty knowledge of their having committed incest. Brother-sister matings horrified the pagan Finns (The Kalevala) just as much as mother-son matings horrified the pagan Greeks (Oedipus Rex). In neither society would Nienor and Turin's ignorance of their incest have freed them of guilt. The Law of Moses, too, condemned mother-son and brother-sister matings and judged them worthy of death if committed willfully (Leviticus 16:6-9; 20:10-17). Incest appears in Scripture in the account of King David's chidren, Amnon and Tamar (II Samuel 13:1-29). Tamar's rape by her brother Amnon, and Amnon's death at the hands of his and Tamar's brother Absalom, set in motion a cycle of suffering for David's family with devastating consequences for it.
The tale of Nienor and Turin, then, reflects both a pagan and a pre-Christian view of justice. Under the Christian Law of Love (Romans 13:8-10; I John 4:7-12), however, one who is guilty of incest can, like any other sinner, turn from his sin to serve Christ, and be received into the fellowship of the Church (I Corinthians 6:9-11; 5:1-5; II Corinthians 2:3-11).
Finally, Glaurung is yet another of Tolkien's Satan-figures. Although he comes from Fafnir, the Dragon of The Volsunga Saga and The Nibelungenlied, Glaurung, in his role as destroyer, deceiver, and tormentor, is a type of Satan as the Great Dragon (Revelation 20:2-3). In one respect, Glaurung is the worst of Tolkien's Satan-figures. Whereas Morgoth's and Sauron's cruelty is often impersonal, a matter of policy, Glaurung inflicts his cruelty on his victims face to face out of a clear desire to make them suffer. Glaurung is thus like Satan as "a roaring lion ... seeking whom he may devour" (I Peter 5:8-9).
posted by Alfred D. Byrd at 12:45 PM
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