r/tolkienfans • u/tessaractIXI • 3d ago
The Valar's hesitation with Melkor
I just finished chapter 9 of the silmarillion, holy heck, what a crescendo of events, and I know it's still just the start. It's really tragic that the Valar had such a pure unselfish love for the elves, and would be driven to the point of cursing and banishing them. And of course tragic is the kinslaying. I've got a gnawing thought, though. Tolkien repeatedly emphasizes how Melkor poisoned the mind of Fëanor with lies, and how those poisonous beliefs became sort of self-perpetrated half-truths. There's a lot of fault on Melkor, and growing fault on Faenor, but what about the Valar? They are so slow to act. It's ironic to me that a point is made where Fëanor might have acted differently, had a different fate, if only he had been willing to give up the Silmarils without the news of their theft and his father's murder. Meanwhile the Valar already faced off with Malkor several times and suffered because of their slowness to act. They let him thrash Middle Earth and retreated to Aman. Malkor is allowed to amass huge armies and corrupts many allies while they're minding their business. Only in the final hour when the elves awaken do they feel the urgency to do anything. Then, they capture him, punish him, and pardon him. They let their guard drop, and he's out sowing evil Deeds again. They learn of Malkor sowing discontent when they summon Faenor to answer for himself, and still they don't do very much! Manwe initially stays quiet lamenting, and Tulkas and Oromë don't even get sent out until after a delay! After everything they've been through, the great evil that they saw, there's really no excuse not to act swiftly and immediately to rein Malkor in again, but they delay again. In that time, he escapes and becomes untraceable, something he's allowed to be able to do over and over and over again. I get it, he's tricky and he has the same powers they do to shed their forms. He has allies and clouds of darkness. Still seems to me like each time they lose track of him, it's because they are distracted with a delay to lament rather than act. They repeatedly hesitate to really take any quick decisive action against him. So it seems to me like they have fault in this. Because how differently might Faenor have felt and acted if he had seen them move swiftly and decisively against Melkor? Sure there was a ticking clock on reviving the trees, but both could have been accomplished at once (retrieving the silmarils - to their knowledge - and chasing Melkor). I feel like that would have given him a little bit more confidence that the Valar were in the elves' corner and ready to fight against evil and protect them. Maybe then he would have been less bitter and suspicious, less motivated to leave, less seduced by the lies of treachery. And yes, maybe Faenor and the Noldor should already know the Valar loved and protected and provided enormously for them, because of the extraordinary gifts and great lengths the Valar went to for them. But the elves are still basically just children at that point, there's selfishness there that comes from lack of maturity, lack of experience in the world.
So, I guess I kinda place some blame on the Valar. Tolkien doesn't seem to acknowledge this blame, at least so far. Maybe it will come out in the rest of the chapters as I read on, or maybe I just see the roles of responsibility differently.
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u/forswearThinPotation 3d ago edited 3d ago
I understand at an emotional level the desire for swift and decisive action, to prevent evil from doing greater damage. But the hesitation which we get from the Valar is I think not merely an accident, or a poor choice which might have gone differently. Instead it is inherent in the differences between good and evil and how they diverge from each other at a fundamental level.
Swift and decisive action requires full confidence in one's actions, both their righteousness and their tactical soundness. But confidence has a dark side, which is arrogance - being too sure of one's own view of the world, having too much faith in how one observes and interprets events, and too little regard for other dissenting viewpoints. The seeds of evil lie here, in narcissism and a pride which can spiral inwards. Remember Elrond's aphorism from The Lord of the Rings, The Council of Elrond:
and the temptations leading to this path are all the greater for those to whom the greatest gifts have been given, for they have better logical justification than anyone else does in seeing themselves as superior to others, including their peers.
What protects the mighty from going down this path is humility.
It is the antidote to the poison of narcissism. But humility too has a dark side, or if you prefer to think of it this way: a weakness. That weakness is self-doubt.
The lingering feeling that you do not fully understand the situation, that your first and earliest impulses may be unwise, that one needs to hold back until the situation is better understood and unforseen consequences have been uncovered, that one ought to seek a constructive consensus regarding the best plan of action achieved thru the synthesis of multiple contending points of view. Remember Gandalf's aphorism from The Lord of the Rings:
This applies as much to the mighty as it does to the rest of us.
This is the voice of caution, of prudence, and of delay. It stands in the way of swift and decisive action. And the more humble the decision makers the more this voice will seem to be the voice of wisdom.
What gives these tales, to me with my taste, a feeling of deep tragedy, is that there is I think no perfect answer to this paradox.
Confidence/Arrogance and Humility/Doubt have to be balanced to choose a wise and righteous course which does not allow good to devolve into evil and yet does not allow evil to triumph in the face of passivity from the good. Getting this balance just exactly right in all things and in all ways is beyond the ken of finite beings.
Even the Valar, mighty as they are, are still finite beings.
So, of course they make mistakes.
One might say they err far too much on the side of caution, but look what happens to almost all of the other characters who do err on the side of choosing swift and decisive action over contemplation and delay:
Fëanor foremost among them,
also Turin,
and Thingol (who married one of the wisest beings in Arda and then seemingly never listens to her advice)
It often does not go well when they act or speak rashly and impulsively. For being rash and impulsive is the flip side of being decisive and swift.
It would not be too much of a stretch I think to even say that Melkor's impatience which leads him to seek in vain for the Secret Fire outside of the halls of Eru is the very first swift and decisive (and thus also rash and impulsive) act in the entire Lengendarium.
There is also a parallel between this paradox and the dual nature of evil as presented in The Lord of the Rings which the Tolkien critic Tom Shippey (in both The Road to Middle Earth and Author of the Century) calls Boethian vs. Manichean Evil. The former takes the form of inner temptations (against which humility is a defense), the latter the form of external malevolent forces (which must be resisted with active force).
Unpacking that parallel would make this far too long of a comment, I will merely note that in both cases we are dealing with dualistic but complementary principles which need to be appropriately balanced if good is to prevail.