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The question of what's fated in our lives versus what we're free to choose is very important and possibly as old as human culture itself. The answers developed in mythologies, philosophies, and religions run the gamut from "everything is free will and nothing is fated" to its opposite. What is of most interest in terms of Tolkien's myths is the gray area in between the action being carried by a character's will rather than his circumstances and the time in which he either fulfills or overcomes his destiny.
As in many traditional myths, sometimes Tolkien's characters seem positively carried away by fate, helpless and hopeless before the onslaught of a destiny not altogether of their own making. These characters — such as the Elf-lord Fëanor and the mortal Túrin Turambar ("Master of Doom") — are tragic heroes. They contrast with the successful, mythic heroes who fulfill a greater destiny for which they seem uniquely fashioned.
Who can say whether Tolkien's tragic heroes are more controlled by outside forces and exercise less free will than the non-tragic ones? It may be instead that his tragic heroes exercise their wills a little bit too freely, that is, in ways that run counter to their "greater" destinies and actually play into the hands of more constrained or tragic fates. If so, ironically they are in a way more tightly controlled than successful heroes, who freely match their wills to the greater destinies in which they participate.
Between what will be and what shall be
First off, Anglo-Saxon (Old English) makes a distinction between the concepts of what will be and what shall be. In modern English, these verbs are not well differentiated. To us, "I will do it" and "I shall do it" say the same thing. But in Old English, the former statement would mean "I want or intend to perform this action" whereas the latter meant "I ought or find it necessary to perform this action."
In Old English, the verb willan — from which we get both the noun will, as in "free will," and the auxiliary verb will, as in "you will go" — meant "to be willing" or "to wish." The verb sculan — from which we derive the auxiliary verb shall, as in "you shall not steal" — meant "ought," "to be necessary," or even "must be." The difference, although subtle or nonexistent to our ears, is significant when considering fate and free will in Tolkien, for often what a character wants to do (will do) is not at all what he ought to do (shall do).
A couple of other terms that often pop up in Tolkien's stories about fate and free will can use some explanation: the seemingly synonymous words doom and fate. Doom (spelled dôm in Old English) had not just the modern connotation of "bad fortune" and "disaster," but also "judgment." This is seen clearly in the term dômdaeg ("Doom's Day"), the Old English way of saying "Judgment Day," as in the Last Judgment of the New Testament. Interestingly enough, it also occurs in the term dômgeorn, literally "doom eager," which was an adjective that meant "eager for praise or glory" — a commodity for which all heroes in literature are quite willing (if not able).
Although we use fate (from the Latin fatus, meaning "that which is spoken") to mean destiny, the Old English term for destiny is still with us, though with a very different connotation: weird. Spelled wyrd in Old English and meaning "fate," "chance," and "destiny," this term is related to the past tense of weorÞan, meaning "to become" and to the Latin vertere, meaning "to turn" (as in revert, to "turn back," and invert, to "turn inward"). In days of yore when you referred to the old weird woman, you meant the soothsayer — she who saw your fate and predicted your future (what will be and what shall be) — and not some old kook. Of course, because many a soothsayer may have been on the odd side, to the say the least, you can see how weird has come to denote the "strange," "odd," or even "cracked" (isn't that totally weird?).
The problem with the term doom in Tolkien is that it doesn't always mean "bad fortune" or "disaster" as we naturally think of it. Tolkien used it whenever a judgment — good or bad — was involved. Thus, the circle where the Valar sit in judgment was Máhanaxar, the "Ring of Doom," without meaning that they only made pronouncements of death and catastrophe. Understanding this helps make sense of a line in the love story of Beren and Lúthien: When Lúthien first looked on Beren, "doom fell upon her," and she instantly loved him. Here, Tolkien probably meant that she made a very favorable judgment about him and then fell head-over-heels in love. Tolkien certainly didn't mean that the moment she laid eyes on him a catastrophe struck her up the side of the head, but she went ahead and loved him anyhow. (The great thing about this use of doom is that both meanings are implicit — whereas Lúthien is aware only of her decision to love Beren, the reader is aware of how this decision also sealed her fate of living a mortal life.)
Understanding doom more in its "judgment" sense rather than its "disaster" sense also lends a new understanding to Mount Doom, the volcano where Sauron's Ring was forged and the only place it can be destroyed. As much "Mount Judgment" as "Mount Misfortune," it is a place of trial and testing for our hobbit heroes (especially Frodo) as well as downfall (especially for poor Gollum).
Fate personified
In Greek and Norse mythology, fate was personified as three sisters. For the Greeks, the fates were called the Moîrai (the "Apportioners," or the Furies):
- Klotho ("Spinner") spun the thread of one's life at its beginning.
- Atrophos ("Unbending" or "Unchanging") wove the thread of one's life into a tapestry recounting its actions.
- Lachesis ("Allotter") cut the thread of one's life at its end.
In Norse mythology, these three sisters were known as the Norns:
- Urd ("Fate," related to wyrd in Old English) was old and decrepit and focused her one-eyed gaze backward on the past.
- Verdandi ("Being") was young and fearless and fixed her gaze on what was right before her.
- Skuld ("Necessity"), heavily veiled and inscrutable, turned toward the opposite direction of her sister Urd and held an unopened scroll.
For the Greeks and the Norse, the Three Fates were not subject to the will of the gods — though sometimes the gods were able to sway their judgments a wee bit. Also, by profession, both sets of sisters were weavers or spinners of cloth that told the story of one's birth, exploits, and death (the Moîrai spun their threads into cloth on a loom, whereas the Norns spun theirs into webs).
Tolkien used this image in The Silmarillion for the Vala Vairë, "the Weaver" and the spouse of Mandos (also known as Námo, "the Doomsman"). It is Vairë who weaves all the events that have ever taken place into storied webs that cover the halls in the Houses of the Dead.
While Vairë records the fate of all beings, her mate Mandos actually prophesies the fate of others. The most important example is the so-called Prophesy of the North, also affectionately known as the Doom of the Noldor, by which Mandos predicted the dire fate of the rebellious Elves under Fëanor's command. This was, however, as close as Tolkien got to personifying fate. His Christian sensibilities may have prevented him from finding any place for the Three Fates in Middle-earth, though he was surely familiar with their influence in the mythologies on which his "modern" myths depended.
The power of the curse
This element is found especially in those featuring a tragic hero who is trapped into fulfilling a doom (in both senses of judgment and catastrophe) that he doesn't intend: the good old-fashioned curse.
The word curse has two complementary meanings: a prayer or invocation for harm to befall one's enemies (also known as an imprecation) and the evil or misfortune that befalls another (known as the cursed) seemingly as a result of such an imprecation. Though Tolkien did not go in for personifying fate (a job better left to God in his estimation), he was fairly big on curses.
The most significant curses occur in The Silmarillion in the myths of Fëanor and Túrin Turambar. In the story of Fëanor, it was the Curse of Mandos on the Noldor that drove the tale. Mandos issued the curse in response to Fëanor's leading his people in rebellion against the Valar and to the Kinslaying of the Teleri at Alqualondë. In the story of Túrin, Morgoth's curse on the entire family of Húrin (Túrin's father) drove the tale.
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