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Pithy TLDR:

"Fëanor did Nothing Wrong!" says Freud.
"But his sons certainly did!" says Sartre.

Tolkien's House of Fëanor Through Sartre and Freud:
Truly Free or Already Determined?

Introduction

In J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, the primary narrative revolves around the actions of a singular house of elves, and their choices or lack thereof, to rebel and fight against the gods and other beings in Tolkien's Middle Earth. In many circles, the primary figure who instigates the rebellion is seen nearly as evil as Tolkien's Satan figure himself, and the seven sons that follow him are often lumped into this category as well. Sartre and Freud offer compelling counterarguments to one another on the existence of free will. Sartre argues that all men are free in all circumstances, while Freud believes in causal determinism, that the events one experiences determine what choices an individual can and will make. In The Silmarillion, and specifically as seen through the elven House of Fëanor, I argue that both Sartre and Freud's arguments on freedom in decision making have merit. Alone they have only pieces of the puzzle. It is only when both Sartre and Freud are applied to Tolkien's The Silmarillion that they explain how Fëanor and his seven sons could commit egregious crimes in the name of an Oath sworn in haste to their God.

I. Tolkien's Quenta Silmarillion

The fantasy book The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien is a collection of several stories set in Tolkien's legendarium. It is a prequel of sorts to both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, taking place between the creation of the world until the start of the Third Age, where both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set. The largest and most developed of the stories within The Silmarillion is known simply as the Quenta Silmarillion, and is the story from which the book gets its name. It follows the royal house of the Noldorin elves, the House of Finwë, and their rise and fall in the elven paradise of Valinor and in Middle-Earth, the primary land where the other books are set.

The House of Finwë is subdivided into three more houses for each of the sons of the High King Finwë: the House of Fëanor, the House of Fingolfin, and the House of Finarfin. Their deeds, both good and evil, are what drive the narrative of the Quenta Silmarillion. For this paper, the House of Fëanor is most relevant.

It is from Fëanor, eldest son of Finwë, that the book gets its name. In the bliss of Valinor he creates three holy gems, the Silmarils, which contain the light of the Two Trees, a proto-sun and moon. Fëanor is the mightiest of all elven kind, blessed with skill and beauty, but his story is intertwined with the death of his mother when he was extremely young. His father's quick marriage to another elf, Indis, and then the birth of their two sons, cause Fëanor to form a bitter rivalry with his kindred. He goes so far as to threaten his middle half-brother, Fingolfin, resulting in his banishment for many years.

When Morgoth, Tolkien's equivalent to the Christian Satan, comes back to Valinor and destroys all the light, Fëanor is asked to hand over the Silmarils so that Yavanna, one of Tolkien's godlike beings, can restore the Two Trees. He refuses, and when word reaches them that the Silmarils were stolen and King Finwë slain by Morgoth, he and his seven sons swear an oath to retrieve them and exact their revenge, no matter the cost:

They swore an oath which none shall break, and none should take, by the name even of Iluvatar, calling the Everlasting Dark upon them if they kept it not; and Manwë they named in witness, and Varda, and the hallowed mountain of Taniquetil, 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. (Tolkien 90)

Over the course of the Quenta Silmarillion, Fëanor and his seven sons commit various atrocities including three "kinslayings" where the participants attack and kill large groups of elves in pursuit of the jewels. It is the Oath of Fëanor that binds the entire history of Middle Earth together, and the choices made by Fëanor and his seven sons in fulfilment of it. Because the Oath of Fëanor swore upon Iluvatar, Tolkien's version of a singular creator-god, the Oath is something that the elves believe cannot be broken: "...many quailed to hear the dread words. For so sworn, good or evil, an oath may not be broken, and it shall pursue oathkeeper and oathbreaker to the world's end" (Tolkien 83). Thanks to the Oath and the rebellion they led that followed, the House of Fëanor is often considered directly responsible for the evil that occurs in the Quenta Silmarillion. The question of whether they freely choose their deeds, however, is a more complicated matter, something which Sartre and Freud would have very different opinions on.

II. Sartre and Absolute Free Will

Born in Paris in 1905, French Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most famous members of the existentialist movement. He was an atheistic existentialist philosopher, believing there to be no God, and this in turn influenced each aspect of his philosophy. With the absence of God or a universal, moral truth, Sartre placed humans and humanity at large at the forefront of everything. In his seminal work Being and Nothingness, written during the Nazi occupation of France, he examined the concept of free will in human nature.

For Sartre, free will is absolute. There is no circumstance where we are not free to make a choice. For example, let us examine two scenarios: The first is simple. Imagine that Sally's favorite food is apple pie. At Thanksgiving dinner, Sally is presented with two different desserts: apple pie and chocolate cake. As her favorite food is apple pie, she chooses this one from the two set before her. In this example, it is easy to see that Sally is free to make her choice. But Sartre argues that even in much higher stake circumstances, we have the free will to choose.

For the second scenario, imagine that instead of being a guest at a Thanksgiving meal, Sally finds herself the victim of a crime. The criminal pulls a gun and points it at her, telling her she is going to be shot. According to Sartre, Sally is still free to choose. She can choose either to die resisting, or to die passive. Sally still retains the free will that is an intrinsic part of Sartre's view of human nature. "Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself," (Abel 315) Sartre says, highlighting this very fact. Existentialism teaches that humans come as a blank slate, and it is through the choices they make that they form identities. Sartre summarizes this part of existentialist theory through a simple statement: that existence precedes essence (Abel 316-318).

There are several major ideas that Sartre puts forth which are relevant to his reading of The Silmarillion. First are the related concepts of anguish, forlornness, and despair. In describing these three concepts, Sartre explains that existentialism's view of absolute free will carries with it a heavy burden of knowledge that each person is responsible for every choice that they make. "And when we say that a man is responsible for himself, we do not only mean that he is responsible for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men" (Abel 316). For Sartre, there is no fundamental difference between a choice made by an ordinary person and a choice made by a public figure. Every action by every individual has the potential to suggest a decision another could make. If Sally survives being shot in the hostage situation and decides to become a street vigilante, she must consider the possibility of every human being also becoming a street vigilante and disregarding legal justice.

Forlornness is the natural continuation of anguish from Sartre's Atheistic existentialism. The lack of a god or gods means that humans are responsible for their choices themselves. This absolute free will is often burdensome. "That is the idea I shall try to convey when I say that man is condemned to be free: condemned, because he did not create himself, yet, in other respects is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does" (Abel 318). To be aware of one's free will is to recognize that there is no one else to blame. If Sally becomes a vigilante and is caught, she cannot point to a god or even another human as the direct cause of her disregard of rule of law. Instead, Sally alone must own up to her choice to fight crime alone instead of pursuing a legal solution.

Sartre's concept of despair combines the previous two concepts. "As for despair, the term has a very simple meaning. It means that we shall confine ourselves to reckoning only with what depends upon our will, or on the ensemble of probabilities which make our action possible," (Abel 321). When making decisions, Sally cannot rely on predicting what others will do. She cannot control them, as they are free as well. Instead, she must focus on what she controls directly: her own choice of whether to become a vigilante to fight crime herself, or to pursue justice in a different manner such as the court system.

Related to these three concepts is bad faith. Sartre uses the term bad faith to explain what happens when someone lives their life refusing to acknowledge their absolute free will. It is dishonesty to themselves. If Sally were to become a vigilante and, when arrested, point to the criminal who shot her to say, "he forced me into this life," then she would be living in bad faith, rejecting anguish, forlornness, and despair. This concept is important to Sartre's interpretation of the events of the Quenta Silmarillion.

III. Sartre and the House of Fëanor

The belief in absolute free will is central to Sartre's philosophy. Though an atheistic existentialist, Sartre did not believe that his theories were there to disprove the existence of God, but rather, that the existence of God had zero bearing on the relevance of his theories (Abel 328). Sartre would therefore look at the Oath of Fëanor as mere words.
In Tolkien's world the existence of God is very real, as are the angelic god-like beings beneath Iluvatar known as the Valar. Nonetheless, it is each elf that chooses for himself how to act. Fëanor chooses to rebel. His sons choose to follow him. Their elves choose to join them. For Sartre, the Valar's response to the Oath, known later as the Doom of Mandos, cannot possibly be a prophecy that brings about what it speaks of, but perhaps a warning:

Tears unnumbered ye shall shed ... On the House of Fëanor the wrath of the Valar lieth from the West unto the uttermost East, and upon all that will follow them it shall be laid also. Their Oath shall drive them, and yet betray them, and ever snatch away the very treasures that they have sworn to pursue. To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well; and by treason of kin unto kin, and the fear of treason, shall this come to pass ... For blood ye shall render blood... (Tolkien 88)

The Doom of Mandos would later come to fruition through several different moments during the War of the Jewels, the House of Fëanor's desperate attempt to regain the Silmarils. One example is a battle called the Nirnaeth Arnoediad in elvish. In English it translates to Unnumbered Tears, a direct reference to the first line of the Doom. The elves lost the battle in dramatic fashion with the majority of the Noldorin population killed or driven into hiding. The lines "to evil end shall all things turn that they begin well; and by treason of kin unto kin, and the fear of treason, shall this come to pass," could be seen as prophetic in the context of the Nirnaeth (Tolkien 88). Maedhros of the House of Feanor led a unified force of Noldor elves into battle, captained by his brothers and their cousins, the sons of the House of Fingolfin. However, even then they did not have enough warriors, and they reached out to another group of elves who were related to the Teleri of Valinor. Due to the kinslaying of the Teleri by the House of Fëanor, however, their king in Middle Earth would not send troops, causing the House of Fëanor to turn to Humans. The humans, terrified of death and corrupted by the enemy Morgoth, betrayed the elves as they started to gain the upper hand in battle, thus leading to an irreparable decimation of the Noldorin people (Tolkien 189-197).

On the one hand, the Doom of Mandos does seem prophetic through the lens of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. However, for Sartre, the existence of such a divine reading of the future does not preclude the free will that each elf in The Silmarillion has. The Valar may know what choices an elf makes before they happens, but they do not cause the elf to choose. Even Tolkien himself supports this understanding with a message from the Valar before the elves leave Valinor. "Against the folly of Fëanor shall by set my counsel only. Go not forth! ... No aid will the Valar lend you in this quest, by neither will they hinder you ... as ye came hither freely, freely ye shall depart" (Tolkien 85). Thus, Sartre's assertion that the existence of God does not render the truth of absolute free will void is seen in the context of Fëanor's rebellion and the ensuing Doom of Mandos, where the Valar explicitly refuse to aid or hinder the elves.

Throughout the Quenta Silmarillion, only two members of the House of Fëanor reach the end of the over five-hundred-year-long bloody war with Morgoth: Maedhros and Maglor, the two eldest sons. Sartre's concepts of anguish, forlornness, despair, and bad faith are well illustrated by these two. After three kinslayings, the loss of their kingdoms in Middle Earth, the deaths of their brothers, cousins, uncle, and father, Maedhros and Maglor find themselves debating their final course of action. The two remaining Silmarils were reclaimed by Eönwë, the chief herald of the Valar from Valinor, and he is refusing to hand them over unless Maedhros and Maglor return for judgement by the Valar.

Throughout the Quenta Silmarillion, Sartre would view the Sons of Fëanor as acting in bad faith due to their insistence that their atrocities are the result of the Oath they are seemingly incapable of breaking. They are blaming an outside influence that does not truly exist to excuse their own choices, all of which have repercussions for everyone around them. However, in their final debate, Maedhros and Maglor truly face the anguish, forlornness, and despair of being condemned to be free.

Maedhros sees no course of action but to attempt to retrieve the Silmarils while still in Middle-Earth. He still believes that he must remain faithful to the Oath, because even though Manwe and Varda, who they swore to, could release them, they have no way of speaking with Iluvatar, the One God, and thus cannot be released of their doom. "'But how shall our voices reach to Ilúvatar beyond the Circles of the World? And by Ilúvatar we swore in our madness, and called the Everlasting Darkness upon us, if we kept not our word. Who shall release us?'" (Tolkien 253). This is still bad faith, according to Sartre. Maedhros is free to choose whether he continues to kill in service of the Oath, or to stop and face judgement.

Maglor, on the other hand, does not wish to pursue the Oath. He is tired of the evils and wishes to submit. "'If none can release us,' said Maglor, 'then indeed the Everlasting Darkness shall be our lot, whether we keep our oath or break it; but less evil shall we do in the breaking'" (Tolkien 253). It is not that in choosing to forgo the oath that they will be free from judgement, but he recognizes that they are free to choose to find judgement by abandoning the Oath just as they are free to choose to face judgement upon continuing to pursue the Oath.

In the end, Maedhros convinces his brother to help him retrieve the last two Silmarils. They are fully prepared to die in service of the Oath, but Eönwë will not permit them to be killed despite their crimes and he allows them to flee. The final actions of Maedhros and Maglor perfectly illustrate Sartre's assertion that they are free to choose, even if the choices are all hard. Maedhros, the Silmaril burning his unclean hand, decides to end his life. "He perceived that ... the oath was vain. And being in anguish and despair, he cast himself into a gaping chasm filled with fire, and so ended" (Tolkien 254). Whether Tolkien purposefully used the terms anguish and despair as Sartre does is unclear. However, it is in the realization that Maedhros freely chose all his evil actions and thus is the only one responsible for himself that leads to his final choice to die with the Silmaril in his arms.

Maglor chooses differently. He also is burned by his Silmaril, and recognizing what he had previously come to believe, that he was free in his choices under the Oath, he decides to reject the Oath in the end. "And it is told of Maglor that he could not endure the pain with which the Silmaril tormented him; and he cast it at last into the Sea, and thereafter he wandered ever upon the shores, singing in pain and regret beside the waves" (Tolkien 254). His final recorded choice is to reject the Oath that in bad faith he had professed was controlling all his choices regarding the Silmarils.

Due to these final choices, Sartre would say that the elves were indeed always capable of choosing, even the House of Fëanor. They were, as he says in Being and Nothingness, condemned to be free (Abel 318). Freud, however, would read these choices differently.

IV. Freud and Melancholia

Sigmund Freud was a philosopher and psychoanalyst from what is now the Czech Republic. Born in 1856, he lived both on the European mainland and in England where he developed his theories on personality and the unconscious mind until his death in 1939. While instrumental in the development of psychiatry and the catalyst for a paradigm shift in Western thought, Freud's theories including that of dream analysis and sexuality are not often taken seriously today. His theories suffer from a lack of falsifiability. There is no way to prove him wrong, therefore, his theories cannot be truly tested. However, his influence is undeniable.

Freud's theories rely on a foundational understanding of id, ego, and superego. A proponent of causal determinism, Freud hypothesized that man is controlled by his unconscious mind, of which the id, ego, and superego play a part. For the healthy person, the three parts of the mind are balanced (Pojman 170). For the unhealthy mind, they are not.

The id is tied to the physical body. It is a force of nature within a person, wrestling and grappling with emotion, with pleasure, and often manifests a release of energy in physical movements, dreams, wishes, and desires (Pojman 171). This need to release energy and tension is an intrinsic part of the id, and something a person is entirely unaware of within themselves.

The superego is the portion of the mind that keeps law and morality. It is concerned with ethics and behavior, and manifests in ways such as the conscience (Pojman 172). The superego owes its moral regulation to experiences. If Sally grows up in a house where her parent will not tolerate crying, the superego learns that such actions are not morally permissible and will work to keep her from crying in the future. Even after Sally learns that crying is not wrong, her superego has been conditioned to believe it as such. Socialization is the key to conditioning the superego and its desire to maintain harmony around it (Pojman 172).

The ego is like the office manager of a company. Its job is to control and regulate the impulsivity of the id and the ideality of the superego (Pojman 171). Logic and reason govern the ego. Unlike the id, which Freud sees as biological and hereditary, and the superego, which is conditioned by socialization and culture, the ego comes from both, with a basis in the hereditary but conditioned by how the world around it reacts (Pojman 171). Freud's ego concept is what allows for harmony between the three portions of the mind, learning how to manage impulses in relation to what is rationally proper (Pojman 171-172).

From this trinity of concepts, Freud developed what is perhaps one of his more influential and relevant theories today: that of melancholia, mourning, and trauma. In his 1917 essay Mourning and Melancholia, Freud examines the differences in mourning from grief and melancholia, what today would be better referred to as depression or another mental disorder of similar kind. Freud sees mourning as a natural occurrence. "Mourning is regularly the reaction to the loss of a loved person, or the loss of some abstraction which has taken the place of one, such as fatherland, liberty, an ideal, and so on" (Freud 153). If we return to Sally and find that she has lost her boyfriend during an armed robbery, the grief and mourning period she would go through after, which could include sadness, anger, and despair, would finally result in acceptance and she could someday find a new boyfriend. This is Freud's mourning. For a time, the id would overtake the ego in the person in mourning. However, Freud explains that in mourning, eventually this would stop, and balance would return. "The fact is, however, that when the work of mourning is completed the ego becomes free and uninhibited again" (Freud 154). This is not the case in a person suffering from melancholia.

Melancholia operates on a much deeper, unconscious level than mourning which is a direct and logical result of a loss of a love-object. Freud explains that in melancholia, the loss can be from something that even the sufferer does not comprehend. "This would suggest that melancholia is in some way related to an unconscious loss of a love-object, in contradistinction to mourning, in which there is nothing unconscious about the loss" (Freud 155). The fact that melancholia is so tied to an unconscious desire is an example of Freud's belief in determinism. Sally is not freely choosing to suffer from melancholia.

This is especially true when Freud continues to explain that the unconscious loss of the love-object in melancholia is often not a single loss, but a series. "The occasions giving rise to melancholia for the most part extend beyond the clear case of a loss by death, and include all those situations of being wounded, hurt, neglected, out of favor, or disappointed" (Freud 161). If Sally grows up in a home where she is routinely asked to care for herself, the unconscious mind may internalize the repeated losses, thus resulting in melancholia.

Melancholia is also responsible for side effects beyond just grief. Freud highlights the fact that often it results in self-hatred, lack of interest in pleasure (which is tied back into his concept of libido as the driving force in humans), and even a hatred of that which was loved. "[The rise of melancholia] can import opposite feelings of love and hate into the relationship or reinforce an already existing ambivalence" (Freud 161). Sally, after growing up in a home where she has been neglected, may turn her love of herself into hatred. Her unconscious mind reinforces the conditioning which resulted in melancholia, and, if taken to the extremes as Freud does in his essay, could result in suicide (Freud 162-163), a sort of sadism against the self.

Sally may also turn to sadism towards others. Perhaps she begins to lash out towards her family, even those who did not neglect her. "In melancholia, that is, countless single conflicts in which love and hate wrestle together are fought for the object" (Freud 168). Because her id, ego, and superego are unbalanced from the trauma exposure throughout her childhood, Sally cannot make sense of whether to hate or to love. The imbalance leads to both, simultaneously. This is a form of unconscious conditioning, and the conditioning causes her to experience melancholia. Therefore, her choices are not freely made.

V. Freud and the House of Fëanor

If Jean-Paul Sartre's reading of the Silmarillion found promise in the sons of Fëanor, Sigmund Freud's interpretation relies heavily on Fëanor himself. Fëanor, son of Finwë, is a nearly textbook example of melancholia, loss, and the connection to narcissism. Born in the bliss of elven paradise in Valinor, he is not only crown prince of his people but is the most skilled and mighty of all elven kind. His birth, however, is marred by the willful death of his own mother, Miriel.

Tolkien's elves do not die of old age or sickness. They are bound to the world and hold a conditional immortality. If they are not killed or do not give up their own lives in weariness, they will continue to live. At the time of Fëanor's birth, no elf had ever died in Valinor. Miriel is the first.

Upon giving birth to Fëanor, Miriel feels too weary to continue. "But in the bearing of her son Míriel was consumed in spirit and body; and after his birth she yearned for release from the labours of living" (Tolkien 63). All of her strength she had given to Fëanor. Finwë, who had loved Miriel deeply, grieved her desire to be released from the living and she was sent to one of the godlike Valar for healing. It did not work, and Miriel gave up her life.

For Freud, the loss of Miriel for Fëanor and Finwë treads the line between melancholia and mourning. Finwë has a much healthier response. "Now it came to pass that Finwë took as his second wife Indis the Fair. She was a Vanya [elf], close kin of Ingwë the High King, golden-haired and tall, and in all ways unlike Míriel. Finwë loved her greatly, and was glad again" (Tolkien 65). This remarriage, however, was something that had never happened in elven kind before, and after the disaster that followed, never happened again.

Fëanor, unlike Finwë's mourning, entered a version of melancholia. The trauma of the death of his mother never left Fëanor, who spent his life in crafting and smithing to distract himself from the loss. The marriage of his father, Finwë, to Indis, was the ultimate betrayal of Miriel for Fëanor. "The wedding of his father was not pleasing to Fëanor; and he had no great love for Indis, nor for Fingolfin and Finarfin, her sons. He lived apart from them, exploring the land of Aman, or busying himself with the knowledge and the crafts in which he delighted" (Tolkien 65). The attempt to shift his love-object focus from his dead mother to a craft, jewel making, results in Fëanor having an extremely strong attachment to his creations, especially the three Silmarils, his masterpieces. The three intruders on his and his father's life, Indis and her two sons, embody the grief and trauma, while the three jewels, the Silmarils, offer an example of unstained beauty and perfection, something his family will never reach.

The strife between Fëanor and his half-brothers is one of the driving forces behind the events of the Quenta Silmarillion. Ever at odds, Fëanor spends his life while in Valinor in a mix of paranoia, narcissism, and anger. He even goes so far as to threaten his brother at sword-point, confronting him over a rumor that Fingolfin was attempting to take over the throne from Finwë, their father. When speaking of melancholia, Freud remarks, "Part of it regresses to identification, but the other part, under the influence of the conflict of ambivalence, is reduced to the stage of sadism" (Freud 162). While this pleasure from inflicting pain on others is intrinsically tied to sexual desire for Freud, a sexless version of sadism does consistently occur between Fëanor and Fingolfin's followers.

After the death of their father and the Oath they swear to pursue Morgoth in vengeance to retrieve the silmarils, Fëanor commits kinslaying against another clan of elves, the Teleri. They are shipbuilders, and by defeating them in battle, Fëanor comes into possession of their swan ships. Fëanor's elven clan, the Noldor, need these ships to leave Valinor and follow Morgoth. However, there are not enough for all the houses of the Noldor. Fëanor then takes his followers across the narrow sea in secret. Upon asked by Maedhros, his eldest son, who should take the ships back to bring the other houses, Fëanor laughs. "Then Fëanor laughed as one fey, and he cried: "None and none! What I have left behind I count now no loss, needless baggage on the road it has proved ... Let the ships burn" (Tolkien 90). In some of Tolkien's notes, one of Fëanor's sons is burned alive in the ships on accident. While this does not occur in the published Silmarillion as put together by Christopher Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien's son and literary heir, it well illustrates the sort of insanity and melancholia that Fëanor had reached at this point.

Freud is often concerned with the relationship between parental and child interactions and what it did to personality. The loss of Fëanor's father and theft of the Silmarils is another case where the loss of a love-object pushes the lover, in this case Fëanor, into melancholia. The reactions he has to the deaths of his parents are not natural mourning which reach a resolved state where the ego regains stability. Instead, Freud would see Fëanor as nearly constantly at the whims of the id. His name, prophetic as with many elven names, means "Spirit of Fire." Fëanor is well known for being hot headed, impulsive, and reckless.

These traits only continue to worsen as he remains in his melancholic state, and the number of losses of love-objects grows. The moments after the death of his father, only the second elven death to occur in Valinor and the first from an act of violence, Fëanor nearly goes mad in his rage and his grief. "For his father was dearer to him than the Light of Valinor or the peerless works of his hands; and who among sons, of elves or of men, have held their fathers of greater worth?" (Tolkien 79). The theft of the Silmarils becomes a symbol of all the grief he had endured since the death of his mother as a young child.

This grief-filled madness which later manifests in reckless abandon alike to suicidality is a good representation of Freud's view of melancholia and determinism. Is it possible for Fëanor to freely choose when his entire life, filled with loss both conscious and unconscious, has conditioned him to hate his siblings and to place all his hope and love into his father and his own skilled nature? Freud would say he could not. He is at the mercy of the id throughout the Quenta Silmarillion. And indeed, even the text of The Silmarillion offers this argument:

In those unhappy things which later came to pass, and in which Fëanor was the leader, many saw the effect of this breach within the house of Finwë [from the marriage to Indis], judging that if Finwë had endured his loss and been content with the fathering of his mighty son, the courses of Fëanor would have been otherwise, and great evil might have been prevented; for the sorrow and the strife in the house of Finwë is graven in the memory of the Noldorin Elves. (Tolkien 65)

Freud's id, ego, and superego in tandem with the concept of melancholia offer a compelling argument for Fëanor's lack of freedom to choose. His courses have been determined by the grief he sustained in childhood and growing up. But Freud cannot as easily explain the Sons of Fëanor who do choose to abandon their Oath of vengeance.

VI. Conclusion: A Combined Reading

As seen in the above sections, Sartre's concept of free will applies well to the sons of Fëanor, while Freud's concept of melancholia and the influence of the unconscious in determinism most accurately explains Fëanor's actions. While the Valar do not directly interfere with the free choices of the elves, thus proving Sartre's point that the existence of God has no bearing on the relevance of his atheistic existentialism, Freud's theory also has merit. His concepts of the unconscious mind are important when looking at the character of Fëanor, someone whose formative years were so dominated by grief. Both theories work in tandem.

The Sons of Fëanor do not undergo the same kind of consistent grief and love-object loss that Fëanor did in childhood. As such, they have not been as fully conditioned by their environments to exist in a state of melancholia that their father has. Their decision to abide by the Oath are seen in the end as acting in bad faith. By rejecting the Oath before their final acts, suicide for Maedhros and exile for Maglor, they reach the understanding that they were always free to choose, even if the consequences of each choice were negative.
Fëanor, on the other hand, experiences so much tragedy that he reaches states of mania, narcissism, and madness on account of the love-object losses he endures. Because of this, his choices are not made freely. The relationship between himself and his family constantly undermine his ability to be free of melancholia and the control of the id over his ego and superego.

If we go a step further, even Fëanor's narrative arc has traces of Sartre's theories on free will, and his seven sons have traces of Freud's concepts of melancholia and determinism. The trauma that the Sons of Fëanor undergo during the War of the Jewels offer a compelling example of the influence of id, ego, and superego in their decision making as well. Maedhros's death by suicide is an example of the sadism turned inwards that Freud theorizes in Mourning and Melancholia (162-163). While Freud's theories do suffer from a lack of falsifiability, thus making it difficult to definitively say that any single decision made by Fëanor was not caused by his unconscious mind, it is possible to apply Sartre's theories to his arc as well. The Valar make it abundantly clear that they will offer no direct interference against or for Fëanor in his rebellion. Sartre could argue that Fëanor chooses not to forgive his rivals, instead condemning them. His refusal to forgive the trauma inflicted on him leads to the treason and fear of treason referenced in the Doom of Mandos, and later, causes the downfall of the elves.

The concept of free will to choose versus the unconscious mind determining choice is a complex one. In some respects, both can be applied simultaneously. However, Sartre's theories most accurately apply to The Silmarillion through Fëanor's seven sons, and Freud's through Fëanor himself. Thus, to gain a complete understanding of free will and choice through the lens of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion and the House of Fëanor, the theories of both Sartre and Freud must be applied together.

Works Cited

Abel, Donald C. Theories of Human Nature: Classical and Contemporary Readings. McGraw-Hill, 1992.

Freud, Sigmund. "Mourning and Melancholia." Collected Papers Vol. IV, The Hogarth Press, 152-170.

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