Tough choice...

[Manveru]

OK. I'm reading UT for the first time. I find it very interesting, fascinating and so on... Presently I am on NARN I HIN HURIN and I've already found one thing very annoying and disliked (for me and I saw for a few other members, too). I'm talking here about... Saeros. And here is my point:

After what had happened should Turin have killed that despicable Elf, or was Dragonhelm right in that 'game' of his trying to teach Saeros a lesson (which meant do no harm, but in the end...)?

What do you think?

 

[Ithrynluin]

Saeros was having an inferiority complex because Turin was getting so much of Thingol and Melian's attention. He was petty and his arrogance caused Turin to escape from Doriath. Evil came out of his departure and Melian could have averted Morgoth's curse on Hurin and his family, if only they stayed within the confines of the Girdle of Melian.

 

[Turin]

I think he did the right thing in not killing him.

 

[Arvedui]

I think Turin did the right thing, although it ended wrong. And Thingol himself thought the same, so I can't be all wrong.
Saeros' behviour was way out of line, but not so bad that it was reason enough for Turin to kill him there and then.

 

[Manveru]

Originally posted by Arvedui
Saeros' behviour was way out of line, but not so bad that it was reason enough for Turin to kill him there and then.

Yes... But then Saeros tried to kill him and he didn't play "fair" (attack from the back). If Turin had proven to be unaware, he would have laid dead then... no question about that. All in all I think that hadn't "the accident" happened, Turin would have had an "enemy for a life-time" ('cause I don't think Saeros, after him being humiliated, would forgive son of Hurin this "lesson"). And such 'enemies' it is better to 'eliminate' from one's path ASAP. They often prove to be a 'reason' for one's fall...

I don't know... maybe the above "stream" of reasoning is too drastic... After all, I'd spare him, too (if I were Turin). That's what good guys do, right?

 

[Melian]

I think that it's really hard to talk about choices here. It seems to me that the whole Turin character was designed by Tolkien to depict the Power of Doom. In short, no matter what Turin did, in the end the Curse that had been put upon his father would make him and Niniel suffer.

So if option # 1( to kill Saeros) had been picked, I'm sure that the outcome would have been as good as the real one.

I read somewhere in the forum that Turin has often been compared with Aedypus from Greek Mythology. Every good deed of those characters was corrupted by Doom. Nothing would have changed if at some or other point they had done something else.

My personal view on the situation, however, is that Turin did the right thing by not killing. What came after is a different subject.