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Originally Posted by littlemanpoet
Of what use is it in this "relative powers" game?
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When people start using quotes from the works to justify who goes where in the hierarchy we have to analyse those quotes to see who says those things, what they say, why they say it & what they leave out.
Overall The Sil has an anti-Feanorian bias (being, one could speculate, due to the fact that Bilbo, the principal compiler of the Red Book, used sources of information, both living & written, that he found in Rivendell). So, the Feanoreans look bad in the Legends.
Take Celegorm & Curufin's attack on Beren & Luthien - who wrote that is important because the writer attributes various motives to C&C which may or may not have been true.
Or take Feanor. Was Feanor's story written as 'journalism' or as 'tragedy'? If
SpM is correct that a characters moral/psychological strengths & weaknesses play a part in how we judge their innate 'power' (& thus where they belong in the hierarchy) then we have to ask 'Who's writing the report? Are they dependable - have they recieved full psychoanalytical training? Or we're they producing a work of moral didacticism, which may have little relation to actual events?'
One final point - if the Elves (as stated in Ainulindale) are bound by the Music as by Fate, then can we consider any of their actions to be 'courageous'? Wouldn't they only be able to follow the 'program'? Also, wouldn't it take greater courage for Men (who have no idea of their post-mortem state - or indeed whether they have any) to lay down their lives than for Elves (who know exactly what will happen to them) to do so?