Failure and Punishment

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

I therefore, would find it much easier to categorise a transgression as a “sin” in Middle-earth than I would in the real world.

You obviously do more loyering in Britain-land than watching American televangelists. And it is the appalling, abject, humiliating contemptibleness which they apply to the word 'sin' which is/would be so out of place in Middle-earth, despite as you say the moral universe it entails. Despite his characters' errors and mistakes, Tolkien never denies them dignity. Not even poor old Lobelia. Or, I would even argue, pathetic Wormtongue and Saruman himself.

Originally Posted by SpM

And where does this leave poor old Turin, whose intentions throughout were mostly good, but whose acts generally led only to doom and disaster, both for himself and for any others whose paths he crossed?

Well, where does it leave one of the prime tragic heroes he ressembles, Oedipus?