Couldn't Niniel and Turin work this out?

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Eorl of Rohan

Aw. I was hoping against hope that there was no reference about taboo of marriage between close kinds in Tolkien's works, but I guess that's dashed.
I should have liked to dream of a possible happy future for Turin and Niniel.

Probably that can't be helped. You see, the story was basically meant to be tragic from the beginning till the end. But that said, I don't think it's a reason to despair - there are many other stories from Middle-Earth and basically all of them end up happily! (And that is even if somebody dies... my belief is that all of them end up happily. At most, there is the general sadness like e.g. the departure of the Elves, but that's something different, not tragedy.)

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

As for suicide - personally, I've never understood why this is so widely considered sinful or immoral. Tragic, certainly, but how is voluntarily ending one's own life sinful? However, that's just my view; I expect Tolkien would have agreed that it was sinful. One does wonder what he thought the 'correct' response would have been on both Nienor's and Turin's parts.

I wonder too. The point is, I think he would say that under their own circumstances this was probably the logical and inavoidable conclusion. Of course in our Primary World he would have a different point of view (from the point of view of his faith at least the one that amendment is always possible), but that's probably a lot outside the scope of what he wanted to portray here: a complete tragedy, well in tune with all the old tragic tales (all the ancient Greek fate-bound Oidipus-like guys or Kullervo from Kalevala, who had essentially the very same fate).

As for suicide being seen as sinful: there is a very good logic behind it, in my opinion, and I am saying that as a person whose close friend had actually commited suicide. The main underlying point would be that it is not just your personal problem and decision. It is ultimately an utterly cowardly and selfish deed, thinking that "with being dead, I don't have to worry about anything anymore". But it's not only about oneself, but also about the other people who knew that person, and who are still left here living their lives. That friend of mine wiped out all knowledge of his existence, like throwing away things from his home and erasing all files from his computer, making it seem as if he never existed. But to all those people who knew him, of course, it was not as easy as that to just forget that he existed. Namely his parents. The point is, there is a certain network of people around everybody and he is in some way responsible to them. This is further emphasised also by the classic religious explanation of suicide being sinful because your life is not ultimately yours to take because it also was not you to give it to yourself in the first place. The general explanation (and I think shared by more religious worldviews, and in my opinion not impossible to adapt even by non-religiously thinking people) is that you are born here, which is not just a random privilege, but it puts you in a certain situation with certain responsibilities. (And from this point, you can start thinking about basically everything in this world in a different perspective, I am not going to start on that here, you can surely imagine on your own.)