Andreth

thearrogantemu:

1-3 things I enjoy about them

• That
  she gets to, essentially, speak for the entire human race in the worldbuilding
  of the legendarium. She gets to be the voice of the most fundamental questions
  in that or in any world, and she queries her creator as sharply as she does her
  interlocutor (hashtag practical theodicy with the House of Beor).

• Several
  things about the Athrabeth remind me of the Statute of Finwe and Miriel, where
  the Valar debate what it means that Death has come into Aman. The options seem
  to be “surely this situation can’t be all that bad; our Creator wouldn’t have
  done that to us”, and, if the situation really is all that bad, then surely
  there must have been something done to deserve it. But unlike the conversation
  of the Valar in the Statute, here the sufferers of the wrong within the world
  have a voice and are not merely the subject of the consternation of the great. Andreth
  forces Finrod to see her point and acknowledge the reality of her suffering. Because
  of her presence and her insistence, she eventually wrings out of Finrod an
  insight, I think, considerably deeper and more ambiguous than he himself had
  anticipated. Her insistence that while memory may be enough for the Elves, it
  is not enough for Men, not enough for her.

• Tolkien’s “hmm, they
  are about to talk themselves into Elf Christianity and that is definitely not a
  thing in this world, must revisit later.”

Something interesting about them based on
tenuous circumstantial evidence

Though we see her
being honest about pain, doubt, and bitterness in the Athrabeth, I think she was
not a bitter person, but actually had a brilliant (and rather
earthy) sense of humor. (My tenuous circumstantial evidence: Anglo-Saxon
poetry, which ranges from “The hope we are told that Heaven offers us seems
unreal and distant in the face of the loss which permeates our lives” to “Hah,
made you think it was a dick but it’s actually an onion” without batting a
metaphorical cultural eye.)

A question I have about them

Everything about
Beorian culture???

A random relevant line I like

 Oh man, the Athrabeth
pulls no punches, and it just gets more and more intense as it goes on, but for
a picture of Andreth’s character, it doesn’t get better than this: And
then suddenly I beheld as a vision Arda Remade; and there the Eldar completed
but not ended could abide in the present for ever, and there walk, maybe, with
the Children of Men, their deliverers, and sing to them such songs as, even in
the Bliss beyond bliss, should make the green valleys ring and the everlasting
mountain-tops to throb like harps.’

Then Andreth looked under her brows at Finrod:
‘And what, when ye were not singing, would ye say to us?’ she asked.

THAT IS SOME HOBBIT-GRADE SASS RIGHT THERE.

My preferred version, if there is more than
one version of their story (or part of their story)

I just wish she had
made it into the published version!

Favorite relationship(s)

Okay, while I love
that with Aegnor we finally get a  human woman
falling in love with one of the Elves (AND we get a woman as the figure of
tragic romance, the lover who cannot attain the beautiful, distant beloved) I
still have to say her relationship with Finrod, as it comes through in the Athrabeth, is my favorite. Despite the
intervening layers of narration and history, it comes through quite clearly in
the intensity and honesty of their conversation, the way they both start out
seeing themselves as educating the other but come to reveal their own deepest
hopes, sorrows, and uncertainties, and, I think, push themselves beyond the
understanding they had at the outset. Perhaps you’ve had that sort of
conversation, where you don’t just reveal yourself to another person, they don’t
just reveal themselves to you, but together you come to insight that genuinely
changes you.  

How would they react to Tom Bombadil

She would
be intensely satisfied that here at least in creation is something the Elves
cannot account for. (Also, I’m so sorry she never got to meet hobbits. I think
that she and Sam would get along famously.)

Optional: Something about them that I think
people forget

She outlives Aegnor.