Finrod: 30-Day Character Study - Study Days by cuarthol

28. Down Memory Lane, Part Four.

Down Memory Lane, Part Four. Imagine your character writing or dictating their autobiography. What parts of their story would they hush up or change to make themselves look better? What parts would they blow out of proportion? What parts would make them cry?

Finrod doesn’t want to think about much of his life in Beleriand after he is reborn.  Beleriand itself, but not his life there.

He’d want to focus on the good and beautiful things - meeting Thingol and Círdan, meeting Dwarves and working with them on Nargothrond, meeting Men and learning so much about them.

But he would, in a sense of self-inflicted punishment, include things he felt he had done wrong, expressly refusing to cover them up.  He’d mourn again the loss of his brothers, and the pain of Aegnor’s loss and refusal to return from Mandos.  He’d mourn the Kinslaying and wonder what he could have done differently.  He’d not regret going to Beleriand, but he’d regret the path that they took.

He would not speak of his death, or his oath.  Those would be too close to him.  Nobody who had not been there could possibly understand.  He might write about that privately, along with other things he experienced or did there.  Many things he’d keep inside.  The only one he might share part of the story with would be his father.

Finrod would be far more likely to go on at length about the land rather than himself - the plants and animals, the beauty he had experienced, perhaps recount his thoughts and feelings on the first moonrise, the first sunrise, the new cycles of time.

He would try to capture the majesty of Menegroth and the horror of Thangorodrim and fail miserably at both.  He’d try to express the fleeting lives of Men and yet the brightness with which they shone and still fail utterly to help someone understand who was not there.

Most of those things he’d feel too deeply about he might speak of in the quiet hours to certain people - telling Olwë about his brother, telling his mother about the cousin she never met, telling Nerdanel about the beautiful things her sons did there, shying away from their ends.  Perhaps he would even spend time talking to Aulë about his Dwarves.  He, more than anyone, might better understand Finrod’s poor attempts to recount Nargothrond.

Finrod’s “autobiography” would probably end up telling about all the other lives he was touched by.  He would write about Orodreth’s wife and children, and he might speak of Andreth but would not share the more private details of her love for Aegnor or their deepest discussions which she trusted him with.

He might lapse into philosophical musings, and fill it with pictures of various things, memories as best he can recreate them.

It comes down to Finrod would write an autobiography that focused on everything except himself, though it would be told clearly from his point of view.