Don't know if its relevant, but I think Tolkien's comment on Frodo's 'failure' comes in. Tolkien basically, as I understand it, says that you have to judge the individual on their original intention, & what they had to face, before you judge them as 'failing'.
In the end, Frodo did fail in his quest to destroy the ring, but as Tolkien points out, no-one could have suceeded, as the task, & what Frodo had had to go through simply to get the ring to the fire, was astounding enough.
To turn to Hurin, He had been slowly destroyed at the hands of Morgoth for, what, over thirty years. His mind was virtually destroyed. He was seeing the world & events through Morgoth's eyes, & Morgoth's 'vision' was essentially so corrupted that he couldn't see objectively, even if he'd chosen to.
I don't think Tolkien is making any judgement on Hurin. Maybe he's making a comment on how even the greatest of us can be corrupted, against our will.
Having said that, all the family seem to suffer excessively from pride, & it could be argued that it was a case of Morgoth using that, rather than 'cursing' Turin, or the rest of his family with 'bad luck'. One does wonder whether that family was going to suffer in much the same way as they did even of Morgoth hadn't got directly involved.
Perhaps Hurin's 'despair' was the inevitable effect of such a proud man being so long impotent. If anything Hurin's pride wasn't humbled by the tragedy of his family, it was twisted into hate, contempt & despair.
I don't think Tolkien was so much interested in holding Hurin up for condemnation as in showing the effect of pride.
But then again, I'm not sure Tolkien saw his 'heroes' in a 'Christian' heroic light. They aren't Christian heroes, They're Northern' Pagan heroes, along the lines of Beowulf. Maybe Tolkien is making some point about men in the absence' of Christianity.
Anyway, all that just 'occured' to me, & poured out as I wrote. Maybe its complete nonsense [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]
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