[Aiwendil]

Findegil wrote:

And than he cries out: "You will no longer make use of me! There is a way for me to leave your domion for ever. I will go to the one that created us both. He shall judge me know - and you later!" (That's is clearly overdone - but it shows the direction.)

Yes, that's something like what I had in mind. Of course, it's quite likely that Tolkien never intended it that way. But still, the fact is that Hurin does escape Morgoth's dominion in death.

Lalaith wrote:

As I remember, there *was* hope and life after Ragnarok: Baldur and the sons of Odin and Thor were the new gods, and a new race of men sprang up from a man and a woman who had hidden themselves from the destruction.

Of course. It seems I need to brush up on my Norse mythology. But I thought Baldur was killed in the Ragnarok . . .

Morwen wrote:

A little indecision would have been a good thing in Turin's case. Decisive action, when they are inevitably wrong actions, is no virtue.

True. But my point was that Turin does struggle to escape the curse. His failure is not, in general, moral failure; rather it is very poor decision-making.

Turin's problem is he never stopped to *think*, for example to wonder how Glaurung could know about Morwen and Nienor's plight in the first place - much less to doubt the dragon's motives for telling him this.

But his failure to think was, in this case, a result of Glaurung's spell.

Turin's efforts to avoid his curse were limited to changing his name, not his attitude or his behavior.

That's a valid, if cynical, way of looking at it. But names have great significance in the Silmarillion. Turin believed that he could hide from fate by keeping his identity secret. As it turns out, he was wrong. But again, his failure came not from want of trying, but simply from choosing incorrectly how to go about escaping his fate. There was also a sense with each of his name changes (and particularly "Turambar") that he was giving up his past and trying to start a new life - but his past kept catching up with him. So I think there's more to it than a simple name change.

You are right though - what he should have changed was his behavior, not his name. Note, though, that he does in fact change his behavior in Brethil; for a time he does not go to war. Yet this does not defeat his curse either.

I very much doubt she used any kind of power, and even if she did it would have been as useless on Hurin as it was on his son *unless* he were still open to the truth. Melian didn't 'heal' Hurin, she helped him heal himself.

I always got the sense that it was some power of Melian that cleared Hurin's mind. But it's rather a moot point, I think, since this is not an authentic version of the story.

[ May 14, 2003: Message edited by: Aiwendil ]