Quote:
Originally Posted by TheLostPilgrim
I honestly feel like while LOTR is justifiably lauded, most of the stories in The Silmarillion could eat it for breakfast if they had been turned into full length conventional narratives.
|
This is an interesting question - I think due to its comparatively shorter length, and its 'editorialized' publication, it hasn't received quite as much attention as it should. I like to think of the Children of Hurin as a nascent masterpiece - there are parts of the novel that are briefer than others, (for example the Outlaws chapters vs the Nargothrond chapters) but in general the story benefits from the terse nature of the writing.
Do I think it is 'better' than the LoTR? I certainly think it is completely different, and (for me at least) evokes not only completely different emotions, but it almost evokes a different kind of world - this isn't one where a kindly Gandalf figure encourages out protagonists to have faith in some higher power.
It's funny, on my last reading of tLoTR, the intimations of higher power and 'providential' guidance actually irritated me, and although I still enjoy reading LoTR, The Children of Hurin offers something new and different - a kind of catharsis and poignancy with relation to human suffering missing from the LoTR.
So I suppose it comes down to taste. But whatever your opinion, I think CoH deserves to be regarded as a central element in Tolkien's canon, and hopefully in time a more nuanced picture of Tolkien's creativity will be developed which also takes into account the less rosy picture of human suffering developed in the Silmarillion, and the Children of Hurin especially.