Hurin and despair

[Kuruharan]

I see you found your saucepans!!!

(Now if only I could find an avatar that I liked...)

But the situations presented to them, and their responses to those situations, were always fated to lead them to their doom. They were unable to alter the outcome.

-and-

But if you are saying that fate is conspiring (through the situations that they are presented with) to increase the likelihood that their decisions have the disastrous consequences that they in fact do have

I think that I understand you better now.

And I would say that it is actually a mixture of both Morgoth's will dragging them in a certain direction and circumstances conspiring against them. So we were sort of talking about the same thing and sort of not.

Earlier you mentioned the Doom of Mandos. I'm not sure that this is entirely a curse. I think that Prophesy is a better word for most of it, although there is a curse aspect to it. Much of what Mandos told them did not require the intervention of the Valar. I believe that it did not take a genius to foresee that the Noldor could not defeat Morgoth. This being the case they would inevitably, through force of circumstances, be brought down to the wretched state that Mandos foretold. It was also fairly easy to see that the Oath of Feanor would inevitably lead to dissension, although this may be one place where the power of the Valar worked against them. I think that the main area where the actual curse comes in is in the closing of Valinor. This essentially sealed their fate.

So, the fact that the Noldor could not defeat Morgoth (which did not require the Valar to do anything), combined with the closing of Valinor (which was the primary action the Valar took), allowed circumstances to progress to their inevitable conclusion.

I think in this it is easier to see the different nature of the Elves. There was a greater inevitability to this situation than I feel was in the situation of Hurin and Company.

With the Hurin curse I think that the power of Morgoth played a greater role. This is not to say that circumstances were not important, but I think that the different nature of Man required that Morgoth's baneful influence be more strongly applied to ensure that things turned out as they did. The words "my thought shall weigh as a cloud of Doom" tends to make me believe this. So, I believe that it was a mixture of circumstance and Morgoth's influence.

However, and this is something obvious that I had not thought of until just now, but Morgoth was able to keep Hurin from dying so maybe he could remove the Free Will from his family...