Turin the Hopeless?

[davem]

Originally Posted by Nerwen

But tumhalad, it is part of a greater story. You can't really ignore that, just because otherwise you feel it doesn't quite mean what you'd like it to. It takes place in an incredibly complex fictional world with a long past and future history. Doesn't dismissing all that cheapen it?

It certainly makes it easier for the reader - like with the little girl in the red coat in Schindler's list - of course, we can view her story in the context of the whole film/Second World War (defeat of the Nazis, victory of the Allies), but that's to ignore the essential tragedy of her own tale: a little girl who should have spent her time playing with dolls, going on holidays with her family, making friends, growing up & having children of her own, ends up a corpse on a pile of corpses - and that story is just as true (if only in a symbolic way) as the big story of the Allied victory & the destruction of the Third Reich. All such victims, throughout history, have their own tales, & whether or not good ultimately triumphs does not invalidate their suffering & the fact that their tales end in despair & tragedy. There is no great victory, no Eucatastrophe, in Turin's story - & that's why its important.

Its also why a determination to see it as simply part of a greater tale where good wins out & everyone lives happily ever after is wrong - because in the (earthly - which is all they know) lives of the characters there is no Eucatastrophe. There is just despair, hopelessness & a futile death - whether they bring it on themselves or not. That is also true - just as true as the story of the defeat of the bad guys & triumph of the good. The big story may give context to the suffering of individuals like Turin - but only for the survivors, those looking on (or back) from a distance. For Turin his story is the 'big story', & that story doesn't end with the victory of the good guys.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by davem

Its also why a determination to see it as simply part of a greater tale where good wins out & everyone lives happily ever after is wrong - because in the (earthly - which is all they know) lives of the characters there is no Eucatastrophe. There is just despair, hopelessness & a futile death - whether they bring it on themselves or not. That is also true - just as true as the story of the defeat of the bad guys & triumph of the good. The big story may give context to the suffering of individuals like Turin - but only for the survivors, those looking on (or back) from a distance. For Turin his story is the 'big story', & that story doesn't end with the victory of the good guys.

I definitely agree and, again, I think this point is germane to my earlier thought that the piecemeal quality of the telling of the entire history of Middle-earth, from the Ainulindalë to the dawning of the 4th Age, complete with various points of view and different literary treatments from highly formal to colloquially whimsical, gives Tolkien's compendium a rarified feeling of an authentic chronicle.

And with every great victory or any monumental endeavor, there are hundreds, sometimes thousands of proportionately smaller losses, sacrifices and untold stories that make a tragic mosaic of the greater picture, and that are worthy of a tale in and of themselves. That a great wartime poet like Wilfred Owen should die within a week of the signing of the armistice that ended WWI is just such a tragedy, or the equally senseless death of another poet, Isaac Rosenberg in April, 1918. Their deaths added really nothing to the overall war effort; on the contrary, they were just two of thousands of men who fell needlessly while the generals continued the slaughter and political leaders wrangled over war and peace.

But the vindictive nature of Morgoth's endless torment of Hurin and his family is not that different than the plight of other families in the real world who face such horror and sadness brought on by the powers that be or powers beyond their control.