Visit The *EVEN NEWER* Barrow-Downs Photo Page |
04-22-2007, 06:41 AM | #1 | ||
Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
Posts: 4,256
|
Turin the Hopeless?
From John Garth's review of Children of Hurin in The Sunday Telegraph:
Quote:
Greg Wright, in his book 'Tolkien in Perspective', suggested that the Athrabeth should be appended to all editions of LotR in order to emphasis the 'Christianity' of the work. This makes me wonder. Should LotR be 'appended' to CoH, to emphasise the underlying 'hope' of Tolkien's work? CoH as a stand alone work, is bleak, hopeless & ends in despair. Anyone who didn't know LotR & CoH were by the same person would hardly guess that to be the case. Yet CoH is the work that Tolkien put the greatest amount of time & effort into in his later years. It was the one (even above Beren & Luthien & The Fall of Gondolin) that he desired to bring to completion. Is Garth right? Is this work a reflection of Tolkien the Somme veteran, while LotR, it could be argued, is the work of Tolkien the Catholic? LotR presents the orthodox Catholic view, that God is watching over us all, & that while there may be suffering & loss, in the end God will bring good out of evil, & that, in the end, 'All shall be well, & all shall be well, & all manner of thing shall be well'. CoH seems to present a vision of a world where God won't - where he doesn't actually care enough to bother. So, what do we make of this situation of CoH being Tolkien's 'final' work on Middle-earth? This is the latest vision we have of Tolkien's world, dark, unremitingly bleak & ending in despair & hopelessness. Yet, it is also (& perhaps fittingly) the finest manifestation of the Northern theory of courage - to fight on without hope in a light at the end of the tunnel - because it ain't a 'tunnel': its a hole -in fact its a grave. One fights on not in hope of victory, or the defeat of the enemy, but simply because fighting an evil enemy is the right thing to do. As Turin argues: Quote:
At the very least we now have a counterpoint to the 'Christian hope' of LotR: the Pagan courage in the face of 'hopelessness' of CoH. Others have pointed up Tolkien's inspiration in Sigurd & Kullervo. But Beowulf is there at the heart of CoH. Turin is a Northern hero, moreso than any other character Tolkien created. |
||
|
|