Our Sponsor Sideshow Send us News
Lord of the Rings Tolkien
Search Tolkien
Lord of The RingsTheOneRing.net - Forged By And For Fans Of JRR Tolkien
Lord of The Rings Serving Middle-Earth Since The First Age

Lord of the Rings Movie News - J.R.R. Tolkien

  Main Index   Search Posts   Who's Online   Log in
The One Ring Forums: Tolkien Topics: Reading Room:
Children of Hurin Discussion: The Death of Glaurung, Part 1
First page Previous page 1 2 Next page Last page  View All

noWizardme
Half-elven


Jul 21 2014, 9:49pm

Post #26 of 37 (1331 views)
Shortcut
Brandir's killing of Dorlas [In reply to] Can't Post

Yes, I think there's definitely an "everyone going crazy" feel.
Reading this section this time, I must say that I personally found it effective and shocking (I'd forgotten who was going to kill who, and so fell for the suggestion that Dorlas would kill Brandir). Tolkien does George RR Martin ? Wink

~~~~~~

"… ever let your aim be to come at truth, not to conquer your opponent. So you never shall be at a loss in losing the argument, and gaining a new discovery.”
Arthur Martine

"nowimë I am in the West, Furincurunir to the Dwarves (or at least, to their best friend) and by other names in other lands. Mostly they just say 'Oh no it's him - look busy!' "
Or "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!"


noWizardme
Half-elven


Jul 21 2014, 9:51pm

Post #27 of 37 (1331 views)
Shortcut
The next post in this sub thread really has to be "a fistful of Dorlas" [In reply to] Can't Post

Shame I can't think of anything to go with the title Crazy

~~~~~~

"… ever let your aim be to come at truth, not to conquer your opponent. So you never shall be at a loss in losing the argument, and gaining a new discovery.”
Arthur Martine

"nowimë I am in the West, Furincurunir to the Dwarves (or at least, to their best friend) and by other names in other lands. Mostly they just say 'Oh no it's him - look busy!' "
Or "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!"


CuriousG
Half-elven


Jul 21 2014, 9:52pm

Post #28 of 37 (1329 views)
Shortcut
Dread, doubt, and choices [In reply to] Can't Post

With FIFA over, we still have the Curse Ball to kick around in the RR to determine what it does and doesn't do. As you've pointed out before, if everything is fated, then it's not very interesting. And personally, I like to think people have some free will in life, though we all know we don't have complete free will, or we'd all be rich and happy. So this point of dread/doubt at the mound could be a pivot point, where Nienor faces a fork in her path, and things could have gone a different way if she'd chosen differently. I'm not blaming her in her distress, but I'd at least like to entertain the thought that she was not a puppet on strings at all times. Thanks for the background!


CuriousG
Half-elven


Jul 21 2014, 9:58pm

Post #29 of 37 (1331 views)
Shortcut
The real curse was who the mother was [In reply to] Can't Post


Quote
So I blame this on the curse and Morwen. Morwen is my favorite scapegoat in this story though, so I might be a teeny-tiny bit biased.Wink

We're at the end of the story, and I really tried hard to give Morwen a fresh start in my mind, but I'm with you, she plays all her cards wrong, and those cards happen to be her children. Pride certainly smacked her down and took the rest of them too. If she hadn't been so determined to go to Nargothrond, she and Nienor would still be alive in Menegroth. Maybe they'd die later when it fell, who knows, but they didn't need to go running into the middle of a busy highway and pretend they wouldn't get hit by cars.

I'll give Morwen at least the benefit of pity: when she shows up (next chapter) after apparently living like a wild animal in the woods for a year and finds her children dead, I do feel pity for her then. One wonders what went through her mind when she found the tomb, and if Hurin had explained it all to her and she would still live for years to come, if she would have thought about doing anything differently, of if she'd remain proud and bitter. I tend to think the latter.


noWizardme
Half-elven


Jul 21 2014, 10:05pm

Post #30 of 37 (1324 views)
Shortcut
A cultural shift too? [In reply to] Can't Post

Modern readers, brought up on ideas if conservation, might come to megafauna death-throes descriptions differently to people of the dark age sagas Tolkien is channeling here; or even the Victorian attitudes of Melvilles times.

...and more recently: I remember reading King Solomon's Mines as a child. The heroes' expedition massacres it's way through the big game it encounters en route. It's supposed to show how manly they are, I think; but I found it appalling.

The other thing, maybe, is to bring home the sheer peril of monster-slaying: even the death-throes can be deadly.

~~~~~~

"… ever let your aim be to come at truth, not to conquer your opponent. So you never shall be at a loss in losing the argument, and gaining a new discovery.”
Arthur Martine

"nowimë I am in the West, Furincurunir to the Dwarves (or at least, to their best friend) and by other names in other lands. Mostly they just say 'Oh no it's him - look busy!' "
Or "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!"


CuriousG
Half-elven


Jul 21 2014, 10:13pm

Post #31 of 37 (1323 views)
Shortcut
Eye of the beholder [In reply to] Can't Post

Yes, for some people


Quote
and there upon the further shore he writhed, screaming, lashing and coiling himself in his agony, until he had broken a great space all about him, and lay there at last in a smoke and a ruin, and was still.


would mean, "Good news! The dragon made a big clearing in the forest and saved us all the work, and now we can build condominiums on it. It's a great day for urban development!"


noWizardme
Half-elven


Jul 22 2014, 11:20am

Post #32 of 37 (1314 views)
Shortcut
Love a nice game of "curse ball", or, The Path of Porkins [In reply to] Can't Post

"What exactly is the cause and effect of the curse, destiny, fate, wyrd, chance etc. ?" is not exactly my game. Of course we're never going to come to a definitive answer to that one, and I'm not sure what it would achieve if we did. I also think that the ambiguity is an important literary effect here.

What I find interesting, but hard to do, is to try and fathom what the author intends us to pick up about the interplay of these forces: what are we to suppose the characters infer about any factors other than their free will, & how does that affect their actions in the story? When we know more than the characters what are we to infer?

I find that hard to do, perhaps because I'm not much of a believer in fate myself. But the characters clearly do understand that these forces are at work (from direct evidence in the text, and because we can probably infer that they behave like the people who are subjects of Norse & similar sagas, upon which Tolkien is modelling this story). So it's hard for me to put myself into the characters' shoes.

Recently I went to Prof. Shippey's "The Road To Middle Earth" for some help on this, and found an interesting passage about the Norse "Family Saga" The Saga of Gisli Sursson. I don't know this story myself, so will need to summarize Prof. Shippeys summary (perhaps someone who knows more can add any details I miss or garble?)

The Saga of Gisli Sursson seems to help as follows:
The plot contains a section where Gisli tries to warn his brother-in-law Vesteinn not to come home, because there is a plot to kill him (Vesteinn). The messengers initially miss Vesteinn, because they ride along the top of the sandhill, while he rides along the bottom.

So far, this looks like a plot device which would be perfectly at home in a modern story (a Western?) as a suspense-builder. However, when the messengers do manage to catch up with Vesteinn, his reaction is surprising (to me a least). He says:


Quote
I would have turned back if you had met me earlier, but now all the streams run toward Dyrafjord, and I shall ride there. And in any case I want to.


So it seems that the modern concerns we have about self-preservation and choosing our own course by free will are balanced by a feeling that if something seems to be your fate/destiny whatever, you shouldn't try to thwart those forces (or maybe you cannot, no matter whether you try, and so might as well act commendably as in a disreputable way).

That seems to help here - Dorlas bungles it: even if he was doomed to suffer a freak gardening accident, he should have gone with Hunthor and Turin. Hunthor does the right thing,even though it turns out to be pathetically futile - poor chap doesn't even get the satisfaction of being a "Porkins": (as per a recent and wonderful contribution from Meneldor: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=757102#757102.) Maybe a less egotistical age than ours (or less egotistical person than me?) would feel it was a honour to be a Porkins However, it's a random (or fateful) stray rock which does for Hunthor; he doesn't get bravely but suicidally to distract Glaurung whilst Turin gets him (though that might be something he'd have been perfectly wiling to do).

Not sure where this leaves poor Nienor, who doesn't seem to do anything to choose the Porkins role. Or is her moment of Dread at the mound a point where she dimly recognizes, but in a sense chooses, the Path of Porkins??

~~~~~~

"… ever let your aim be to come at truth, not to conquer your opponent. So you never shall be at a loss in losing the argument, and gaining a new discovery.”
Arthur Martine

"nowimë I am in the West, Furincurunir to the Dwarves (or at least, to their best friend) and by other names in other lands. Mostly they just say 'Oh no it's him - look busy!' "
Or "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!"


CuriousG
Half-elven


Jul 22 2014, 12:17pm

Post #33 of 37 (1311 views)
Shortcut
Vesteinn sounds like Morwen to me [In reply to] Can't Post

Aside from her pride, she's stubborn, and her stubbornness seems to include a sense of "I am destined to do this, so get out of my way." There's also the sense in mythic tales that people accept destiny more than we do now as "going with the flow." So if someone tells you you're destined to be king or get killed by a rock, you're more likely to accept that. "Superstitious" wasn't always a dirty word. And I think you're right that people thought that avoiding your fate meant you'd get into even more trouble with the gods. Hunthor might have dodged a rock but instead been eaten slowly by Ungoliant over a period of years, or had his toes chewed off by ants. Better to take your rock when it comes at you.

Turin tries to escape his destiny/curse, but he never denies he has one. He just fights against it or runs from it, but he's convinced it's part of the fabric of his life. It seems most focused on him in terms of awareness. I don't think Nienor had any sense of curse or destiny at all.

Now that I think about it, if the curse was on Hurin's family, why didn't Nienor leave a trail of wreckage behind her in her personal life? It could be an authorial decision, that it was just too much more to write, but it seems like Turin bore the brunt of it all, and Nienor could have conceivably lived a placid, curse-free court life in Menegroth if events had gone a little differently.


noWizardme
Half-elven


Jul 22 2014, 12:23pm

Post #34 of 37 (1306 views)
Shortcut
Initially the settlement was known as "Writhing Glaurung City"... [In reply to] Can't Post

Initially the settlement was known as "Writhing Glaurung City", though over the years it became Welwyn Garden City...

http://en.wikipedia.org/.../Welwyn_Garden_City"

~~~~~~

"… ever let your aim be to come at truth, not to conquer your opponent. So you never shall be at a loss in losing the argument, and gaining a new discovery.”
Arthur Martine

"nowimë I am in the West, Furincurunir to the Dwarves (or at least, to their best friend) and by other names in other lands. Mostly they just say 'Oh no it's him - look busy!' "
Or "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!"


Rembrethil
Tol Eressea


Jul 22 2014, 1:22pm

Post #35 of 37 (1307 views)
Shortcut
So was Turin supposed to die? [In reply to] Can't Post

Would his death have prevented such tragedy? What about the good things he did? What would have happened to those whose lives he touched?

Your post seems to beg me to ask these questions of Turin. Personally, I think that Turin's earlier demise or suicide wouldn't have been better--perhaps worse even. I think that we are to accept that within Arda, there was a great plan in place-- the Themes of Illuvatar and the vision the Ainu saw. However, it was changed and muddled by Melkor (Melkor the Muddler. Makes him sound a bit swinish..). So I see the 'fate',--if we even can call it that-- of Turin being in place from the beginning-- there was something he had to do--, but warped and confused by the malice of Melkor (I'll try stop alliterating) it became soemthing different from the original conception. Did it change completely? Maybe, but I am of a mind with Finrod in the Athrabeth to think not, for it would seem to give Melkor more (I really am trying) power than Eru. Moving on, I will assume not, but leave the possibility for a positive answer open.

So Turin had a destiny, originally good, but it has been warped out of shape, and the road signs along the way too have shifted. This would definitely explain his confusion-- he lacks any sort of landmark to gauge progress in life. I assume that the resulting life-story was basically the same, but that warped fate took Turin on a different route to the final confrontation with Glaurung. I think this was his purpose in life-- to slay a dragon. Who else but a hero would get close enough? How many dragon-slayers are there in Middle-Earth? Take his circumstances.

Lost a father and sent to foster in a far kingdom-- Many heroes have been sent away from home to gain strength, only to return and liberate their homeland.

Meets a best friend and fight alongside him skillfully, gaining repute-- Check #2 on a hero's to-do list.

Thing then seen to go sideways, in a confrontation with a bully or enemy, but most heroes have to conquer their own small, but personal enemies before they can take on the super villain.

He then goes into exile-- not a terrible thing for a hero

Then he meets a band of rogues and turns them to good-- the beginning of a liberation force?

He then move on to another kingdom and gains favour of the ruler-- not a bad place to find a princess or army.

He then returns home and kills the tyrant of his hometown-- confrontation was inevitable

Then he moves on to a smaller group of scattered and hiding Men whom he unites against evil

It all could so well, but ends up so wrong! I think that the greater fate of Beleriand is at stake here too. It was pretty evident, I think, from the time of the Nirnaeth Anoediad that Beleriand was doomed, so what happens if a hero rises and forestalls it? We don't need the Valar, and there is not reconciliation with the West. More die and struggles are prolonged.

So, should Turin just die? Are his good deeds in vain? I repeat, no! His life was simply caught up in the greater tragedy of Beleriand-- he was a hero on a sinking ship that could not sit still and drown. His life had meaning to those whom he interacted with-- Hurin, Beleg, Androg, Mim, Nienor, Dorlas, Mablung, Thingol, Melian, Nellas, Finduilas, and others. Even if his presence was toxic, they were still able to appreciate the good that remained in him, as we should. Through him we see what the granduer and nobility of Tolkienian heroes, and are able to appreciate the successes of others all the more.

Oh, and I think Turin can get an A for effort.

Call me Rem, and remember, not all who ramble are lost...Uh...where was I?


CuriousG
Half-elven


Jul 22 2014, 4:36pm

Post #36 of 37 (1309 views)
Shortcut
The reverse of "It's a Wonderful Life" [In reply to] Can't Post

"George Bailey Turin, the world would have been better if you had never lived." What a Christmas downer movie!

Arguably, the world would have been better if Feanor had never lived. What a mess he made of things! Though without Feanor we probably wouldn't have had places like Numenor, Rivendell, Lorien, and Gondor, or at least we can say we did have Feanor and we still got those places, so come good came out of his timeline.

The only good I see that came from Turin was a dead dragon. Once he left Doriath, he mangled everything he touched:

Band of outlaws--all dead.
Nargothrond--ditto.
Dor-Lomin--in upheaval but definitely not liberated, and one tyrant would replace another.
Brethil--heavy losses.
Doriath--lost one of its best (Beleg).

Nargothrond and Brethil were the only holdouts in western Beleriand to oppose Morgoth. Essentially, the Dark Lord used Turin to destroy one and weaken the other. That made it all the more difficult for the Gondolin refugees to reach the Sirion haven, and it meant Doriath had no allied kingdom left when Nargo was gone, since Ossiriand was isolationist, so if the Dwarves hadn't destroyed Doriath, it still would have been engulfed by Morgoth on all sides. Thanks, Turin.

Feanor, the Silmarils, the departure of the Noldor to Middle-earth: that was a long chain of events that defined the history of Arda. What chain of events did Turin lead to besides a dead dragon? Which is a big deal, I'll grant you, since no one else had managed to kill him off. (Though Turin makes it look pretty easy. Sneak up underneath him and one stab of the sword. Done! A hobbit burglar could do that.)

Some things that happen with Turin are bad luck. Beleg's death falls in that category for me. But Turin caused the destruction of Nargothrond by betraying its position, and that wasn't fate or a curse, it was pride and folly. I hold him responsible for that.

But you're right that Beleriand was doomed no matter what. Turin may have hastened the end, but it was doomed. Partly by fate, partly because there was an oversized immortal dark lord who kept winning battles and who could repopulate his armies with ease even if he lost, so how can you win against him?


Brethil
Half-elven


Jul 30 2014, 3:37pm

Post #37 of 37 (1312 views)
Shortcut
Turin and Maeglin [In reply to] Can't Post


In Reply To
Good point, Breth. I think that just as Beren & Lu wrap together so much that is good in Beleriand, Turin's story wraps up all that's bad. I view Eol as a free agent, and his malice was his own making, but with Turin as a sort of magnet for malice because of the curse, he sucked in Eol's legacy too.

Can you imagine Turin and Maeglin meeting up? Maeglin would have hated Turin as just another man. Turin might have seen Maeglin as an obstacle to taking over Gondolin and hated him too, or maybe been indifferent. Both were easily angered and wounded, so I can't see that going well, and with Turin often bringing out the worst in people, I suspect he'd draw out the darkness lingering in Maeglin--that is, before he led Gondolin off to fight a hopeless war. Good thing for Gondolin that the right cousin showed up to save what he could!




I get a scary feeling that Maeglin may have despised Turin, but also been able to manipulate him. He's so vulnerable to that sort of thing, and Maeglin is just so good at the quiet long game. (The other side of Eol's inheritance, complementing Gurthang? Jeez, he's backstage all over the place in spirit if you look around important events here!)


This bit, CG: Good thing for Gondolin that the right cousin showed up to save what he could!


The more I read and think over it, the more I feel like this is the saving grace of Turin's tale. Granted we have the lift from Kullervo as inspiration - but in terms of Middle-earth I think the grain of salvation in here is Tuor's success as Turin flails, drawing Morgoth like a shark to blood in the water.


I just have to find some good in here: JRRT was a spiritual optimist and even through the trenches of this story I do like to hold onto the good happening (we need one of NoWiz's interweaves here!!!!Cool) just offstage in Gondolin.








(This post was edited by Brethil on Jul 30 2014, 3:39pm)

First page Previous page 1 2 Next page Last page  View All
 
 

Search for (options) Powered by Gossamer Forum v.1.2.3

home | advertising | contact us | back to top | search news | join list | Content Rating

This site is maintained and updated by fans of The Lord of the Rings, and is in no way affiliated with Tolkien Enterprises or the Tolkien Estate. We in no way claim the artwork displayed to be our own. Copyrights and trademarks for the books, films, articles, and other promotional materials are held by their respective owners and their use is allowed under the fair use clause of the Copyright Law. Design and original photography however are copyright © 1999-2012 TheOneRing.net. Binary hosting provided by Nexcess.net

Do not follow this link, or your host will be blocked from this site. This is a spider trap.