[davem]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

I have a growing respect for Murrough O'Brien, which isn't saying much since I never heard of him before.

Same here. This review is full of fantastic possibilities for threads:

But how does fate work? Is it independent of free will or is free will its agent? Steeped as he was in the saga tradition, Tolkien understood as few others have the power of tragic irony in narrative. Theoretically, pride should resist fate; in practise it fulfils it. From this paradox Tolkien derives a remarkably original tale of tragic fall. The children of Hurin do not, like the parents of Oedipus, rush to avoid their destiny: they defy it.

Pride leads Turin to ignore the help of Thingol, the elf king, not to mention his long-suffering messengers; pride leads Morwen, wife of Hurin, to a similar refusal. Pride has loyalty as its chamberlain, and even love and pity turn to disaster.

'Pride should resist fate; in practice it fulfils it.' &' The children of Hurin do not, like the parents of Oedipus, rush to avoid their destiny: they defy it'. Wonderful insight.

&

There is terrible, but somehow uplifting, irony in the depiction of the Battle of Unnumbered Tears: Fingon calls out joyfully, "The day has come!'' before the battle, and is echoed by Hurin at its disastrous close crying in despair, "Day will come!'' Even the apparent irony that Turin effectively forgets his mother in the wanderings which began as a quest to find her is not a reproach to Tolkien's art but to the delusion that such quests can be carried by the power of passion alone.

These comments on irony in Tolkien's works call into question the old throway line that Tolkien didn't use irony - well, certainly he didn't use it in a sneering way, to mock, but o'Brien is certainly correct in pointing up Tolkien's use here of tragic irony. What else is the Hobbits' return to the Shire to find it devastated by Sharkey's ruffians but tragic irony?