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Originally Posted by Formendacil
In short--if I can be short--there is a back-and-forth between inclusion in "The Silmarillion" and their own stand-alone qualities, which goes back through their whole history of creation, and is, I think, quite deliberate on Tolkien's part. From this, I hardly think it is legitimate to either separate the tales totally from this context, or to attempt to examine them exclusively within this context. Depending on the situation, and the need or the desire, either or both approach is valid.
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Form, that's sort of what I've been trying to say, though you put it more clearly and elegantly than I could.
What I've been specifically arguing
against is the claim that this particular tale is so radically different from the rest of Tolkien's work that it can
only be properly understood out of context... even that it is somehow "wrong" to keep the rest in mind while reading it.
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Originally Posted by tumhalad2
It is entirely unlike either the LOTR or the Sil. It brings to bear its own style, and thereby its own unique tone and atmosphere. How is this to be understood?
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They
all have their own unique tone and atmosphere. I'd guess this story seems so aberrant to you only because you're reading it out of context, and then thinking about how the rest of Legendarium looks without it. Er... does that make sense?
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Originally Posted by tumhalad2
However, I think where I'm getting at is that CoH, in its novelistic form, seems to undermine this construction; it seems to make eucatastrophe gratuitous.
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Weellll... if you
wish to, I'd say you could argue this for the whole
Quenta Silmarillion, at least to some extent. My reaction on reaching the end has never been, "Oh, well, at least the good guys won in the end! What a lovely story!" So much of it concerns sadness, loss and destruction, and Húrin and family are hardly the only characters whose lives end in despair (see
Morth's examples). Not to mention that the final victory against Morgoth comes at tremendous cost.
What seems to be the sticking point for you, as far as I can work out, is this:
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Originally Posted by tumhalad2
(...)The wider Silmarillion too is repleat with much suffering, of course, but the Valar are nonetheless shown to be active participants in thought or deed. In the novel, the Children of Hurin, they are distant, amourphous and almost entirely unkown entities, especially to humans.
(...)unlike Feanor, he has not held personal recourse with the Valar.
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Okay, so the rebelling Noldor have absolute personal certainty that the Valar exist. (Proof rather than faith, really.) However, as the rebels have explicitly put themselves beyond their help, and as, apart from Ulmo, the Valar seem to be pretty comfortable with this state of affairs (really, what do you
mean, 'active'?), I'm not clear how much of a comfort it would be to them, or why they would have any more reason to believe things would turn out all right in the end.
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Originally Posted by tumhalad2
Yes, the War of Wrath constitues a eucastraphe, an underserved episode of grace. But still, I'm uncomfortable with the notion that we should be complicit in it.
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??? "Complicit"? Meaning...?