Aiwendil:
Quote:
A eucatastrophe doesn't need to be completely unexpected and unsought.
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From Tolkien:
Quote:
The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous "turn" (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially "escapist,"...it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.
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The destruction of the Ring was not completely unexpected and unsought. Gandalf had an inkling, pardon the pun. It would appear that I confused "suddenness" with "unexpectedness". Somehow I had thought that there was a phrase in Tolkien's description having to do with "unlooked for". Perhaps that is wrong.