Mythic Unities in The Lord of the Rings

[littlemanpoet]

Aiwendil:

A eucatastrophe doesn't need to be completely unexpected and unsought.

From Tolkien:

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.

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.