Turin the Hopeless? - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

Fordim Hedgethistle · 10-13-2010, 11:12 AM

Hey man, I'm not saying anything so daft as, "LotR doesn't have a happy ending" as it most palpably does. I'm just disputing the premise of the book review that begins this thread that "The Children of Hurin" is diametrically opposed to LotR along simplistic binary lines of "hoplessness" vs "hope" -- I just don't see LotR as ending "hopefully" in the sense that we are presented with a world that is now going to get better and better (which is, I think, the false sense of the book that the reviewer is working from) in opposition to CoH in which the reviewer sees a more 'realistic' view that the world will, at best, stay pretty much the same in terms of good and evil...which is what I see at the end of LotR. You are right, Sauron the super-baddie, the one who is as bad as all the worst human tyrants put together, he's gone. But soon, so too will Aragorn be gone (the epitome of all good humans), Galadriel, Elrond, Frodo, Bilbo, Gandalf are leaving too...so the superbad and the supergood are gone leaving just the bad and the good. The situation is the same, only diminished.

10-13-2010, 11:12 AM	#20
Fordim Hedgethistle Gibbering Gibbet Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Beyond cloud nine Posts: 1,844	Hey man, I'm not saying anything so daft as, "LotR doesn't have a happy ending" as it most palpably does. I'm just disputing the premise of the book review that begins this thread that "The Children of Hurin" is diametrically opposed to LotR along simplistic binary lines of "hoplessness" vs "hope" -- I just don't see LotR as ending "hopefully" in the sense that we are presented with a world that is now going to get better and better (which is, I think, the false sense of the book that the reviewer is working from) in opposition to CoH in which the reviewer sees a more 'realistic' view that the world will, at best, stay pretty much the same in terms of good and evil...which is what I see at the end of LotR. You are right, Sauron the super-baddie, the one who is as bad as all the worst human tyrants put together, he's gone. But soon, so too will Aragorn be gone (the epitome of all good humans), Galadriel, Elrond, Frodo, Bilbo, Gandalf are leaving too...so the superbad and the supergood are gone leaving just the bad and the good. The situation is the same, only diminished. __________________ Scribbling scrabbling.