Is The Children of Hurin better than the Lord of the Rings?

[NogrodtheGreat]

Originally Posted by demnation

I love COH, but I'd stake my claim on the side of LOTR. I find it has a more balanced ( and a more nuanced and realistic) view on some of the many complexities of the human condition.

This is an interesting take - I've often felt the opposite, as thought The Children of Hurin captures the senselessness of human suffering where the Lord of the Rings tends toward "sacralising" it. That is, suffering takes on a meaningful dimension - Frodo suffers because he has been "chosen" to, somehow, to take the ring to Mordor and save Middle-earth.

Turin suffers for several reasons - Morgoth's curse, his own ineptitude, his imperfect knowledge, Glaurung, etc. But even as a child, Turin suffers grief when his sister dies and he is sent away - events over which he has no control as a child. All of this suffering is gratuitous - that is, it doesn't have some 'higher purpose'. It seems to me that this 'kind' of suffering is far more relevant to our sense of how the real world actually works. For me, the story is powerful because it depicts suffering in this morally insignificant way - Turin's 'heroism' lies in his trying to overcome the strictures of the Curse of his own volition, not in the fulfillment of some divine plan.