The Children of Hurin
J.R.R. Tolkien’s most renowned work was the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy, but he has written many stories before that. One of those stories is 'The Children of Hurin', which was later edited by his son, Christopher.'The Children of Hurin' tells the account of Turin Turambar, son of Hurin, hero of the Elder Days. Six thousand years before the Fellowship of the Ring, a great evil was over the Earth. Morgoth was his name, and attempts to end his iron grasp ended in fruitless victories and heartbreaking defeats.
"Upon all whom you love my thought shall weigh as a cloud of doom, and it shall bring them down into darkness and despair," uttered Morgoth, pronouncing his curse onto Hurin, mightiest of warriors among mortal men.
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Unlike 'The Hobbit' or 'The Lord of the Rings', most of the story is about misunderstandings, death and fate. Indeed the main character names himself "Master of Fate". One of the greatest things about this story is that we get to see the story through the eyes of different people. In 'The Lord of the Rings' Tolkien does this by focusing on multiple characters and by shifting between the events. In 'The Children of Hurin' it has same style of narrative. By seeing through different eyes, readers can piece together information, understand the story, and ponder at what the story could've been if things had just been a little …show more content…
Turin continues to make the same mistakes, and doesn't really seem to learn from them. But there are two facts to take into mind here. First, regarding Turin's seemingly inconsistently consistent behavior, J.R.R Tolkien did not write the Children of Hurin in one go like 'The Lord of the Rings', instead, the book was multiple pieces of writing pieced together by his son. J.R.R Tolkien had abandoned the story multiple times, and even he didn't even know what the structure of the story was at first. Tolkien passed away before he could fully go through his book and pick out the problems with it like he did with 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings'.
If Tolkien really did have enough time to edit and improve 'The Children of Hurin', the second fact would also explain Turin's unwillingness to change after so many mistakes. Like his father Hurin, Turin is stubborn. His values never change, no matter what happens. Sometimes his stubbornness would serve both himself and the people around him well. His unwillingness to relent to evil was what gave him the status of a hero thousands of years later in Middle Earth. But most of the time Turin’s unwillingness to change brought tragedy to all who knew
Throughout, J.J.R Tolkien’s The Hobbit, many themes come into place to give a better understanding of the novel. The underlying theme of the struggle between good vs. evil while Gandalf and the dwarves fight the evils during their journey through middle earth. The battle is manifested in the goblins, Trolls, and spiders where good always triumphs evil. Even though the journey is about stealing the gold back from the dragon there is still some moral clarity to this, the dragon stole the gold and torched the city. The dwarves want to make this right and get back what was rightfully theirs.
In Tolkien’s lecture, “Beowulf: The monsters and the Critics,” he argues that Beowulf has been over analyzed for its historical content, and it is not being studied as a piece of art as it should be. He discusses what he perceives the poet of Beowulf intended to do, and why he wrote the poem the way he did. Tolkien’s main proposition, “it was plainly only in the consideration of Beowulf as a poem, with an inherent poetic significance, that any view or conviction can be reached or steadily held” (Tolkien). He evaluates why the author centers the monsters throughout the entire poem, why the poem has a non-harmonic structure, why and how the author fusses together Christianity and Paganism, and how the author uses time to make his fictional poem seem real. He also discusses the overall theme of Beowulf and other assumptions of the text. To support his viewpoints, Tolkien uses quotations and examples from the poem, quotations from other critics, and compares Beowulf to other works of art. Tolkien discusses several statements in interpreting Beowulf as a poem.
From the beginning of creation to the fictitious lands created by J. R. R. Tolkien himself, the distinctions between good and evil rise from the shadows and into the light. Specifically, in the Confessions of St. Augustine all things created through the light of God are seen as wholly good, while the absence of such light and goodness is considered evil. Tolkien’s novel elaborates on the work of Augustine and establishes the differences between forces of good and evil in the land of Middle Earth. Augustine and Tolkien in their works Saint. Augustine Confessions and The Fellowship of the Ring address the issues that arise from an individual 's struggle to escape the temptations of evil and succumbing to their lust for power rather than asserting
Throughout the whole book, Thorin just displayed a complete lack of respect for human life. When Bard and the Elvenking asked for a share in the gold, Thorin would not even give them a measly twelfth of it to avoid war. Additionally, it would only have been fair to give them some of the treasure after all he put them through. That just shows how little he valued life and how much he valued money. A twelfth of that amount of gold would be a lot, but it is small compared to the eleven twelfths of it that he would get and would still be more than anyone could possibly need in their lifetime. Thorin also didn’t want to tell the Elvenking why they were wandering in the forests when they were captured. He was in jail a long, long time, and it all could have been avoided if he just told them their plans. At that point, he wasn’t even really invested in that treasure. He still wanted it and went all that way to get it, but he wasn’t even close to getting it yet. He could have just made a deal with the elves and split the treasure with them in exchange for their help, but he wouldn’t even do that. Instead, he kept it a secret and stayed in prison with the small hope they could get the treasure in addition to the small chance that Bilbo could help them escape, which he eventually did
The last part of wisdom is realizing mistakes – and seeking reconciliation. If a person is able to learn from their mistakes, and take measures to not repeat them again, then they have been wise. As children, we usually find it hard to reconcile, over things that we would later consider unimportant and fleeting – it is only with age that we acquire the ability to interpret, forgive and forget. Unfortunately for Creon in Antigone, he is not given the ability for reconciliation, as his son Haemon along with Antigone have both committed suicide, in spite of him and his refusal to understand what is right.
Tolkien, J.R.R.. “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” In Beowulf – Modern Critical Interpretations, edited by Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.
Seldom do authors fall short in comparison to filmmakers when it comes to characterization because it is often true that to understand a character more deeply, one must search out pertinent information in books that film counterparts tend to neglect. However, in the case of the character Thorin Oakenshield, film director Peter Jackson trumps J. R. R. Tolkien in the areas of intrigue and influence. In The Hobbit: or There and Back Again, Tolkien's intent was clearly not to construct a prominent protagonist in Thorin as much as he intended with Bilbo Baggins, yet Jackson saw fit to project this dwarf king in a much different way, causing his character to slip into the role of co-protagonist alongside his hobbit companion. Unfortunately, in Tolkien's
The Hobbit shows J.R.R. Tolkien’s belief in the ancient heroic tales of the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian epics. He asserts that a being goes through many adventures with the help of friends who believe that anything can happen. Tolkien reveals how bravery and courage make ordinary individuals succeed at ordinary tasks.
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Hobbit, Or, There and Back Again. New York: Ballantine, 1982. Print
The chronicle of The Hobbit is an adventure to regain a long lost home. Brave dwarves and a hobbit endeavor through many treacherous lands and risk their lives in this great campaign. As stated by William S. Brockington, Jr., "Tolkien's fantasy world provides a place where moral values exist and quests can still be achieved." (1467). The final victory is won through the help of many companions the adventurers meet along the way. Had it not been for the setting, characters, and trials in The Hobbit the plot could have never been made possible.
The struggle between good and evil is an ever present theme of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The struggle exists in all of Middle-earth, as the followers of Sauron wage war against the realms of free men and their allies, as well as in individual characters. Boromir, a tragic hero of Tolkien’s work has essentially good qualities marred by his corrupt desires for power and the Ring. The character of Gollum has an on-going internal struggle between the part of him that is corrupted by the Ring and his originally innocent self, Smeagol, who struggles to be good. However, as long as good and evil both exist, redemption is also possible. If Gollum, for example, was portrayed as only evil, and the Smeagol part of him did not exist, the reader would never hope for his redemption, knowing it was already impossible. However, redemption can always be found throughout Tolkien’s work. Reflecting his Christian beliefs, Tolkien often depicts characters redeeming themselves through death. The conflicted characters of the Lord of the Rings demonstrate that if both good and evil exist in a person, redemption is possible at the cost of some sacrifice.
Everyone except Frodo and Sam arrives at the kingdom of Gondor, and though the people of Gondor are amazed and frightened at first by the huge army of walking trees that accompany them, everyone smiles and accepts them when Gandalf and Aragorn reveal themselves. The brothers Denethor and Boromir, however, see that Aragorn brings knowledge from the North which will give their kingship over to Faramir, the true King, and so they secretly conspire against him. And so later on, when the forces of Mordor arrive to attack Gondor, they successfully plot to have Aragorn positioned so he must face the Witch-King in single combat. The battle is too much for Aragorn, and just as he is about to die he is saved by Eowyn, a woman of Rohan who loves him, and Merry, who slays the Witch-king in single combat by using ancient hobbit-magic and so reveals himself to be the lost Thain of the Shire. Even as the forces of Mordor retreat, they are swept into the Sea by great ships brought by Faramir, the true Prince of Dol Amroth, from the hidden city of Osgiliath further up the Great River.
J.R.R. Tolkien led an interesting life because he had many traumatizing experiences as a child. Did these experiences effect his writing or was he just an imaginative adult or was he a child in a grown mans body? That is what we are going to explore in this paper. By the time I am done you will believe that this man was a traumatized child. The many experiences that he had during long his life were very dramatic. They would have made even the toughest of children have problems later on in life. From my own experiences through my own life I can kind of relate to this man. The experiences that I have had have been pretty dramatic, but nothing like his. By reading what happened to him, I know from what I have read about him that he had to be traumatized as an adult.
To begin with, the content of “Lord of the Rings” and “The House of the Scorpion” is greatly influenced by the author’s personal influences. Notably, “The Lord of the Rings” was greatly influenced during the time J.R.R Tolkien was a soldier on the battlefield of World War One. The protagonist of the novel Frodo departs on a journey through Mordor to destroy the one ring and save Middle Earth is relatable to how J.R.R Tolkien’s fought on the battlefield to save his country. Furthermore, J.R.R Tolkien’s friends that died in the war surface in the sense of loss that suffuses the story due to the numerous deaths caused by the two antagonists Sauron and Saruman. Likewise, “The House of the Scorpion” was also greatly influenced by the author, although by contrast, “The House of the Scorpion” was influenced because of Nancy Farmer’s isolation in her childhood, whereas “The Lord of the Rings” was greatly influenced because of J.R.R Tolkien's time spent on the battlefields o...
In The Hobbit, the plot of the story is filled with greed; often, this leads to disaster. Thorin and company’s greed for not sharing the gold backfires on the group. The group of dwarves’ find themselves stuck in prison. As the group travels through the forest, the Elvish king abducts them. The king has one goal: (Colon) to uncover the motive behind the dwarves in his domain. Thorin instructs his group to keep their journey a secret. The group remains in prison for an excessive amount of time due to the greed of Thorin. To avoid this situation, (Introducer) Thorin could tell the king his real motive behind entering the forest. Thorin believes if the king finds out about the gold, the elves’ will attempt to take a share of the treasure. Foolishly, Thorin decides the treasure is worth more than his freedom, “When they took their spell off him (Thorin) and he came to his senses … he was determined that no word of gold or jewels should be dragged out of him” (169). The greed for recovering all of the gold leads to the group stuck in prison. The king only wants information on why the groups of dwarves ended up wandering through his fore...