Master of Doom by Doom Mastered: Heroism, Fate, and Death in The Children of Húrin
2010; Mythopoeic Society; Volume: 29; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0146-9339
Autores Tópico(s)Comics and Graphic Narratives
ResumoIN A LETTER TO MILTON WALDMAN, J.R.R. TOLKIEN WROTE, Children of Hurin [is] the tragic tale of Turambar and his sister Niniel--of which is the (Letters 150). Heroism is a predominant--if not the predominant--focus of Tolkien's entire creative corpus. His readers have come to expect a rich and kaleidoscopic range of heroes and heroines as varied as their races. Their characteristics are no less diverse; indeed, while some of his heroes fit conventions and meet a reader's expectations, others unexpectedly depart from convention and demand that the reader take a second look. According to Richard C. West, Turambar is little more than an object of derision: Tolkien uses the character of to examine the theme of heroic excess, a hero who is the embodiment of a critique of (291). Of course, trivializing is not the primary focus of West's essay Setting the Rocket Off in Story (which examines the Finnish germ of Tolkien's works), but his reading of the character of is far too simplistic, and it fails to appreciate the rich thematic elements of one of Tolkien's least known heroes. Certainly, is hardly the Arthurian Aragorn or the bumbling-but-lovably-Victorian Bilbo, but to pigeon-hole him as a caricature of what the hero should not look like is a sad misreading. proposition then arises: if is not a critique of heroism, what in fact is he? There are two viable answers: the Byronic Hero and the Absurd Hero, as defined in Albert Camus's essay The Myth of Sisyphus. (1) West's skewed observation might have been understandable if until 2007 Narn i Chin Hurin had existed only in the form of its original obscure epic poem or as a random series of notes known only to the most devoted disciples of the Tolkienian mythos, but a rough prose version is to be found in Unfinished Tales, first published in 1980 by Tolkien's literary executor and youngest son, Christopher. (The novel Children of Hurin is essentially the polished edition of the Narn that is to be found in Unfinished Tales, which has been readily available to public eyes for three decades). prefatory issue of authorship therefore becomes a major one: whose accomplishment is Children of Hurin? Because the story has traversed from the father's original poem to two versions of the son's prose, assigning credit for the story as it now exists is tricky. Much of the wording and phraseology in the novel has been grafted from the poem, so that the father's authorial voice frequently carries the line of narration. In order to prevent any further digression on the grounds of assigning authorship, my position is that the story is John Ronald Reuel's; the novel is Christopher's. Still puzzling, though, is that West claims that is in any way a critique of heroism itself. Aside from Unfinished Tales, yet another much shorter prose incarnation of the story is available as the twenty-first chapter of Silmarillion, and even that fragment offers more insight into Turin's character than West's assessment recognizes. Anyone even obliquely familiar with Tolkien's monumental works can find dozens of examples of the high esteem in which he held all epic heroism; if is a symbolic critique of heroism, he is a minority (keeping such particular company as Feanor, Thorin, and Boromir). Of some importance, however, is that these misanthropic characters are still on the side of Good, murky though their agendas may at times seem; they are all still heroes, not caricatures. Any attempt to speculate about Tolkien's authorial intent to a degree beyond any statement he may have made regarding the source(s) of Narn i Chin Hurin would be utterly futile, although he admits that he drew his symbolic inspiration for from Kalevala story of Kullervo. His letter to Waldman is the only authorial acknowledgement that he makes concerning the source of the story, though he clearly wished to put the notion of emulation of epic precedents at a distance: Turin is [. …
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