Children of Hurin

I am pretty open about the fact that I’m a geek. Here is another installment in that policy of openness. Growing up, I read Tolkien books repeatedly – in particular, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the Silmarillion. In my experience, a substantial portion of the population has read the first two on the list, but not very many have read the Silmarillion. But, let me be the first to stipulate that I am not really that hardcore where Tolkien is concerned. For example, I’ve read some of The History of Middle Earth but just in passing and only small parts.

Like I said, however, the Silmarillion was one I read repeatedly, probably 5 or 6 times. I’ve read it enough times to have a favorite passage. And, much to my surprise, as I was driving back to work after dropping my son off at preschool, somebody on the radio was reading that passage.

Turns out, Christopher Tolkien has used some of his father’s work to compile The Children of Húrin which is being released. The Children of Hurin expands upon the parts of the tale told in the Silmarillion about Hurin and his family, particularly Turin and the events surrounding his slaying of the dragon Glaurung (I’m a geek, I know!).

And, in case you care, as to the favorite passage in question, the set up is this. Hurin is, simply put, a bad ass. He is a leader of one of the enlightened tribes of men who have aligned themselves with the elves who are fighting Morgoth, the original Dark Lord to whom Sauron was a mere servant. He is fighting with his brother Huor and the elves in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. At some point, it becomes clear that the battle is lost. Hurin and Huor decide to make a stand in order to allow their friend, the elf-lord Turgon to skin out of there and get back to his fortress at Gondolin. Eventually, everyone else was dead or gone:

Last of all Hurin stood alone. Then he cast aside his shield, and wielded an axe two-handed; and it sung that the axe smoked in the black blood of the troll guard of Gothmog until it withered, and each time that he slew Hurin cried: ‘Aure entuluva! Day shall come again!’ Seventy times he uttered that cry, but they took him at last alive, by the command of Morgoth, for the Orcs grappled him with their hands, which clung to him still though he hewed off their arms, and ever their numbers were renewed, until at last he fell buried beneath them. Then Gothmog bound him and dragged him to Angband with mockery. Thus ended the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, as the sun went down beyond the sea. Night fell in Hithlum, and there came a great storm of wind out of the West.

The scholar who was reading this passage on the radio explained about how Tolkien’s Middle Earth stories very much follow the “Northern” view of heroism as opposed to the Greek or Latin views. The Northern view is very fatalistic. There is no ultimate triumph. No matter what you do, you will die anyway and there is always another monster or another evil around the corner. But, you keep trying and fighting anyway. For whatever reason, as an adolescent boy, there was something very appealing about that view generally and about the Silmarillion and Hurin in particular. I don’t spend much time thinking about such things anymore — something about raising kids and paying a mortgage sort of pounds one into reality — but I still have fond memories.