Heroes and The Children of Húrin
The Children of Húrin is a dark tale filled with bittersweet success, looming doom, and ultimate defeat. Sacrifice secures but a little breathing room and gain quickly fades into the shadow of the overarching oppression of the time. Love is foolishly placed and wisdom is shunned as characters continually seek immediate gratification and, in so doing, destroy all those who matter to them most. J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic tale is a tragedy of the first order and a masterpiece in the telling. It is a world where the enemy’s pride and selfishness is equaled only to that held by the righteous. Valor and bravery are often seen, but without charity they amount to nothing more than arrogance and fool-heartiness. It is a story devoid of heroes.
The Children of Húrin is a post-modern tale at its core. It has more in common with recent works such as The Matrix or Pirates of the Caribbean than it does with The Lord of the Rings. And yet, because of this, it adds a sparkle to The Lord of the Rings that perhaps would not have otherwise been so clearly seen.
Through my own meager efforts at crafting fiction I’ve become convinced that the creation of heroes and stories in which your characters can really be heroes is the most difficult task a writer faces. I thoroughly enjoyed The Children of Húrin, but it is by no means equal to the master work that is The Lord of the Rings. For in The Lord of the Rings Tolkien boldly and unapologetically crafted a story that wasn’t about survival and selfishness or the deepening twilight of a world overthrown with war and an insurmountable enemy on the verge of total victory. That, in contrast, would have been easy. Instead Tolkien showed us the simple pleasures that can be found in a campfire, a warm meal, a soft bed, a redeemed heart, a true friend, and a set of heroes who would sacrifice willingly for a just cause and a binding fellowship.
This is the successor to the mythology of Middle Earth. Here, at last, before the end of all things, a hearty few are found who will choose to do the right thing.
Where have all the heroes gone? So many of today’s stories are left wanting as writers contrive to implant heroic characteristics in those who are simply caught up in the fray of the ongoing tale. The good and the bad are blurred and the cause of the just is little more than selfishness, paganism, and imperfection. We suspend disbelief and root for the “good guys” merely because the author tells us to. But the “good guys” in the end strive for nothing more than what their carnal hearts’ dictate. This isn’t heroism.
Gandalf warns the fellowship to “not look too far ahead” as they willing walk from darkness into night. They walk with little hope of success but with a firm knowledge that what they endeavor to do “must be attempted.” If all were to come to naught and the quest fail, then, at least, they would know they did all that was in their power to do. They had taken responsibility.
Heroes today don’t take responsibility. They are ordinary men and women sucked up into extraordinary events and being asked to perform impossible tasks they are driven to rage and desperation. In the end, firing wildly, they magically shoot the feet out from under the “bad guys” at just the right moment and so their story is ended. But who wants to invest heart and emotion and hope in heroes that are just like us? Subject to the same folly and degradation and lasciviousness. Rather the soul cries out for someone, anyone, who seeing the gathering storm would not be overtaken, would not run for the safety of port, but would order his ship into the hurricane. Would call the calvary to follow him up over the hill and then down into the arrows of the enemy. A true hero is one who rises to the challenge, raises the bayonet, and charges into the spearhead of the enemy’s offensive hoping and trusting in providence alone to see him though. A hero is one who is faithful in letter, and in spirit.
Both the worlds of fiction and nonfiction need more heroes. Heroes like Frodo Baggins who, when faced with all the safety and hope his world could still provide, stood up and said, “I will take the Ring to Mordor - though I do not know the way.”
That is a hero.
