Húrin

Tom Shippey calls the scene where Húrin is freed after 28 years by the Dark Lord Morgoth the "lyric core" of the tale of the fall of Gondolin.

Christopher Garbowski comments that when Húrin cries aloud, revealing the hidden entrance to Gondolin, the effect is quite unlike that of The Lord of the Rings.

Helen Lasseter Freeh comments on the version in Unfinished Tales where Húrin and Morgoth discuss luck and fate in Middle-earth.

Shippey remarks that Tolkien often provides double explanations of events throughout his Middle-earth writings, so that their cause could be luck, but could equally be fate, the will of the godlike Valar.

[Húrin] was shorter in stature than other men of his kin; in this he took after his mother's people, but in all else he was like Hador his grandfather, fair of face and golden-haired, strong in body and fiery of mood.

[T 1] Húrin is the elder son of Galdor of the House of Hador and Hareth of the Men of Haladin, who are Edain; his younger brother is Huor.

When Húrin refuses, Morgoth curses him along with his kin and puts him on a high mountain peak in chains, and lets him see and hear from the seat the evils that will befall his son and daughter, but not the good they will do.

[T 4] After twenty-eight years of imprisonment and the death of his children, Morgoth releases Húrin: "He had grown grim to look upon: his hair and beard were white and long, but there was a fell light in his eyes.

In anger and despair he seeks out the Folk of Haleth, blaming them for the deaths of his wife and children; a revolt ensues, killing the last Haladin.

Manthor too is killed; he asks Húrin: "Was not this your true errand, Man of the North: to bring ruin upon us to weigh against thine own?

[T 7] The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey writes that the "lyric core" of the story of the fall of Gondolin, the source of narrative dynamism amidst all the description and genealogy in The Silmarillion, is the scene where Húrin is set free after 28 years imprisoned by Morgoth.

In his view, "everything in this scene is emblematic";[1] the sun sets behind the Mountains of Shadow, standing for the coming catastrophe, but "the real sunset is in Húrin's heart".

Tolkien Encyclopedia that the depiction of Húrin in The War of the Jewels, crying aloud in the wilderness by the hidden entrance to Gondolin, creates a very different and far less optimistic and effect to that of The Lord of the Rings, which had already been written.

[2] Alex Lewis, writing in Mythlore, asserts that Tolkien introduced a historical bias into the tale of Húrin's coming to Gondolin.

Terrible things in the Narn seem to be coincidences; but, writes Shippey, Tolkien often gives double explanations of these events, one fate, one just accident.