I have read my copy through three times. Each time my current view is corroborated.
Sorry Barliman. I mistook "Once I realized this (that nothing would stop the doom placed on them), I stopped reading COH (which is a kind of distilled Silmarillion with dialogue) and SIL. " to mean you had
never got around to finishing it.
But as for the examples you ask for I could name
Earendil. The existence of the silmarilli and the prophecy that they will be found. Also the survival of
the Faithful from the Fall of
Numenor. Remember how
Ulmo brought dreams to two
elven kings and appeared before
Tuor? Ulmo essentially says that no matter what the Doom may be on the people there is always a rift in it, there may still be a way to avoid complete darkness. I think this does show that there is always reason to hope, and even though individuals come to ruin
Morgoth never did have the ultimate destruction that he wanted. Even from the death of
Finwe's first wife something good came. His re-marriage to Indis brought
Fingolfin and
Finarfin who, along with their descendants, play a great role for good.
Maybe most hopeful of all is that in the Legendarium there is a
God, gods, and
Istari, even if
men do not always know it or believe it. The Children of
Iluvatar are supposed to join in the music with the
Ainur in the end. That the
Gift of Men, though it had become seen as a curse, is that no matter what befalls them in
Arda they will eventually be free'd of it.
I'm not argueing the desperate tone of the stories in Sil, I just think they are not without hope.
And sure, I fully agree with you that war must have had an impact for the worst on his view of men.
Have you read the Athrabeth I mentioned? I think you would find it interesting because it deals directly with a mortal woman's total loss of hope and faith in God. It puts forth the notion that just maybe Morgoth was able to destroy Men in a way that made them irredeemable as a
race and beyond the reach of Iluvatar. IMO, this is the darkest thing in his writings.
The belief of the woman and her people is that Men had originally a kind of immortality and that
Melkor took this from them. However it happened, at the very least it was him who caused Men to fear death rather than see it as a Gift. And this fear of death that men have is (IMO) a root cause of our tendencies to
evil and can bring about death even more quickly. It seems tied in with greed. I tend to believe that the Woman in Athrabeth was mistaken. That we were not designed to be immortal within the world, but that our life was shortened. I think that originally Men were ment to be much like the
Numenoreans are in their early days. Eventually they grow old and elect to pass away from the World as
Aragorn did.
