A Hobbit Returns From War

 A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and a Great War by Joseph Loconte 2015.

I was delighted to receive this book for Christmas. My other hobby is, I suppose, studying the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. So this discussion of the moral dimensions of Middle Earth was welcome. Theologically I'm a self-confessed Tolkienist, and Middle Earth is my emotional comfort blanket. 

This book looks at how the two friends,  C.S. Lewis and Tolkien wrote their great works as a response to their experiences in the Great War. Instead of turning to cynicism,  atheism and rejecting the old values like other writers of their time, Lewis embraced Anglican Christianity and Tolkien set about reasserting outmoded concepts of Goodness and heroism. But the Goodness and Heroism is still human and  flawed and doomed to failure.

Of course this is why Tolkien's writings are in my mind superior to all the fantasy writers who have come before or after with their Nietschean übermensch and moral relativism depicting mighty thewed heroes winning through strength of Will. Any other writer would have Gandalf, Aragorn or Galadriel use the Ring to defeat Sauron. Or Frodo would have resisted the Ring's power to the end and flipped the bird at Sauron while glibly dropping it into the fire, probably saying something clever while he did it too.

Loconte spends time explaining the intellectual and spiritual landscape of the Belle Epoque, when even church leaders were seduced by scientific and technological advances into thinking that Progress would lead humanity to a shining city on a hill. 1914-18 blew that all up and buried the Myth of Progress in a corpse filled trench. Really a bit of cynicism and turning away from old ideals is understandable. I'm surprised more just didn't go insane.

Instead, Tolkien gives us heroes who fail and are flawed,  but they struggle anyway because struggling against darkness, even without final hope, is what we have to do. The elves fight the "long defeat" and have seen many fruitless victories. The striving of the great only serve to create space and time for the hands of the small to turn the wheel. But even then Frodo and Sam fail at the end and the world is only saved by Grace unlooked for. Bilbo's small unplanned act of mercy, to not kill Gollum in the cave, is the tiny event, without witnesses or fanfare, that saves Middle Earth. 

Loconte is a religious philosopher, so he's not as concerned about a literary analysis as I am. He also gives a bit more space to C.S. Lewis and his Christian allegory The Chronicles of Narnia than I would have liked. But Lewis is, perhaps, more readily accessible to his themes. Still,  I found this a thought provoking read about J.R.R Tolkien, my favourite author.