Still Ringing True - Reading The Lord of the Rings

Still ringing true Reading The Lord of the Rings—this time as an adult—remains an overwhelming experience By Gene Edward Veith

Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron; here is a book that will break your heart."

That blurb on the back cover of the old Ballentine edition of The Lord of the Rings captured exactly the way I felt, as a 14-year-old having just finished the last book of Tolkien's trilogy. The comment seemed so apt that the name of the critic stuck in my mind: someone named C.S. Lewis. Not too long after that, I was browsing in a bookstore and saw his name on a book of his own: Screwtape Letters. I opened it up and saw that it had been dedicated to J.R.R. Tolkien. Surely, I had to read this book by someone whose taste in literature was so much like mine. Eventually, I would read Lewis's Mere Christianity, which opened up to my broken heart the sword-piercing beauties of Christianity.

Still later, when I was in college, an off-handed remark about "the one ring" helped me connect with a young woman who turned out also to be a big Tolkien fan. We ended up getting married. Which led to having our children.

How odd that a work of fantasy should have such an impact in my real world. While many Tolkien fans re-read the trilogy over and over, I never did, being content to keep savoring my first impression. Now that a trilogy of movies is coming out based on Tolkien's saga—the first of which, The Fellowship of the Ring, is scheduled for release on Dec. 19—I resolved to ready myself by reading the books again.

Then I was 14; now I am 50. Then I was just waking up to a love of reading; now I am an English professor, a professional reader (something else I probably owe to the impact of the trilogy). Then my world was a lot smaller and my experiences much more limited than they are now, after 36 years of living. Reading it again after all those years, I could remember how the different events in the story struck me the first time and compare that with my reactions as I am today. I know I understood it better this time—seeing it not as just a children's book but as a work that raises issues only adults can fully grasp—and I can say that it was just as good and maybe better the second time around.

"The world changes, and all that once was strong now proves unsure. How shall any tower withstand such numbers and such reckless hate?"

Fittingly, my reading project had an auspicious beginning. I started The Fellowship of the Ring in earnest the week after the Sept. 11 attacks. I was taking my first plane trip after the hijackings, one of the few passengers in a big airliner bound for Detroit, uneasy, frisked at the gate, still overwhelmed by the magnitude of the assault upon our country.

Here I was, reading about those complacent, ordinary, homebound folks, the hobbits, whose comfortable lives were interrupted by the Shadow. In the weeks ahead, as our nation geared for war, and then as our forces attacked, what I was reading had a special resonance. It was not just that Tolkien kept referring to two towers, or the suspense that kept building through the first two books and the weeks after the attack that would finally break out in a spectacular war. Here was the city of Gondor, a once great civilization in palpable decline, having to regain its history and its nerve. Here, for all of the military exploits of great warriors, the real heroism was on display in ordinary folks that the high and mighty had always overlooked.

As I was flying in that airplane under terrorist alert and reading my book, something else compounded my intimations of mortality: turning 50. The AARP sign-up cards had already arrived in the mail, I was feeling my age, and I had been finding myself fantasizing about retirement. But before we landed in Detroit, I read about how both Bilbo and Frodo began their adventures on their 50th birthdays. I left the plane oddly exhilarated.

"Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man's part to discern them, as much in the GoldenWood as in his own house."

As Lewis tells the story of his conversion in Surprised by Joy, it was Tolkien's witnessing—and his arguments—that led him away from atheism into the Christian faith. Those stories they both loved, drawn from legend and fantasy, about a Dying God, about resurrection and redemption: These are not just myths, Tolkien argued. They became true in the Jesus Christ of history. Jesus is really who He said He was, God in the flesh, who died and rose again to bring human beings new life.

When Lewis accepted this truth, he became a great apologist for the faith. Tolkien, on the other hand, kept writing fantasy.

Some Christians are leery of fantasy, even of Tolkien's, which contains wizards, wraiths, and the demonic Sauron, who is, in fact, the Lord of the Ring. Might reading this sort of thing lead to meddling in the occult? In the debate over Harry Potter, defenders but also some critics of J.K. Rowling's wildly popular children's novels about a school for witches are saying that The Sorcerer's Stone is no different from The Lord of the Rings.

But there is a difference. As Richard Adanes, author of Harry Potter and the Bible, points out, Tolkien's Gandalf is not a wizard at all, in the Harry Potter sense; rather, in the Middle Earth universe, he is a being roughly equivalent to an angel. In The Silmarilion, in which Tolkien gives the background and the details of his imaginary realm, he begins with a Genesis-like creation story, along with a fall. He writes of one God who makes all of Middle Earth and fills it with beings with natural—not occult—powers of their own.

As pastor Joel Brondos points out, the themes of the two fantasies are practically opposites. Harry Potter is about an outcast boy who seeks and acquires power. The Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, is about the rejection of power. The whole point of the story, on which the whole plot depends, is that the power of the Ring, because it has been forged by the Dark Lord, must not be used. Though the temptation to use its occult power is great, to do so corrupts the user, even if it were used for a good end or to defeat Sauron. The user would become a new Sauron. The forces of good—Gandalf, the elves—know that the Ring must be destroyed but that they themselves dare not touch it. So they ask the weak but strong-charactered hobbits to go to Mordor, the lair of its evil maker, to destroy the Ring by throwing it into the volcanic crack of Mt. Doom.

The trilogy is filled with Christian motifs—resurrection, providence, sacrifice, the promise that a king will return—but it is not (like The Chronicles of Narnia) an allegory, a genre Tolkien disliked. Tolkien called what he was doing a "sub-creation." God created the universe so human beings, made in His image, can imitate Him, though faintly, by making creations of their own. Whereas God's creation is real, an author's creation (or, rather, "sub-creation") is fictional, existing only in the mind and the imagination, though potentially meaningful and valuable nonetheless.

"Orcs, and talking trees, and leagues of grass, and galloping riders, and glittering caves, and white towers and golden halls, and battles, and tall ships sailing, all these passed before Sam's mind."

In his essay "On Fairy Stories," Tolkien deals with the charge of "escapism," the objection that fairy tales, fantasies, and stories like his merely provide escape. The assumption, he said, is that escaping is always a bad thing. For someone who is imprisoned, the most healthy thing he can do is to escape the walls that shut him in.

Non-Christians are indeed in a prison. They think that nothing exists beyond what they can see—the hard, stone walls of the material world. They have no understanding of spiritual realities, that good and evil are not mere psychological states but objective truths, that they can be freed from their bondage of sin into an everlasting life wonderful beyond their conception. They need an evangelism of their imaginations.

What The Lord of the Rings offers and conveys is a Christian sensibility. It gives readers a taste of the attractiveness of Goodness and the repulsiveness of Evil. It evokes a sense of mystery and longing, a sense that this world has cosmic significance, as does the part each of us is called to play.

"'Why, to think of it, we're in the same tale still! It's going on. Don't the great tales never end?'

'No, they never end as tales,' said Frodo. 'But the people in them come, and go when their part's ended. Our part will end later—or sooner.'

I just finished reading the Lord Of The Rings series as well as The Hobbit. I don't know how I missed them when I was younger and an avid reader but I did.

I too read them after 9/11, and was astounded at the number of similarities I found to present day reality.

If for some reason they weren't read before, now is a wonderful time to do so. The desire of evil to overcome good and the necessary fight for freedom from evil is as appropriate to our times as it was when these books were written.

I recommend reading The Hobbit first.

Jen

I always start out with "The Hobbitt" before I read the rest of them. In fact, I sometimes even read 'The Silmarillion".

The Silmarillion tells a tale of the Elder Days, when Elves and Men became estranged by the Dark Lord Morgoth's lust for the Silmarils, pure and powerful magic jewels. Even the love between a human warrior and the daughter of the Elven king cannot defeat Morgoth, but the War of Wrath finally brings down the Dark Lord. Peace reigns until the evil Sauron recovers the Rings of Power and sets the stage for the events told in the Lord of the Rings.

J.R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis are two authors that Christians can read and not get into "trouble with evil" as I call it.

"Biblical Calvinist" Nice screen name. Well, I guess I am to after reading a book called "Truths That Transform" by D. James Kennedy. That book really set my heart and soul straight about some beliefs that I had.

FReegards, RadicalRik

I have it; the adventures of Frito, Dildo and Goodgulf against Sorehed and his Nozdruls is one of the great works of Western Literature :-)

The great thing about the Lampoon parody novels is they also cleverly parody even the writing style and sentence structure of the author..."Doon" is another great one.

"Non-Christians are indeed in a prison. They think that nothing exists beyond what they can see—the hard, stone walls of the material world. They have no understanding of spiritual realities, that good and evil are not mere psychological states but objective truths, that they can be freed from their bondage of sin into an everlasting life wonderful beyond their conception. They need an evangelism of their imaginations."

Wow!!

Very nicely written, as with all of his articles.

But I don't know how he could have refrained from rereading LOTR for so many years. I can't count how many times I've read it, to myself, to my future wife, to my children at various stages. There are a few books you can read repeatedly, and this is certainly one of them.

I assume he read it because it's always best to read the book before seeing the movie. I would certainly say that to anyone who plans to take his kids to the movie. It would be too bad if they didn't read the book first.

Don't be surprised that he refrained from reading it for so long. I'm almost 60 and I'm reading it for the first time. I, too, began it shortly after 911. I'm still reading 'The Two Towers' but will soon be into 'The Return of the King.' I can hardly wait. This has been a wonderful experience for me, and I found myself actually not even turning on my computer for days at a time, just so I could READ! I'm wondering, though, if I am going to do the same thing I did with "Lonesome Dove," and just turn it over when I finish it and start again. Some books are just SOOOOO GOOD!

I am now reading "The Hobbit" and waiting for the Lord of the Rings to be delivered from Amazon. Thanks for the article. I take World Mag and read a couple of articles about "The Lord of the Rings" but missed this one. I have always "thought" about reading these books, being a fan of CS Lewis, but kept putting it off. Reading all the comments, I wish I hadn't waited.

Moved recently and have not found Fellowship yet, reading Towers anyway, not like I haven't read it a thousand times before. But how can anyone not read The Hobbit first? I'm looking forward to the movie but I'm afraid to get too exited about it. The last movie I was looking forward to in this way was Phantom Menace (aka Sesame Street does Star Wars) I have seen all the original movies and the hobbit is still my favorite some of the later ones were just awfull. (Each was done by a different company) The original Fellowship was great as well and I can still hear Sam complaining about the marsh flys in a thick british accent "What do they eat when they can't get 'obbit?" My copies of the books are so tattered, I really have to get new ones. I sure would like to get some really nice hardbacks, ones that will last forever.

"I know I understood it better this time—seeing it not as just a children's book but as a work that raises issues only adults can fully grasp—and I can say that it was just as good and maybe better the second time around."

I couldn't agree more. The rejection of power theme was more palpable to me when I read the trilogy as an adult than as an adolescent.

I couldn't help but think that the only American to ever reject an offer of absolute power when it was offered to him was George Washington, who refused the crown of America offered by his officers after the Revolution was won. I also couldn't help but think that very few (if any?) Americans in a similar position today would refuse such an offer. Elected officials today are more like Saruman than Gandalf.

"Elected officials today are more like Saruman than Gandalf."

Isn't that the truth along with his flunky Wormtongue.

Chapter VIII, The Scouring Of the Shire in The Return of the King brought tears to my eyes. Destruction for the sake of destruction, tearing down what the Hobbits had built, repression of freedom, using the "law" to rule. (It had a good end though.) :0)

Jen

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