Tolkien: The Man Behind Middle Earth

By Elizabeth Foss
Herald Columnist
(From the issue of 12/18/03)

"Nicholas, where is Mommy’s engagement ring?" I ask again, trying not to let the panic I feel creep into my voice.

"I told you," my nearly three-year-old sighs, "I threw it in Mount Doom when I was Frodo Baggins." Then, he mutters an afterthought, "I just wish I could remember the way to Mordor."

Me too. This game of make believe has crept its way into the real life of our household for nearly a year, since the boys listened to the BBC audio version of J.R. R. Tolkien’s masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, last winter. I doubt Nicholas really remembers the story but he has been fed it through his play with his brothers for so long, he can’t remember a time when he didn’t intimately know the characters and their saga. They eat sleep and breathe Lord of the Rings and their play has reached a fevered pitch as the real ringleader in our family play-dramas, Christian, counts the days until the release of "Return of the King."

I’m not much of fan of fantasy myself. I have a place in my heart for Narnia and the tales told by Tolkien’s good friend C. S. Lewis, but reading the Lord of the Rings was work for me. I find Tolkien a man of amazing talent — the ultimate storyteller, the master wordsmith. I’m just not terribly fond of hobbits and wizards and elves. However, my children are entranced. And, taking to heart the words of John Bosco to "Love the things the boys love," I have watched the movies with Christian and spent several months analyzing the books with Michael.

It was not until I read C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church and Tolkien: Man and Myth, both by Joseph Pearce, that I really appreciated the deep Catholic roots of Tolkien’s work and so began to appreciate even more the genius of his writing. Tolkien asserted that The Lord of the Rings was "fundamentally religious and Catholic" and he said specifically that he was "grateful for having been brought up (since I was eight) in a Faith that has nourished me and taught me all the little that I know; and that I owe to my mother, who clung to her conversion and died young, largely through the hardships of poverty resulting from it."

Tolkien’s mother was a widow who converted to Catholicism despite living in an England that was hostile to the faith. When her extended family learned of her conversion, they cut off all financial aid to the young widow and her two children. The ensuing years of poverty were a tremendous strain and Tolkien’s mother died from complications of diabetes at the age of 34. Tolkien believed her to be a martyr for the faith.

His mother named Father Francis Morgan to be the guardian of young Tolkien and his brother and, though they lived with their aunt, they truly grew up in the Birmingham Oratory under the guidance of Father Francis. The environment was one of strict religious observance and it had a profound and lasting effect on Tolkien’s work and his life.

While I will probably never be a big fan of fantasy, I am a fan of J.R. R. Tolkien. I appreciate his ability to tell a tale and his ability to craft a phrase. More than that, I appreciate the complexity of his understanding of theology and his talent when it comes to making that theology accessible to many generations by means of a myth of his own making. Tolkien believed that myths were true. He and his friend C.S. Lewis argued that point early in the conversations that ultimately led Lewis to Christ. Pearce writes: "Tolkien [argued] that myths, far from being lies, were the best way of conveying truths which would otherwise be inexpressible. ‘We have come from God [continued Tolkien], and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God.’ Since we are made in the image of God, and since God is the creator, part of the imageness of God in us is the gift of creativity. The creation — or more correctly the sub-creation — of stories or myths is merely a reflection of the image of the Creator in us."

Young Tolkien was educated at home by his mother who was too poor to be able to afford the school tuition. Among other things, she taught him Latin, French and German. She shared with her boys the joy of painting and music. She provided much opportunity to be outdoors in the rural countryside until she was forced to relocate to an urban boardinghouse. But even in the squalor of the inner-city, she gave her sons the retreat that can be found between the covers of a good book. Tolkien was profoundly influenced by the implicit moral tales of George Macdonald and the fairy stories of Andrew Lang. He fell in love with the poetry of language and his mother fostered his romance.

Years after her death, Tolkien would "sub-create" an entire world, complete with its own languages. And in a house in Virginia, far from Birmingham and even farther from Middle-Earth, like in so many homes all over the world, small boys would play at being hobbits and big boys would argue with each other over whether the Lord of the Rings is an allegory or a myth. Entire families would be caught up in the story told so well that it is woven into the family culture. The mother, taking in the scene in her own domestic church, would pray for the soul of Mabel Tolkien, the young woman who rocked the cradle of the baby who grew to stir souls, fire imaginations and win hearts for Christ. While she’s on her knees, she’ll whisper one more fervent prayer to St. Anthony. We’re on a mission to find that ring!

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