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Part of the achievement of Tolkien and Lewis was to reintroduce into the popular imagination a Christian vision of hope in a world tortured by doubt and disillusionment.
Tolkien and Lewis were attracted to the genres of myth and romance not because they sought to escape the world, but because for them the real world had a mythic and heroic quality.
The world is the setting for great conflicts and great quests: it creates scenes of remorseless violence, grief, and suffering, as well as deep compassion, courage, and selfless sacrifice.
Their depictions of the struggles of Middle-earth and Narnia do not represent a flight from reality, but rather a return to a more realistic view of the world as we actually find it.
“If we thought we were building up a heaven on earth, if we looked for something that would turn the present world from a place of pilgrimage into a permanent city satisfying the soul of man, we are disillusioned, and not a moment too soon.”
Tolkien and Lewis offer an understanding of the human story that is both tragic and hopeful: they suggest that war is a symptom of the ruin and wreckage of human life, but that it points the way to a life restored and transformed by grace.
Their recourse was to draw us back to the heroic tradition: a mode of thought tempered by the realities of combat and fortified by belief in a God of justice and mercy.
“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all,” he explains. “But I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”
Both authors thus reflect the historic Christian tradition: human nature as a tragic mix of nobility and wretchedness.
“The lamps are going out all over Europe,” he said. “We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”
The assumption of religious leaders in England and the United States was that war would advance the ideals of Christianity and democracy. More than that, it would give birth to an epoch of peace and righteousness: the “last battle” before the dawn of a new world.
“This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”28
One may answer the Call—or refuse it, turn away, and walk into Darkness. But indifference to the Call to struggle against evil is not an option; one must take sides.
In Frodo we are meant to see ourselves: our weaknesses, our rationalizations, and our lack of resolve in combatting evil. But we also get a glimpse into a life of courage and perseverance in the ongoing struggle: you resisted to the last. Tolkien’s story reminds us that evil is a sleepless force in human lives,
“Dreams of the far future destiny of man,” wrote Lewis, “were dragging up from its shallow and unquiet grave the old dream of Man as God.”46
“The major disillusionment of the twentieth century has been over political good intentions, which have led only to gulags and killings fields. That is why what Gandalf says has rung true to virtually everyone who reads it.”
soft and subtle compromises can initiate a total corruption.
“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”55
The intended effect of these characters is to retrieve the medieval virtues and make them attractive, even to a modern audience.
these authors charted a middle course: a partial return to the chivalrous ideal. Only a society that upheld this ideal—in its art, literature, and its institutions—could hope to resist the dark and hungry forces arrayed against it.
After the war, Tolkien and Lewis sought to recapture something like the camaraderie that sustained them during the crisis years of 1914–1918. At Oxford they launched the Inklings, the group of friends and fellow scholars who met weekly—Tuesday mornings at the Eagle and Child pub over beer and Thursday evenings in Lewis’s college rooms over various drinks—to discuss their works.111 For sixteen years these men gathered to read, recite, argue, and laugh together.
“Is any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a good fire?”113
Their experience reminds us that great friendship is a gift born of adversity: it is made possible by the common struggle against the world’s darkness.
There is no shortcut to the Land of Peace, no primrose path to the Mansions of the Blessed. First come tears and suffering in Mordor,
“Is everything sad going to come untrue?” asks Sam.37 Here we find, beyond all imagination, the deepest source of hope for the human story. For when the King is revealed, “there will be no more night.”38 The Shadow will finally and forever be lifted from the earth. The Great War will be won. This King, who brings strength and healing in his hands, will make everything sad come untrue.
