A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-18

by Joseph Loconte

Their noble aims would not change, we are assured, only the means to achieve them. This is the exact rationale offered by Nikabrik, one of the black dwarves in Prince Caspian who joins the Narnian resistance against the Telmarines. After the Narnians suffer many defeats, Nikabrik grows pessimistic.

Nikabrik’s ruthlessness, his willingness to compromise with evil, becomes his downfall. It is hard to imagine a more cautionary tale for the crusader in all of us: however noble the motives may be, they easily become twisted by the thought of glory and the taste of power.

The perverse relationship between technology, science, and power became a defining reality of the postwar years. Eugenics, communism, fascism, Nazism: these were the revolutions and ideologies that arose in the exhaustion of the democracies of Europe, all in the name of advancing the human race. All began by promising liberation from oppression; all became instruments of totalitarian control.

Much of the dramatic genius of The Lord of the Rings depends on the fact that none of its characters, not even its noblest, are immune to the danger; any of them might be tempted to betray themselves and their cause. “I have come,” says Frodo, clutching the Ring at the brink of the chasm, at the Crack of Doom. “But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!” In the end, even Frodo—who sought with all his heart to avoid becoming the Ring-bearer—cannot resist its seductive power.54

A recurring motif of his works is how soft and subtle compromises can initiate a total corruption. “It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into Nothing,” counsels the senior demon in Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. “Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”55

Edmund succumbs. He is to blame for his fall into temptation; he gives himself over to gluttony and his inclination to dominate others. Yet there is an outside power at work as well: unknown to Edmund, this was “enchanted Turkish Delight” and “anyone who had once tasted it would want more and more of it, and would even, if they were allowed, go on eating it till they killed themselves.”57 What Lewis was describing, of course, is an addiction, instigated by moral failure—a lust for pleasure and power.

Tolkien and Lewis explicitly rejected these views as an assault on human freedom. The characters in their imaginative works are continually tested by the choices set before them. Each is involved in a great moral contest, a struggle against forces that would devour their souls. “ ‘It is very grievous,’ said the Tisroc in his deep, quiet voice. ‘Every morning the sun is darkened in my eyes, and every night my sleep is the less refreshing, because I remember that Narnia is still free.’ ”61 Yet their characters retain the power of choice; there is nothing predetermined about the outcome. It is through their own decisions, their yielding to selfish ambitions, that they invite a spiritual crisis into their lives. The result is not the freedom they imagined, but the deepest slavery of heart and mind.

Although Tolkien’s work appears to lack a religious framework—there are no prayers or acts of worship, for example—its characters are conscious of a Moral Law, a source of Goodness to which they must give account.63 The conflict between Mordor and Middle-earth occurs in a world of timeless moral truths, where men and women must choose sides in a titanic struggle between light and darkness. “How shall a man judge what to do in such times?” asks Éomer. Aragorn’s response is unequivocal: “As he ever has judged,” he says. “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.” In his review of Tolkien’s work, Lewis declared this to be “the basis of the whole Tolkienian world.”64

Later in the story, as Sam and Frodo pass through the Dead Marshes on their approach to Mordor, they enter a landscape deeply reminiscent of the battlefields in France and Belgium: the bomb-wracked craters swollen with water, filth, and the remains of the fallen; the painful whiff of mustard gas; the noxious stench of death. “The air, as it seemed to them, grew harsh, and filled with a bitter reek that caught the breath and parched their mouths,” wrote Tolkien. “Here nothing lived, not even the leprous growths that feed on rottenness. The gasping pools were choked with ash and crawling muds, sickly white and grey, as if the mountains had vomited the filth of their entrails upon the lands about.” Here, as at so many places along the Western Front, was a land desecrated and diseased beyond healing.71

There are great victories over the forces of darkness in The Lord of the Rings, but not without profound loss. There is determination, but it is often mixed with dread, with a burden of fear that all the efforts of the Fellowship will come to nothing.

Here is why Tolkien’s work has been called a modern story, a “descent into hell” in its description of the sufferings of war.74 Perhaps, in a sense, Tolkien has written a kind of war diary after all: an account of the pains and terrors of combat, yet clothed in the language of myth. “It might indeed be seen in certain respects as the last work of First World War literature,” writes Brian Rosebury, “published almost forty years after the war ended.”

Lewis wrote. “He was tugging and pulling and the Wolf seemed neither alive nor dead, and its bared teeth knocked against his forehead, and everything was blood and heat and hair.” After drawing out his sword from the beast, Peter wipes the sweat off his face. “He felt tired all over.” 77 Lewis once admitted that his memories of war invaded his dreams for years: his account of Peter’s battle could have been any soldier’s recollection of bayoneting the enemy for the first time.

As in Tolkien’s trilogy, Lewis’s Narnia series depicts war not as an opportunity for martial glory, but as a grim necessity. When victories are won, there is a striking lack of triumphalism; we find instead amazement and gratitude for surviving the encounter. Battle scenes, though never lengthy, are described with surprising realism.

The military blunders, the fruitless acts of bravery, the bone-chilling rain, the meager rations: there were many days and nights just like these along the Western Front. Imaginary beasts aside, such scenes could have been lifted from the journal of any front-line soldier. Like Tolkien, though, Lewis includes these images not for their own sake, but to provide the matrix for the moral and spiritual development of his characters: “Eustace stood with his heart beating terribly, hoping and hoping that he would be brave.”80 Indeed, the most compelling personalities in their stories face down their fears and find themselves transformed by the crisis of their age.

Each of the installments in The Chronicles of Narnia is awash in these traditions. Narnia is a realm of kings and queens, where a code of honor holds sway, where knighthood is won or lost on the field of battle. “This is the greatest shame and sorrow that could have fallen on us,” says the Prince in The Silver Chair. “We have sent a brave lady into the hands of enemies and stayed behind in safety.”

Tolkien once said that when he read a medieval work it stirred him to produce a modern work in the same tradition. This is what he has done in The Lord of the Rings.85 As Verlyn Flieger observes, two of the central heroic figures of the story, Frodo and Aragorn, carry “a rich medieval heritage.”86 Yet in them Tolkien presents us with two kinds of heroes: the extraordinary man, the hidden king determined to fight for his people and regain his throne; and the ordinary man, the hobbit who, like many of us, is “not made for perilous quests” and prefers the comforts and safety of home.

In Aragorn we see the classic elements of the medieval knight: the casting of his broken sword upon the table at the Council of Elrond, his secret love for Arwen, his kingly leadership of the people of Gondor. Yet it is Aragorn’s chivalrous character that holds the greatest appeal. His courage and ferocity in battle occur alongside his mercy and tenderness, especially toward the weak. His commitment to a just cause never devolves into a campaign for personal glory. “I am Aragorn son of Arathorn,” he announces to Frodo and Sam, “and if by life or death I can save you, I will.”

Why did Tolkien and Lewis, ignoring the most powerful trends of their culture, embark on this task? Part of the answer lies in the battlefields of France. It was there, as young soldiers, that they encountered these virtues—in the officers and privates and medics at the Western Front. It was there, according to Tolkien, that the inspiration for his most beloved mythic character occurred. The exploits of the hobbits reveal how the “unforeseen and unforeseeable acts of will, and deeds of virtue of the apparently small, ungreat, forgotten in the places of the Wise and Great” shaped the destinies of nations.

Rejecting equally the moods of militarism and pacifism, 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. The serene and pacific Rivendell is a vision, perhaps, of the world as it ought to be, but not as we actually find it. “There are in fact things with which it cannot cope,” Tolkien said, “and upon which its existence nonetheless depends.”95 The heroic ideal in their stories is not escapism, they argued, but the only realistic path available in a dangerous world. As Lewis explained: “It offers the only possible escape from a world divided between wolves who do not understand, and sheep who cannot defend, the things which make life desirable.”96

The heroic quest as understood by Tolkien and Lewis is unlike our modern notions of heroism in at least one other way: it is not a solitary endeavor. Students of war understand this truth better than most. Historian Stephen Ambrose introduced millions of readers to the importance of comradeship in wartime with his book Band of Brothers, the basis for the award-winning HBO miniseries.

Yet for Tolkien and Lewis, their personal knowledge of the fellowship of men under fire must rank as another defining experience for their literary lives. As Lewis biographer Alan Jacobs observes, friendship is one of the most significant themes in The Chronicles of Narnia.98 In The Silver Chair, we watch not only the growing friendship between Eustace and Jill Pole, but the stubborn loyalty of Puddleglum, as he decides to share the dangers of their quest: “Don’t you lose heart, Pole,” said Puddleglum. “I’m coming, sure and certain. . . . Now a job like this—a journey up north just as winter’s beginning, looking for a prince who probably isn’t there, by way of a ruined city that no one has ever seen—will be just the thing. If that doesn’t steady a chap, I don’t know what will.”99

We see the cords of friendship develop between Aravis and Shasta in The Horse and His Boy, as the demands of war force them to work together, slowly replacing their resentments with deep admiration and, eventually, love. “In this idea about Aravis, Shasta was once more quite wrong,” Lewis wrote. “She was proud and could be hard enough but she was as true as steel and would never have deserted a companion, whether she liked him or not.”100