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

Thus in The Lord of the Rings we find great sobriety about the prospects of final victory in this present life, as in the words of Galadriel: “Through the ages of the world we have fought the long defeat.”

“Take my advice,” says Mr. Beaver, “whenever you meet anything that’s going to be human and isn’t yet, or used to be human once and isn’t now, or ought to be human and isn’t, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet.”

“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.”

As Tolkien once told his publisher, the Shire “is based on rural England and not any other country in the world.”15 The house of his famous hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, takes its name—“Bag End”—from his aunt’s farm in Worcestershire. “I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size),” he admitted. “I like gardens, trees and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking.”16

Thus, Spencer’s social interpretation of Darwinian science energized the most powerful narrative at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Myth of Progress was not just one story among many. It was the story, the metanarrative of all the stories about our mortal lives, a comprehensive explanation of the meaning of human existence. The Myth of Progress was proclaimed from nearly every sector of society. Scientists, physicians, educators, industrialists, salesmen, politicians, preachers—they all agreed on the upward flight of humankind. Each breakthrough in medicine, science, and technology seemed to confirm the Myth. Every invention and innovation was offered up as evidence: whether it was Marconi’s radio messages or the Maxim machine gun, such advances were ordained by the gods of progress.37 Thus, what began as a theory about biological change ripened into an assumption—a dogma—about human improvement, even perfection. Or so it seemed to C. S. Lewis and many of his generation. “I grew up believing in this Myth and I have felt—I still feel—its almost perfect grandeur,” he wrote. “To those brought up on the Myth nothing seems more normal, more natural, more plausible, than that chaos should turn into order, death into life, ignorance into knowledge. It is one of the most moving and satisfying world dramas which have ever been imagined.”38

Tolkien and Lewis encountered the horrific progeny of this thinking—in the trenches and barbed wire and mortars of the Great War—and it gave them great pause about human potentiality. On the one hand, the characters in their novels possess a great nobility: creatures endowed with a unique capacity for virtue, courage, and love. Indeed, a vital theme throughout is the sacred worth of the individual soul; in Middle-earth and in Narnia, every life is of immense consequence. On the other hand, their characters are deeply flawed individuals, capable of great evil, and in desperate need of divine grace to overcome their predicament. Both authors thus reflect the historic Christian tradition: human nature as a tragic mix of nobility and wretchedness. As we’ll see, this frankly religious doctrine—the biblical fall—was confirmed by their experience of war. It would supply the moral architecture for their stories, giving them an enduring sense of realism and relevance. “You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve,” Aslan tells Caspian in The Chronicles of Narnia. “And that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth.”59 Tolkien wrote that the idea of “the Fall of Man” lurked behind every story, and that “all stories are ultimately about the fall.”60

Perhaps the observation of a Scottish officer was closer to the mark: “The religion of ninety percent of the men at the front is not distinctively Christian,” he wrote, “but a religion of patriotism and of valor, tinged with chivalry, and the best merely colored with sentiment and emotion borrowed from Christianity.”

As Lewis wrote, many years after his wartime service: For let us make no mistake. All that we fear from all the kinds of adversity, severally, is collected together in the life of a soldier on active service. Like sickness, it threatens pain and death. Like poverty, it threatens ill lodging, cold, heat, thirst, and hunger. Like slavery, it threatens toil, humiliation, injustice, and arbitrary rule. Like exile, it separates you from all you love.87

They talked late into the night, sharing with one another their deepest convictions and aspirations. Given their evident loyalty to one another throughout the war years, they must have vowed to preserve their fellowship in whatever way they could. Tolkien later said it was at this moment that he first became aware of “the hopes and ambitions” that would propel him throughout his life.3