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

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