Tolkien and the Great War Quotes

“To put the last point another way, writers such as Graves, Sassoon, and Owen saw the Great War as the disease, but Tolkien saw it as merely the symptom.”
― John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth

“Tolkien came to regard the tale of Beren and Tinuviel as 'the first example of the motive (to become dominant in Hobbits) that the great policies of world history, "the wheels of the world", are often turned not by the Lords and Governors, even gods, but by the seemingly unknown and weak'. Such a worldview is inherent in the fairy-tale (and Christian) idea of the happy ending in which the dispossessed are restored to joy; but perhaps Tolkien was also struck by the way it had been borne out in the Great War, when ordinary people stepped out of ordinary lives to carry the fate of nations.”
― John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-Earth

“has a knee-jerk tendency to avoid extremes as implausible, but ‘fantasy’ actively embraces them. It magnifies and clarifies the human condition.”
― John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth

“[S]oldiers' slang, which spanned death, drink, food, women, weapons, the battlefield, and the warring nations, grew out of irony and contempt for what was intolerable; it was as crude and unlovely as camp life itself.
Qenya thrived in the same soil, but not in the same mood. Nothing could be further removed from the unbeautiful inflexible practicalities Tolkien was being taught than the invention of a language for the joy of its sounds. 124”
― John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-Earth

“Will shall be the sterner, heart the bolder, spirit the greater as our strength lessens.”
― John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth