What Tolkien Taught Me about Giving Up Hope

 “I don’t know how long we shall take to— to finish,” said Frodo. “We were miserably delayed in the hills. But Samwise Gamgee, my dear hobbit— indeed, Sam my dearest hobbit, friend of friends— I do not think we need give thought to what comes after that. To do the job as you put it— what hope is there that we ever shall? And if we do, who knows what will come of that?… I am commanded to go to the land of Mordor, and therefore I shall go,” said Frodo. “If there is only one way, then I must take it. What comes after must come.”

Sam said nothing. The look on Frodo’s face was enough for him; he knew that words of his were useless. And after all he never had any real hope in the affair from the beginning; but being a cheerful hobbit he had not needed hope, as long as despair could be postponed.

~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

Reading Aloud and The Lay of Leithian

I’ve spent the past few days with my husband, who had four wisdom teeth yanked with just local anesthetic. In between sipping broth, taking prescription narcotics, and feeling dizzy, he somehow found the energy and jaw strength to finish reading me The Lay of Leithian by J.R.R. Tolkien. (Zachary is, in short, fantastic beyond all reason.)

I had forgotten how comforting and exciting it is to have a story read aloud to you. When I read by myself, my eyes skim the page at an almost speed-reading pace, and I have to place a bookmark under the line I’m reading if I want to savor the prose. Reading aloud slows down the story. It lets me take in each word. Since I have a hard time processing things by listening to them (I’m a visual learner), I have to listen intently, focusing all my energy on taking in the meaning and hearing to the flow of the words. It’s a lot more energy-intensive than reading for myself. And a lot more exciting.

If you haven’t read The Lay of Leithian, and you like poetry, I highly recommend finding a copy. (Disclaimer: Tolkien never actually finished the poem, so you’ll have to discover how it ends by reading the chapter about Beren and Luthien in The Silmarillion.) The story follows the tale of Beren, a mortal man, who falls in love with a half-elf, half-angel maiden named Luthien. Their love is strong, but Beren must fulfill a seemingly impossible task to win her hand in marriage: journey to Hell and back and return with a holy stone, a silmaril.

The story, even aside from the incredible prose and spell-binding imagery, has everything good stories have: true love, a noble hero, a beautiful maiden, a forbidden romance, friendship, torture, prophecy, battle, the triumph of beauty, and the sorrow of fate. It’s one of the most beautiful stories I’ve ever heard. I’ve already decided I’m going to tell it as a bedtime story to my children someday, especially to my daughters, who need to see that beauty has worth because it springs from goodness, courage, devotion, and strength.

In On Fairy-Stories, Tolkien wrote that before we grow weary of detailed and gritty and lifelike stories, “We should look at green again, and be startled anew (but not blinded) by blue and yellow and red. We should meet the centaur and the dragon, and then perhaps suddenly behold, like the ancient shepherds, sheep, and dogs, and horses— and wolves. This recovery fairy-stories help us to make.”

In The Lay of Leithian, I looked at green again— and it startled me in the best possible way.

Tolkien Quotes: Goodness and Beauty

As I bustled around my house sprucing things up, hanging artwork, rearranging furniture, and sweeping up clutter, this quote from “On Fairy-Stories” came to mind:

“[In modern times,] goodness is itself bereft of its proper beauty. In Faerie one can indeed conceive of an ogre who possesses a castle hideous as a nightmare (for the evil of the ogre wills it so), but one cannot conceive of a house built with a good purpose—an inn, a hostel for travellers, the hall of a virtuous and noble king—that is yet sickeningly ugly. At the present day it would be rash to hope to see one that was not—unless it was built before our time.”

Making things beautiful should not be a frivilous pursuit. It is a serious task, one to be undertaken with thoughtfulness and joy. In every age, and in every moment, the world has needed beauty more than ever before.

On Fairy-Stories, Part Five

One last word from Tolkien on the subject of children, good for all of us to remember as we approach the New Year:

Children are meant to grow up, and not to become Peter Pans. Not to lose innocence and wonder, but to proceed on the appointed journey: that journey upon which it is certainly not better to travel hopefully than to arrive, though we must travel hopefully if we are to arrive.

~~~

On Fairy-Stories, Part Four

As most of you know, I just finished my weekend job in which I transform into a Scandinavian elf and roam St. Charles’s Main Street spreading good cheer and handing out collector cards. I’m accompanied by another elf, an angel, a fairy, the Nutcracker Prince and Clara, and a host of gift-givers from around the world, such as Father Christmas, Pere Noël, Julinese, and La Befana. Each one of us lives in the magical reality, and it’s a job I take very seriously. This frustrates a lot of people. Here is a typical conversation with an adult when there aren’t any children around:

Mikkel and Mikko, Christmas elves, children of the Scandinavian fay.
Depicted cuddling a cute doggie.

ADULT: So are you guys students from Lindenwood, or what?

MIKKO: No, I finished elf school a few centuries ago.

ADULT: Haha, of course. But seriously, where are you from?

MIKKO: Scandinavia. I grew up on the Swedish-Finnish border.

ADULT: In real life?

MIKKO: Of course in real life! I live up at the North Pole now, though.

ADULT (trying to figure out if she’s talking about Alaska): Where’s that?

MIKKO: On top of the world. 

ADULT (gives her a blank look)

MIKKO: I work for Santa. I’m in charge of making sure all the toys get made.

Getting ready for a parade.

ADULT (starting to get fed up): Do you know how old I am?

MIKKO: I’m terrible at guessing humans’ ages. I’m 647.

ADULT (gives up and walks away)

MIKKO: Gleðileg Jól!

It doesn’t take long to learn that adults expect fantasy to be a sly and utterly fake performance solely for the benefit of children. On the contrary, sincere fantasy is crucial to both children and adults.

Last year, I saw a Santa (not involved in Christmas Traditions, I might add) who was lining up kids to sit on his lap. After just a few minutes, I realized that Santa spoke loudly and jovially to the children, interjecting “Ho! Ho! Ho!” in a booming voice wherever possible. But when he talked to the adults over their children’s heads, he dropped the act and spoke in his normal voice. I felt insulted on the children’s behalf. Santa wasn’t taking this seriously. To him, this was just another day on the job, fooling children with a fake beard.

This is something that has always bothered me about the story of Santa Claus. Parents teach their children this fairy-story as if it’s a lie that they’ll have to learn about someday. I much prefer the way my parents taught me. As little kids, my brother and I had an argument about whether or not the Santa we’d seen downtown was the real Santa Claus. I said he was, and my brother said he wasn’t. Furious, I ran up to Mom and demanded an answer.

“No, that person downtown wasn’t the real Santa Claus,” Mom said calmly. “He was a man dressed up like Santa Claus.”

Some people have heard me tell this story and gasp in horror that my mother would shatter my fantasy like that. However, this revelation did nothing of the kind. I felt mildly miffed that my brother was right and I was wrong, but the incident strengthened my belief in Father Christmas. He was too magical and majestic to be crammed into a red suit and squeezed down a chimney. From then on, I imagined him as he appeared in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe— real but otherworldly.

The honest belief in the magical was something my parents infused in me from the beginning: something to be cherished all throughout life, not just as a child. In short, they took me seriously, as every child should be.

This is all a roundabout way of bringing up this quote from Tolkien’s On Fairy-Stories:

It is true that the age of childhood-sentiment has produced some delightful books (especially charming, however, to adults) of the fairy kind or near to it; but it has also produced a dreadful undergrowth of stories written or adapted to what was or is conceived to be the measure of children's minds and needs. The old stories are mollified or bowdlerized, instead of being reserved; the imitations are often merely silly, Pigwig-genry without even the intrigue; or patronizing; or (deadliest of all) covertly sniggering, with an eye on the other grown-ups present. I will not accuse Andrew Lang [an author who compiled fairy-tales] of sniggering, but certainly he smiled to himself, and certainly too often he had an eye on the faces of other clever people over the heads of his child-audience —to the very grave detriment of [his works].

Magic is a real part of life, and it should be taken seriously. To this day I firmly believe in Santa Claus— part of Faërie, as mysterious and elusive as the rest. Merry Christmas, everyone!

~~~

On Fairy-Stories, Part Three

A baby never gets tired of playing peek-a-boo. No matter how many times you cover your eyes, the baby feels excited tension, even though he isn’t able to name his suspense about whether or not he’ll see your face again. No matter how many times you pull back your hands, the child will have exactly the same reaction: delight, relief, and pure happiness. 

This fades as we grow up— mostly as a defense mechanism. The joys and sorrows of adulthood and (I shudder to think of it) adolescence would be far too much to handle if we didn’t temper this childish existence-in-the-moment with grown-up sense of coping. Still, it has always surprised and saddened me how quickly I become jaded. Some days I look up at the clouds and wonder when was the last time I noticed their shapes, or listen to a bird and wonder why I’ve been tuning out the sounds around me, or feel the soaking cold as I walk and wonder why I’m surprised to take note of it. 

Our mind figures out and organizes what is “normal,” and we live with that filter turned on far too often. Sometimes we need a kick, a breath of the hills and forests of Faërie, to help us see the world around us. As Tolkien says:

We do not, or need not, despair of drawing because all lines must be either curved or straight, nor of painting because there are only three “primary” colours. We may indeed be older now, in so far as we are heirs in enjoyment or in practice of many generations of ancestors in the arts. In this inheritance of wealth there may be a danger of boredom or of anxiety to be original, and that may lead to a distaste for fine drawing, delicate pattern, and “pretty” colours, or else to mere manipulation and over-elaboration of old material, clever and heartless. But the true road of escape from such weariness is not to be found in the willfully awkward, clumsy, or misshapen, not in making all things dark or unremittingly violent; nor in the mixing of colours on through subtlety to drabness, and the fantastical complication of shapes to the point of silliness and on towards delirium. Before we reach such states we need recovery. We should look at green again, and be startled anew (but not blinded) by blue and yellow and red. We should meet the centaur and the dragon, and then perhaps suddenly behold, like the ancient shepherds, sheep, and dogs, and horses— and wolves. This recovery fairy-stories help us to make. In that sense only a taste for them may make us, or keep us, childish.

~On Fairy-Stories

~~~

On Fairy-Stories, Part Two

J.R.R. Tolkien was often criticized by his contemporaries for “dabbling in fantasy,” considered to be a plaything for children and nothing else. In his essay On Fairy-Stories, Tolkien addresses this criticism head-on:

To many, Fantasy, this sub-creative art which plays strange tricks with the world and all that is in it, combining nouns and redistributing adjectives, has seemed suspect, if not illegitimate. To some it has seemed at least a childish folly, a thing only for peoples or for persons in their youth. As for its legitimacy I will say no more than to quote a brief passage from a letter I once wrote to a man who described myth and fairy-story as “lies”…

“Dear Sir,” I said—Although now long estranged,

Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.

Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned,

and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned:

Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light

through whom is splintered from a single White

to many hues, and endlessly combined

in living shapes that move from mind to mind.

Though all the crannies of the world we filled

with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build

Gods and their houses out of dark and light,

and sowed the seed of dragons—'twas our right

(used or misused). That right has not decayed:

we make still by the law in which we're made.”

Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion.

For creative Fantasy is founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it… If men really could not distinguish between frogs and men, fairy-stories about frog-kings would not have arisen.

In short, Tolkien points out that creativity flourishes on a foundation of truth and logic. Artists and storytellers accept the laws of the natural world before bending them, and this bending is the most natural thing in the world. In creating fantasy, a storyteller helps readers see the world through the eyes Faërie, vivifying the natural by the supernatural. The best fantasy clarifies the world instead of obscuring it, and Magic is a complement to Reason.

~~~

On Fairy-Stories, Part One

With Tolkien on everybody’s minds, I thought it was a good time to bring up one of the most brilliant pieces he ever wrote: an essay titled On Fairy-Stories. (It is also a companion to the heartbreaking and beautiful story Leaf by Niggle, which makes me cry and feel powerful hope every time I read it.) In his passionate discourse, Tolkien defends the mythical and the fantastic as essential parts of adult life. 

“Fairy-stories,” or tales of the world of Faërie and how it collides with our own, are not falsehoods or child’s play: they are essential elements of the way we interpret our lives, understand our reality, and face the brutality of our present world. Fairy-stories are not factual, but they are truthful. They are, in a sense, the story of the world.

If you want to read the whole essay (it’s long, but well worth the ride), here is the manuscript in full. In the next couple days I’ll post a few excerpts that jumped out at me.

~~~

Hope for Those in Transition

The past few days, I’ve felt very emotional. Wanderlust is wrapped up in this. On one hand, I feel frustrated that the six-month trip Zach and I are hoping to take in a couple of years prevents me from putting down roots. On the other hand, I feel terrified about the thought of acquiring furniture or falling in love with the townhouse. I feel torn in two. This Tolkien quote comes to mind often, and I try to take a deep breath and let things go.

Blog.

A Tolkien Quote Worth Repeating

I also wrote a blog about it a few years ago. (Click on the photo to view it larger.)

Tolkien Quotes: When the Road Darkens

Update, 2021: This post for some reason shows up in a lot of search engines, so it's one of my most-viewed posts despite being an off-the-top-of-my-head thing I wrote when I had barely turned 21. If you want to view other posts in this series, you can check out this tag: https://thetravelingmandolin.blogspot.com/search/label/tolkien
Just remember that I was in my young twenties when I wrote all of these! I haven't read them in years and can't speak to their quality. I was a kid, and I was still learning. :)

Reposted from 8/28/2010

“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens,” said Gimli.

“Maybe,” said Elrond, “but let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall.”

In this passage, Elrond cautions the stouthearted dwarf against judging another person’s weakness. Gimli can’t imagine that anything would cause his courage to fail, but later on in the journey, he faces trials of a kind he could never imagine. He chooses to hold to his vow and push through anyway, but he learns that the Road is full of peril that weakened his resolve in ways he couldn’t begin to imagine. 

A theme that constantly arises in Tolkien’s work is the frailty of the heart, no matter how steadfast. It is easy to make vows; it is nearly impossible to keep all of them. Does he imply that we should never pledge to do anything difficult? At first it may seem so, but in context it becomes clear that Elrond’s words caution against a specific kind of promise. 

From, “I’ll never be as bad as he is” to “I will never hurt you,” vows that depend on our own fortitude and moral fiber are, by their very nature, doomed to fail. We cannot keep our promises unless we rely on Someone greater to strengthen our hearts and keep us true to our word. We cannot vow to tread the hard path if we haven’t seen the nightfall— however, we do not have to walk in darkness. The great Light is always by our sides, able and willing to show us the path. We only need to open our eyes and see.

~Lisa Shafter