Welcome, friends! Elen síla lúmenn’ omentielvo! (“A star shines upon the hour of our meeting.”)
You came here to read my thoughts about J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, but first you must hear some backstory. I like to think this is in keeping with the spirit of Professor Tolkien, because if there is anyone who appreciates the importance of backstory, it is the man who wrote what became The Silmarillion, The Book of Lost Tales (Parts One and Two), Unfinished Tales, and The History of Middle-earth (Volumes 1-12).
Why am I writing about The Fellowship of the Ring?
It began in the year 2018 of the present age. I had been suffering from depression for some time, along with various health issues. I was pouring through books, attempting to find something to reawaken my joy and help me deal with the questions that tormented my mind. (Obviously, I did not yet have a small child, as I still had free time on my hands.) I consulted Spiritual Depression by Martyn Lloyd-Jones and Enduring Divine Absence by Joseph Minich. I tried and failed to fall in love with that spiritual classic, The Dark Night of the Soul. Finally, I resorted to a book that had been sitting in what I shall call my “good intentions pile”: How Dante Can Save Your Life by Rod Dreher.
As someone who had enjoyed Inferno, hobbled part way through Purgatorio, and never made it to Paradiso, I hoped Mr. Dreher would not only inspire me (or somehow shame me) into finishing the heavenward climb, but also reveal how these most hallowed works of Western literature could provide the anecdote to my depression. I was under no illusion that Dreher himself could do so, but he was surely correct to sing the praises of the great Florentine. Therefore, I proceeded.
I made it through about two chapters before I realized that Dante was not going to save my life. In them, I read a great deal about Dreher’s familial difficulties, for which I had great sympathy, but there was very little about Dante himself or the works that supposedly held the key to salvation. Then I had a revelation: the Divina Commedia may have been the solution for Dreher, but for me it would be something else. I must find a work of literature that spoke uniquely to my own heart while allowing me to meditate on philosophical and spiritual truths. Surely, this was the true lesson of Dreher’s experience.
I therefore set the book back on the shelf with my other good intentions and reached instead for a different work that had saved my life once before.
The Winter of My Discontent
It was the winter of 2001-2002. The United States had just invaded Afghanistan and was still deeply shaken by the attacks of September 11. It was the first time I had experienced such a national emergency, and everything felt dark. Although I did not recognize it then, I was likely dealing with the first stirrings of anxiety that would plague me a few years later. Even before the terrorists struck, I was an awkward teen who felt lonely and lacked a certain motivation in life. I needed something to capture my imagination.
Then at the recommendation of a friend and with the special permission of my parents (as the film was rated PG-13), I went to the cinema to see The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. I remember the moment well. The room grew dark. I heard the soft sound of stringed instruments and an ethereal choir. Someone whispered in a foreign language, then the voice of Cate Blanchett proclaimed, “The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it.” Just like that, my imagination was captured.
It was not my first exposure to the works of Tolkien—that had come a few years earlier when my sixth-grade teacher read to us from The Hobbit—but seeing the world he created on the big screen allowed it to hit home in a new way. I had an immediate desire to read the works on which the films were (at certain points loosely) based. Not only did I quickly devour the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, but I went back and re-visited The Hobbit and made it all the way through The Silmarillion.
Fantasy literature is often derided as escapism, and the works of Tolkien certainly provided an escape from my usual hum drum existence, but they were also more than that. The message of Tolkien’s works was as appealing to me as the fantastical landscapes and heroic characters. To this day, I do not believe I have read anything in a novel that has moved me as much as Frodo Baggins’ bold declaration while desperately seeking to destroy the power of evil: “They cannot conquer for ever!”[1]
I would carry one of the books with me from class to class, and I confess I was sometimes reading when I ought to have been paying attention to my instructor. I remember sitting in one of those old school desks and reading for the first time of Gandalf’s showdown with the Witch-king of Angmar at the gate of Minas Tirith, breath appropriately bated, when my math teacher called on me. I was forced to scramble for an answer to her question, not unlike a politician who has just been confronted with video proof of something they said four years earlier. I survived the incident with my teacher none the wiser, but I never made it through calculus.
Tolkien has one of the largest legions of fans of any author in modern history, and many of them are quite serious about the lore. Although I was once part of a Tolkien fan site, dabbled in (exceedingly poor) Middle-earth poetry, and wrote a humorous version of the Council of Elrond that holds up fairly well to this day, I was by no means deserving of the title “Tolkien expert.” I knew hardly a word of Sindarin, had never dressed up as an elf maiden (unless you count my Galadriel-inspired homecoming gown which confused my parents on account of its white hue), and had no intention of plowing through all twelve volumes of The History of Middle-earth. However, it was largely in honor of Professor Tolkien that I read Beowulf and loved it. His influence on my life was difficult to measure concretely, but some evidence of it was surely revealed when my mother asked me why I had started spelling gray with an ‘e.’
The Road Goes Ever On
With the release of the final extended edition of the Lord of the Rings films and my departure for college, the initial phase of my Tolkien fandom ended. I aspired to be one of those people who would proudly re-read Lord of the Rings each year, but as it turned out, the world was full of good books to read, and my instructors were rather keen on me studying those related to my coursework. I never stopped loving the world Tolkien created, and at the age of twenty-one I had the opportunity to visit Oxford for three weeks and eat in the very pub where the Inklings, the literary discussion group of which Tolkien was famously a member, used to hold their meetings. I believe my compatriots on that trip were more interested in C.S. Lewis, whose home and gravesite we collectively visited, but I had a different pilgrimage to make.
On a clear January day, I took a bus along the route I had carefully researched online. I got off as close as I could to my destination and walked into Wolvercote Cemetery. It was not difficult to find what I was looking for, as others had come before me and left flowers at the site. There I saw carved in stone the names of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and his wife, Edith, along with the respective titles “Beren” and “Luthien.” Knowing the tale in his legendarium to which these names referred, I could sense the love that existed between the two. As I raised my camera and took a photo, sun beams poured down upon that tomb, not unlike the resting place of Balin in Moria. I was glad that I had come to honor the man who had given so much to so many.
The following years brought many changes for me. I returned to England to attend graduate school, then began a short-lived career in international relations that ended when I married someone in the military and we were transferred to Dayton, Ohio. There I threw myself into writing and began work on my own trilogy of novels, which unsurprisingly told a story from medieval British history. My life was going decently well.
Then I became sick. For a year, I dealt with pain and fatigue such as I had never known. It was constant and unyielding, defying diagnosis. I was encouraged early on that despite my history of anxiety and depression, my mental state remained fairly positive. Then about six months in, I fell headlong and far. I descended into an emotional abyss. It was the worst depression of my life.
With the arrival of 2018, I experienced what seemed to me a minor miracle: my pain subsided and I was able to return to my previous level of activity. I had no idea why God spared me when others were allowed to continue in pain for years on end. I counted my blessings and attempted to move on, but while my body was whole again, my mind was another matter.
I was thrown into a crisis of faith that continued for many months. This was the time when I began desperately seeking out any work of literature that might provide me with some balm for the soul. I was receiving pastoral counseling, but it seemed to make little difference: I knew the biblical answers before they were given to me. My tendency toward introspection and philosophical analysis had become a real curse, but I could not change what I was.
I had taken to filling a notebook with my queries and lamentations, attempting to find my way back to a sense of spiritual peace. I wondered if I ought to go off to a proverbial cabin in the woods for a week and have it out with God. I was not exactly angry with him, but he felt so distant.
That was how I stumbled upon the solution of returning to Tolkien’s world. I picked up The Fellowship of the Ring and allowed that beloved work of literature to take me back to the things I knew at the beginning…to restore, as it were, the joy of my salvation. I would read a chapter and then write about it. I made no attempts at an academic work and had no intention of publishing. It was a personal exercise in contemplation and refreshment.
What I found was that as soon as I re-entered the world of Middle-earth, I felt that I was home. The darkness within my soul became somewhat lighter. I was able to process much of what I felt. Partially through this exercise and partially through the passing of time, I began to experience healing. I took up my staff and continued along the pilgrim road, seeking the beatific vision.
A significant break in my reading and writing occurred when I became pregnant with my son, another life altering experience. In the fullness of time, I picked up where I had left off and attempted to finish reflecting on the book. As I had too little time to write about The Fellowship of the Ring and compose a series of articles for my blog, I reasoned that it made sense to combine the two efforts. The result is what you are now reading.
How to Enjoy these Essays
I will start posting my observations on each chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring, beginning with “A Long-expected Party” and ending with “The Breaking of the Fellowship.” You can expect a new essay to be posted every fortnight or so, which should ensure the thing is completed prior to my eleventy-first birthday.
If you have never read this book before, you might enjoy perusing the chapter in question and then reading my reflections afterward. If you are a long-time Tolkien fan with a “NO ADMITTANCE EXCEPT ON PARTY BUSINESS” sign on your front door (like yours truly), perhaps you can simply consult your memories. I will freely draw upon information from Tolkien’s other works to interpret what he is communicating in The Fellowship of the Ring, but I will try to avoid spoiling the later books (The Two Towers and The Return of the King), and though I love them dearly, I will not be referring to the films directed by Peter Jackson. They were my gateway drug into the world of Tolkien and are fine achievements in their own right, but they cannot communicate the whole of Tolkien’s intent.
There are a million writers in this world who can give you brevity designed for search engine optimization. “Ten Reasons Fellowship of the Ring is Awesome. Number Nine Will Shock You!” What I bring to the table is detailed analysis, background information, and nuance. Yes, that means that these articles are not going to be short. I have stubbornly resisted most suggestions that I reduce my word counts over the years. This intransigence is a luxury gifted to me because I am not depending on my writing to pay the bills. You will find a lot of words here, and as the main purpose of this exercise was my own personal benefit, I have no intention of yielding to any contrarian demands. To use a phrase I have recently coined, I will say neither boo nor hoo to you on this score. However, if you find your eyes glazing over as I go into deeper and deeper detail about an incidental aspect of the plot, feel free to skip ahead. I will provide links with each article to help you keep track of the various characters and locations should you wish to do so.
J.R.R. Tolkien was a committed Christian in the Roman Catholic Church. He had a great influence upon his friend and fellow novelist, C.S. Lewis, and was to some degree instrumental in the latter’s conversion to Christianity. Both understood the power of myth to capture the imagination and point to spiritual truths, though Tolkien was emphatic that his works were not an allegory. Repeat: Not an allegory! There will be no Aslan dying and rising again in Middle-earth. Moreover, Tolkien was clear that Mordor was not a stand-in for Nazi Germany, nor was the One Ring symbolic of the atomic bomb. The man was a genius who created an entire universe with its own history, geography, and languages.
Nevertheless, Tolkien’s legendarium is influenced not only by the Germanic and Scandinavian legends he treasured, but also by his Christian faith. This is most clearly seen in The Silmarillion, which tells the creation narrative of the mythical universe of Eä, in which a sovereign deity is opposed by the greatest of his creations who proceeds to do all he can to pervert the intentions of the creator. It is a familiar story to anyone with knowledge of Christian theology, and the morality of Tolkien’s world is very much in line with Christian ideals. It can teach us much about Christian notions of history and the path to redemption for mankind. If one peels away the strange Elvish phrases, confusing names, and thousands of years of events portrayed with an almost super-human level of detail, one arrives at a basic story about the battle of light and darkness: a fall, the marring of creation, and the ultimate defeat of evil that will bring about restoration.
If any of this sounds
interesting to you, I welcome you to join me on this journey, for a journey it
truly is from the simple beauty of the Shire to strange lands both fierce and
fantastical. The road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began,
and we must follow if we can.
[1] Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings, Single volume film tie-in edition (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994), 687.