FRODO LIVES

The Enduring Applicability of J.R.R. Tolkien

spheres of literary taste. Their acute escapism from the matters of reality is pitied and scorned by

those who simply know of better genres for profound storytelling. However condescending this

might be for the readership, an unsubstantiated criticism is made when considering the following

actuality: the most influential and bestselling author of twentieth-century fantasy was a veteran

of modern history‟s very real and darkest hours. By first-hand experience in the trenches of the

Somme, J.R.R. Tolkien endured.

For any of his learned critics, it would be rather foolhardy to suggest that Tolkien turned his back

on the Great War.1 The author chose a meld of epic fantasy and sobering realism to render the

prominent vices and virtues of his century. This he does in his magnum opus, The Lord of the

Rings, published 1954–55, which in this writing will be abbreviated as LotR.

Tolkien‟s lasting popularity cannot be dismissed as merely a freakish infection of popular taste;

or as the voice of the Modernist literati Edmund Wilson put it in 1956, “juvenile trash.”2 The

nature of evil, in its forms and origins, the existence of humankind without revelations of the

divine, are surely the routes of legitimate study. That is not to say that Tolkien‟s own observation

is as resonating as the themes, and yet his work cannot be pinned and dissected by the science of

any indefinite literary criticism. This study will both argue and interrogate why.

An allegory of the First World War and onward has become something of an idée fixe for

Tolkien‟s critics, scholars and enthusiasts alike.3 The Ring is not, for example, a direct reference

1
David Doughan, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biographical Sketch (The Tolkien Society)
2
Dr. Patrick Curry, Defending Middle Earth, Tolkien: Myth and Modernity (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004) p 6.
3
John Rhys-Davies, How was The Lord of the Rings influenced by World War One? (BBC Online, 31 Jul 2014)

1.
to nuclear energy and this Tolkien fervently avoided.4 Any reader from any period of time is able

to find affinity within his mythos because of what he called, “applicability over allegory.”

As he writes in the foreword to every printed copy of LotR:

As for any inner meaning or „message,‟ it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither

allegorical nor topical. I cordially dislike allegory and all of its manifestations and always have

done so since I grow old and weary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or

feigned, with its various applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think many

confuse applicability with allegory … one resides in the freedom of the reader, the other in the

purposed domination of the author.5

Upon publishing, Tolkien shelves his work in a bookshop and detaches himself from the account

of any personal reading; whatever allegory there is belongs to reader and not to him. The very

triumph of this applicability, however, does belong to him. Tolkien committed his story to

cultural legend, not history, and so it exists entirely without absolute definition – editions

continue to leave the shelves because LotR has a literary lifespan exceeding anything he could

have anticipated.6

How he achieved this pervasive resonance begins with the period of his formative years. Tolkien

would have grown up with the immediate legacy of William Morris and his Arts and Crafts

movement,7 and was member to the T.C.B.S, (Tea Club, Barovian Society.8) He saw this coterie

4
Peter Jackson, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (New Line Cinema, 2003) Appendices, 14:15
5
J.R.R. Tolkien, Foreword to 50th anniversary edition, The Lord of the Rings (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004)
6
Dr. Patrick Curry, Defending Middle Earth, Tolkien: Myth and Modernity (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004) p
10.
7
Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, J.R.R. Tolkien, Artist & Illustrator (Harper Collins Publishers, 2004) p
50.
8
Humphrey Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography (George Allen & Unwin LTD, 1977) p 47.

2.
of erudite young men, all bibliophiles and lovers of language and poetry, as very his own Pre-

Raphaelite Brotherhood.9

His fascination with the relationship between nature and myth is also found in his own

illustrations, often used as the dust jackets for his novels, which are greatly influenced by the

work of another Romanticist, William Blake. Tolkien‟s painterly style often precedes himself as

a poet,10 whose ability like Blake, does also shift from comic to heroic to elegiac. So with the

first decade of the twentieth century similarly rendered by the movement of Art Nouveau, a

ripening distaste for industrialism was in the air.11 Indeed Tolkien would later write of his bête

noire, the internal combustion engine, which he thought as one of humanities greatest evils.12

So too did this flowering Romanticism stem from the music of the nineteenth century, where

legend and natural wonder ran as the leitmotif through the compositions of Wagner. Like

Tolkien‟s prequel to LotR, The Hobbit, Wagner‟s Das Rheingold is a short, childlike tale which

introduces a far longer, more solemn trilogy concerning a tale of rings.13 Although throughout

this time Tolkien had not yet written anything beyond his philological pursuits, technology was

becoming ever more powerful, seductive, and perhaps also addictive. He could see the cities of

Britain expanding into greensward and woodland – his worst fears were literally gathering steam,

until all engines were redirected for Europe.

9
John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth (Harper Collins, 2003) p 14.
10
Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, J.R.R. Tolkien, Artist & Illustrator (Harper Collins Publishers, 2004) p
47.
11
Ibid, p 35.
12
Peter Jackson, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (New Line Cinema, 2003) Appendices, 21:55
13
Neil D. Isaacs, Rose A. Zimbardo ed., Tolkien and the Critics: Essays on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
(University of Notre Dame Press, 1968) p 18.

3.
As one writer, Fraser Harrison, puts it:

While it is easy to scoff at the whimsicality and commercialism of rural nostalgia, it is

also vital to acknowledge that this reaching-out to the countryside is an expression … of

a healthy desire to find some sense of meaning and relief in a that world that seems

increasingly bent on mindless annihilation.14

For Tolkien, the annihilation referred to by Harrison would have been the beginning of the Great

War. With his fellow members of the T.C.B.S dying about him, Tolkien sat at the Somme,

convalescent from trench fever, and wrote the words which would become his Middle-Earth.15

These seminal short stories are compiled in The Book of Lost Tales, which was not published

until after his death.

During the inter-war years, perhaps inspired by a sense of hard-fought patriotism, Tolkien

unknowingly began to answer a question asked by E.M. Forster in 1910 – “Why has England not

a great mythology?”16

Indeed England has no overarching mythology of its own, only folktales and borrowed legends

from other countries. Even the quintessential story of King Arthur is a commingling of European

tales, chiefly that of England‟s old adversary, France. Tolkien held that any truly English

mythology was eradicated with the Norman Invasion of 1066.17 One must question whether

14
Dr. Patrick Curry, Defending Middle Earth, Tolkien: Myth and Modernity (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004) p
16.
15
Humphrey Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography (George Allen & Unwin LTD, 1977) pp 81-86.
16
Dr. Patrick Curry, Defending Middle Earth, Tolkien: Myth and Modernity (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004) p
20.
17
Peter Jackson, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (New Line Cinema, 2003) Appendices, 5:33

4.
Tolkien was writing his own mythology because so many appeared to be turning to the

construction manuals of modernity rather than the pages of fiction?18

Middle Earth is indeed steeped in the utopian concept of Merrie Olde England, and abounds with

landscapes reminiscent of the Cotswold country, but the quest to delineate the foundations of an

English mythology, inspired by his early stories in The Book of Lost Tales, culminated in a single

line written jadedly on the back of a student‟s essay – “In a hole in the ground there lived a

Hobbit.”

Called „Halflings‟ by the other races of Middle Earth, the Hobbits are indeed very short, yet this

„halving‟ might also refer to their metaphorical position – half within the realms of reality with

their very human features and idealised habits, whilst also half within the realm of this epic

fantasy. When used as a place name, „faërie‟ literally translates to enchantment.19 A fairy is

therefore technically nothing more than a denizen of said realm, and of that Tolkien was keenly

aware. None of his fairies are the saccharine gimmicks of a Disney picture intended for little

girls, but ones of a lengthy history and expounded culture; from the first Tolkien breaks

convention and appeals to those otherwise wised-up on the fantasy genre.20

18
John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth (Harper Collins, 2003) p 26.
19
Neil D. Isaacs, Rose A. Zimbardo ed., Tolkien and the Critics: Essays on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
(University of Notre Dame Press, 1968) p 22.
20
John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth (Harper Collins, 2003) p 38.

5.
6.
Whilst the Hobbits and their Shire could quite, not at all superficially, be used as evidence in an

accusation of nationalism on Tolkien‟s part, the Hobbits bear a love for the land more so than the

love for a fatherland.21 Writing for the BBC, Jane Ciabattari asks, “The values articulated by

Tolkien were ideally suited for the 1960s counterculture movements. Today we‟d think of

Tolkien‟s work as being aligned with the geek set of Comic-Con, but it was once closer to the

Woodstock crowd. How did this happen?”22

The hippies of 60s counter-culture found especial affinity with Tolkien‟s idealism of nature and

myth, notably with his rustic Hobbits and their proclivity for the smoking of pipe-weed. “Your

love of the Halfling‟s leaf has clearly slowed your mind,” scorns Saruman to Gandalf in Peter

Jackson‟s live-action adaptation, as something of an Easter-egg for those of that psychedelic

generation.23 Hobbits are also mentioned to belong to large families which are all somehow

genealogically connected, leading one to presume that yet another facet of the hippie lifestyle is

shared with these irenic and easy-going lovers of nature. Come the late 60s, fan clubs were

beginning to emerge throughout the West. Rayner Unwin, son of Tolkien‟s publisher, remembers

reading „FRODO LIVES,‟ on the wall of a New York subway during the days of the Summer of

Love.24

For LotR is also the story of a closing age, rather like the period of history to which Tolkien, and

as Gertrude Stein coined them, the lost generation, belonged.25 Frodo is on the cusp of adulthood

when the Ring is hanged around his neck, and the anti-quest into terror and danger begins. He

21
John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth (Harper Collins, 2003) p 51.
22
Jane Ciabattari, Hobbits and Hippies: Tolkien and Counterculture (BBC Online, 20 November 2014)
23
Peter Jackson, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (New Line Cinema, 2001) 00:39:10
24
Peter Jackson, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (New Line Cinema, 2003) Appendices, 11:20
25
Neil D. Isaacs, Rose A. Zimbardo ed., Tolkien and the Critics: Essays on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
(University of Notre Dame Press, 1968) p 81.

7.
goes from a jovial Hobbit to an isolated, stern and sad human adult – he experiences the pathos

of mortality beyond his picturesque homestead.26

The evil Frodo encounters is, like all of Tolkien‟s writing, named according to his underpinning

logic always grounded in philology. The Ringwraiths are the prominent image of Tolkien‟s evil;

hooded riders who exist solely to hunt Frodo and acquire the Ring. Wraith shares its etymology

with wroth, wreathe (a twisted thing) and writhe.27 Their villainy is part of an overarching moral

vacuum, a lack of independent will. This is a distinctively modern concept and indeed a

modernist view of evil28 – not at all as nostalgic as Tolkien‟s other sentiments. The youth of his

lost generation had no difficulty recognising evil but more with identifying it, as made manifest

in the Great War where horrendous events were carried out by entirely normal people. Germans

boys under the Kaiser were none the wiser than the British boys under Kitchener – boys given

rifles and told to shoot at other boys, for reasons deemed greater to their own volition. To we of

the present it now seems so obvious that the atrocities of that pyrrhic war were carried out by

bureaucrats, by men who became as wraiths; their moral vacuum became a mere routine

profession. So too did the Ringwraiths begin with good intentions when they accepted Sauron‟s

temptation of power, but all went astray as Tolkien‟s evil reveals its potential to ensnare us all –

even, ultimately, Frodo himself. Tolkien believed that under the right or wrong circumstances,

we could be this evil.29

26
Neil D. Isaacs, Rose A. Zimbardo ed., Tolkien and the Critics: Essays on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
(University of Notre Dame Press, 1968) p 67.
27
Peter Jackson, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (New Line Cinema, 2003) Appendices, 17:10
28
Jessica Yates, Tolkien as a Writer for Young Adults (The Tolkien Society Essays) pp 3-4.
29
Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (Harper Collins, 2000) pp 112-115.

8.
Hugh T. Keenan writes:

Man is bent on destroying himself through sociological, technological and psychological means.

Man‟s technology is the enemy of his humanity. But whereas Lewis‟ world [C.S. Lewis] is

heavily Christian and he traces the sources of man‟s perversity to the influence of the Devil,

Tolkien‟s world is almost nonreligious. He traces the perversity of his creatures … to their own

twisted natures.30

His mythmaking would set a thematic precedent; this so called escapist fairy-tale became a

benchmark for all epic fantasy to come.31 But how can it be that Tolkien, whose atavism seemed

so antithetical to modernity, came to embody such a modernist essence? And in turn, how can it

be that the various progenitors of postmodernity took such a liking to the very same work? Here

again his craft of applicability shines through. Beside the clattering of swords and the fantastic

flame of a dragon‟s breath, Tolkien retains an authenticity to the human condition. He saw the

supreme arc of our wants and fears transcending a mere matter of taste in literary genre. 32

Today‟s criticism appears to misunderstand much of that applicability, and asks with narrow,

politically-correct improvidence why there are no black people in Middle-Earth; why there are so

few female characters, why the benevolent Elves have such radiant white skin.33 Failing avant la

lettre to be held against these contemporary demands, this somewhat dogmatic reading can so

30
Neil D. Isaacs, Rose A. Zimbardo ed., Tolkien and the Critics: Essays on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
(University of Notre Dame Press, 1968) p 65.
31
Jessica Yates, Tolkien as a Writer for Young Adults (The Tolkien Society Essays) p 2.
32
John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-Earth (Harper Collins, 2003) p 35.
33
Pat Reynolds, The Lord of the Rings: The Tale of a Text (The Tolkien Society Essays, 2004) pp 5-6.

9.
easily overlook Tolkien‟s greater portraiture; whilst adventure and drama in Middle-Earth might

embody a modern meaning, it still does not exist to deliberately propagate it.34

Second-wave feminists of the 1960s found great prescience in the character of Éowyn of Rohan,

whose plotline wrestles to overcome the rule of a patriarchal culture.35 Aragorn asks of her,

“What do you fear, Lady?” to which she answers with stirring liberation, “A cage … to stay

behind bars until use and old age accept them.” Tolkien has arguably committed no crime other

than being a man of his time, place and experience, yet Middle-Earth appears mostly patrilinear

rather than patriarchal; man and woman share equal status, but different functions. Galadriel, a

figure wiser than even Gandalf, refuses the Ring out of strength rather than weakness or fear,

where all others who succumb to the Ring throughout the story are notably male.

Such a reading even blindly moves over the opening lines of LotR – “One Ring to rule them all

… and in the darkness, bind them.” The Fellowship, tasked with destroying this force of

supremacy, is an alliance of races and cultures from throughout Middle-Earth who come together

in defiance.36 Again Tolkien is not concerned with what that supremacy could mean, that he

leaves to his readership, although this „return‟ to criticism against Middle-Earth is to be expected

by the very nature of our pendulous desires.

The meeting of state, science and capital – or for brevity‟s sake, modernity, sought to disenchant

the world with the rise of objective truth and sciences; an intellectual opposition against mystery

and magic. Postmodernity, however, sought to spellbind once again and cast a handful of magic

sand over what was once thought of as the road to reason. Although Tolkien‟s pages are footed

34
Dr. Patrick Curry, Defending Middle Earth, Tolkien: Myth and Modernity (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004) p
8.
35
Dr. Patrick Curry, Tolkien and his Critics: A Critique (Online Essay) p 6.
36
Jessica Yates, Tolkien as a Writer for Young Adults (The Tolkien Society Essays) p 3.

10.
in Indo-European myth, a pre-modern world of ancient castles and awestriking landscapes to

titillate the likes of John Ruskin, perhaps Sauron and his rising shadow in the East is merely

modernism gone mad, rather than modernism epitomised. Then later, the attraction

Postmodernism found within Tolkien was tuned to the idea of Middle-Earth meaning nothing in

particular and yet abounding with many competing possibilities.

In years to come a pattern will surely emerge – Tolkien will experience another burst of

popularity, promptly followed by another march of criticism, and rest again into cherished

memory. Middle-Earth, however, will remain only ever confessed by its creator to be the fruit of

his philological interests, and for him, nothing more. Perhaps this, by a skill singular to Tolkien,

created a language ubiquitously spoken but never indefinitely understood.

11.
 Bibliography

Book:
Carpenter, Humphrey. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography (George Allen & Unwin LTD, 1977)

Curry, Patrick, Dr. Defending Middle Earth, Tolkien: Myth and Modernity (Houghton Mifflin
Company, 2004)

Garth, John. Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-Earth (Harper Collins, 2003)

Hammond, Wayne G. and Scull, Christina, J.R.R. Tolkien, Artist & Illustrator (Harper Collins
Publishers, 2004)

Shippey, Tom. J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (Harper Collins, 2000)

Tolkien, J.R.R. Foreword to 50th anniversary edition, The Lord of the Rings (Houghton Mifflin
Company, 2004)

Book with an Editor:

Essay:
Curry, Patrick, Dr. Tolkien and his Critics: A Critique (Online Essay)
http://www.patrickcurry.co.uk/papers/Tolkien-and-Critics.pdf

Reynolds, Pat. The Lord of the Rings: The Tale of a Text (The Tolkien Society Essays, 2004)
https://www.tolkiensociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/LOTR-The-Tale-of-a-Text.pdf

Yates, Jessica. Tolkien as a Writer for Young Adults (The Tolkien Society Essays)
https://www.tolkiensociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Tolkien-as-a-Writer-for-Young-Adults.pdf

Online Newspaper Article:

12.
Doughan, David. „J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biographical Sketch‟ (The Tolkien Society)
https://www.tolkiensociety.org/author/biography/

Rhys-Davies, John. „How was The Lord of the Rings influenced by World War One?‟ (BBC
Online, 31 July 2014) http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zgr9kqt

Film:
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Directed by Peter Jackson, New Line Cinema,
2001, 178 minutes, [DVD]

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy; Appendices Directed by Peter Jackson, New Line Cinema, 2003,
[DVD]

Images:

Fg. 1: Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit, Illustrated by Alan Lee (Harper Collins Publishers, 2001) p
19.

Fg. 2: Flood, Alison. „Unseen JRR Tolkien poems found in school magazine,‟ (The Guardian,
16 February 2016) Haywood Magee/Getty Images:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/16/unseen-jrr-tolkien-poems-found-in-school-
magazine#img-1

Fg. 3: Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit, Illustrated by Alan Lee (Harper Collins Publishers, 2001) p
74.

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