The Internet Monk 

"the power of opinion, the phenomenon of speech, the impact of truth"

A Webjournal edited by Michael Spencer

LOTR: Timeless, Timely and Well Told 

by Michael Spencer

One could make the case that J.R.R. Tolkien (JRRT) was, if not crazy, at least a few fries short of a Happy Meal. Not content with writing the Hobbitt and Lord of the Rings (LOTR), Tolkien wrote volumes of entire histories, languages and mythologies for his stories, providing Tolkien addicts with a seemingly endless supply of detail and trivia about Middle Earth and its residents. If Ms. Rowling wrote four books about Harry Potter, and seven about the plumbing in Hogwarts, many would wonder if certain lines had been crossed.

Of course, JRRT was no ordinary writer. If anyone ever qualified for the title visionary, it would be Tolkien. The rather reclusive Oxford professor of Philology saw another universe, akin to our own but wonderfully different, and devoted decades of unrewarded labor to bringing that universe into our own. That LOTR was voted "Book of the Millennium" by readers shows what Tolkien achieved.

One measure of Tolkien's greatness was the avoidance of LOTR by Hollywood. Tolkien's Middle Earth was too much for the dream merchants to conquer. With the exception of animated versions of the Hobbit and a disastrous animation of the first two books of LOTR, Hollywood left the story to readers. And Tolkien's readers reveled in the fact that this story was too great, too big to fit onto a screen, but could only be viewed from the platform of the imagination.

When one has read LOTR, and viewed the movie "The Fellowship of the Ring (FOR)," there is a ready admission that Hollywood still fell short in many ways of completely presenting JRRT's vision and story, but what has been achieved in the nearly three-hour epic is wonderful. Middle earth, it's characters, it's essence, and it's wonder, have all been recreated in a way that utterly transports the audience into this greatest of all English stories. With obvious love, awesome creativity, lavish detail and ridiculous expense, LOTR would make JRRT proud, and can only fail to impress the most cynical, negative and disinterested person. Whether one has read the books or not, the film is satisfying, moving, beautiful, exciting and spiritual. LOTR has set a standard that George Lucas has never dreamed of in the Star Wars stories, and a standard for cinematic storytelling that will be very difficult to surpass.

When I read LOTR in high school, and again in my early twenties, it moved me particularly as a story of simple virtues, told on a grand scale. For all its massive sweep, depth of lyric and majestic prose, it was a story of loyal friends, courage and sacrificial choices in the face of temptation and opposition. FOR created this same experience and utterly without manipulation or schmaltz. No amount of special effects is as grand as those moments when characters experience profoundly human struggles and triumphs. It is those moments when friends choose loyalty, and individuals choose sacrifice, that I was most moved. It is a movie that easily brings tears of happiness, and leaves you wishing you lived with more of the virtues you've seen enfolded before you.

I must admit to being mystified at the embracing of LOTR by those very same Christians who have denounced Harry Potter. Someone needs to explain why the wizardry of Gandalf is not as offensive as the wizardry of Harry Potter. If Harry Potter is seen as subtle recruitment into occultism, then why not LOTR more so, since it is a far superior story told in a more persuasive manner? My understanding is that HP must choose to use his powers for good rather than for evil, and this seems to be a prominent theme in LOTR, as all those who come in contact with the one ring are powerful tempted by the ambition to use it wrongly. Is LOTR "laundered" by the fact that JRRT was a confessing Christian and instrumental in the conversion of C.S. Lewis?

I must say that if a Christian evaluation of literature can be this two-faced, in betrays a lack of response to fundamental issues. Potter isn't soliciting anyone into witchcraft. Wiccans hate the caricatures the books foster. If anything, both LOTR and HP are presenting character and virtue in the contexts of imaginative universes. Would critics of HP say that the books were evil if Harry were a Buddhist or a native American (like the wonderful book The Education of Little Tree)? Would his choices and quest for character be "dangerous" if they exposed readers to non-Christian contexts for the same journey? If that is so, then Christians cannot read anything that does not have the imprimatur of the thought police on the cover. This is a shame, and thoughtful people are embarrassed by the hypocrisy of embracing LOTR and denouncing HP.

LOTR is a book that exists in the universe of a creator who has allowed good and evil to take their course in history. The story of Frodo and Sam is the story of destiny and providence in that struggle. The power of the ring and the power of the wizards or the elves are only a device to interact in a world of good, evil, God and those made in his image. HP is a lesser universe, I will admit, where magic replaces technology and one must decide how to use one's powers over the world in the same struggle. Both these are recognizably Christian universes and struggles, and I am clueless as to why anyone could see either book as more than imaginative moral fiction.

Purists may say that FOR will result in fewer readers of the books. Numbers seem to tell a different tale, as sales of LOTR and The Hobbit have soared in anticipation of the films, and if my son is any evidence, in excited follow-up reading to relive the story. We are discovering that the triumph of one medium need not be completely at the expense of another. (Now if we can just get Christians to read something other than Left Behind.)

In one of his conversations with C.S. Lewis, JRRT said that God had inspired all the mythology of the world as a preparation- a sort of kindergarten vocabulary- for the one great story that was true, and the source of our salvation and hope in this world. I have always found this a profound thought, and a far superior way of viewing literature than the sort of "God-forsaken" conspiracy thinking that dominates most evangelical conversation about literature not printed by their denominational press. I think JRRT's observation is just as true of mythology written post-Christ. Rather than divine preparation, I think these books are divine reminders of the truths that surround our lives.

LOTR is a God-saturated work of art, and evidence that God has not abandoned our world of stories, but breaks through in movie theaters and other unlikely places to tell us who we are and what sort of journey we are on. See it and be moved closer to the truth and beauty of our story.

Michael@internetmonk.com                                                                             Post a Comment