Khan to Elessar

Every time I read or watch Lord of the Rings I can’t help but think about how Tolkien had survived one of the bloodiest, most cruel, most dirtiest and darkest wars in human history, came back and wrote this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

And clearly they were all written partly because he survived the war, because of what he’d seen and done and learned. But at the same time the unwillingness to lose faith, the courage and strength that this man had to believe in these things after going through hell! It makes the nihilists look so cheap, so uninteresting! People who’ve went through concentration camps and wars believe in humanity anyway, isn’t that proof that hope and love exist? And many, many, many of them did not return or returned broken and cruel and traumatised to the point when no faith in others was possible for them, and nobody can blame them. But there were many who refused to lose faith and hope. They have seen some of the worst that life has to offer and came back believing that we shouldn’t be eager to deal out death in judgement and should love only that which the sword defends.

No matter how many people say that humanity is horrible and undeserving of love, and life is dark and worthless, and love doesn’t exist I remember this and have hope anyway. Because there were people who have actually had all reason to believe in the worst and still believed in the good, so the good must be real. The good is real, even despite the evil, and we must trust in it.

Thank you for this!

Thinking about Tolkien, and how he was an orphan, and came of age just in time to be traumatized for life by the unprecedented horrors of WWI, where he watched most of his friends die, and then returned to a home indelibly changed, and lived to watch it all happen again to his children.

And still he believed in (and taught, and vehemently argued for) eucatastrophe: a sudden and favorable resolution of events in a story; a happy ending.

His stories are full of darkness and danger, fear and sorrow sharp as swords, sacrifice, desperate heroism, loss, hurt.

Theses things are real. He felt them. We all feel them.

But you know what follows those things? Healing, hope, and the sweet dawn that follows the darkest hour. Bonds forged in fire. Fellowship. Learning. Wisdom to overcome. Love that outlasts death and destruction.

This wasn’t wishful thinking or mere escapism. He lived it. He fought for it. He kept on writing for the sake of his friends who didn’t live long enough to write their own stories. He knew death wasn’t the end.

He considered it a sacred duty to tell others. (Do you like C. S. Lewis? Yeah, thank Tolkien.)

And here his stories stand today, waving their banners, rallying the troops, more popular and beloved than ever. Tolkien belonged to what we call the lost generation. Do you realize how many writers WWI produced? Do you realize how countercultural Tolkien was, creating legends of light in the darkness of the trenches, penning the words not all those who wander are lost that we now slap on bumper stickers and emboss on journals and stitch on hoodies and tattoo on our bodies? (Even Lewis was still writing sad, bad poetry at this point.)

This is the power of faith. And Tolkien had it.

So, in summary, I guess… To all the modern nihilist storytellers who’ve never missed a meal and are getting filthy rich by selling their sad and unsatisfying “endings” as somehow truer and braver and more enlightened: You are cowards, everyone can see and sense it, and I sincerely hope you don’t take a single soul with you into that abyss. I pray you take the hand that’s offered you if and when you decide to climb out of the hole you’ve created with your muddled and meaningless worldview. There is warmth and hope and even laughter waiting for you in the light.

And to anyone struggling to keep up the fight today, remember Tolkien.

“There is a place called ‘heaven’ where the good here unfinished is completed; and where the stories unwritten, and the hopes unfulfilled, are continued. We may laugh together yet.”

In a world filled with hopelessness, grim, pessimistic works are tired, conventional, and uninnovative. Hope is subversive. Hope is brave. Hope stands unflinchingly against the usual. You might even say hope is edgy.

And we need hope now more than ever. This is why I read Tolkien and why I am so grateful to him.