An Elf-friend's Purpose: Sam versus Smith

    In his essay The Footsteps of Aelfwine, Verlyn Flieger tries to define and explain the role of the elf-friend in Tolkien's works. There are so many characters that Tolkien named, literally or figuratively, explicitly or implicitly, elf-friend, that you can analyze this character type quite easily and in-depth, even though it was named and used by only one author. This analysis leads Flieger to an interesting conclusion: the "important position [the elf-friends] all share is that of the link, the connector or mediator between the 'real' or natural world and the world of Faerie - the supernatural world of myth and imagination" (Footsteps, p. 185). This idea makes a lot of sense. The characters Tolkien literally names 'elf-friend' (Aelfwine, Alboin, Elendil, Alwin), or names as elf-friend in his stories (Frodo, Bilbo), or who simply fit the role, often better than the named elf-friends themselves (Sam, The Master Cook, Smith), are so numerous as to make the role almost ubiquitous. And in a way, that is Tolkien's aim.
    The elf-friend has two roles. First, he is almost always an active member of the story in some way. He may not take much physical action, but he is usually an involved character who affects the outcome in some way. But there is also a part two: the role of storyteller. This is the role that Flieger focuses on. Each elf-friend is simultaneously experiencing his own story and learning about the story of the world in a way that they can then transmit a whole to others. Most of the elf-friends leave behind a copy of their experiences and what they learned. Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam with the Red Book of Westmarch, Elendil, Aelfwine, and Lowdham with their 'inherited race memory', each elf-friend is a storyteller, not just of their own story, but of everything they learned about the world they experienced. It is their tale that allows other to learn as well. It is the role of the teacher through the role of the learner. That is what Flieger means by the elf-friend being the link between the natural world and Faerie. A story can simply be transmitted through a statement of events; but that can read as a simple history textbook, especially when the story is not just one series of events, but a many threaded tapestry of the history of a world (Faerie). As such, the readers of The Lord of the Rings or the never-to-be-finished The Lost Road come to hear the history of not just the elf-friends but the elves as well. By having the character in the story hear the histories of their world, the author allows that history to be transmitted as a story, as the elf-friend's experience. As Flieger says, "As Sam [in the Lord of the Rings] experiences the myth, as Sam understands the Elves, so too does the reader"(Footsteps, p. 194).
    This is why so many elf-friends exist in Tolkien's works. Tolkien's stories are set in worlds with complex inner histories, diverse languages and species, and a context that affects every interaction. There are thousands of stories set in the background that the reader knows are there, even if they will never hear them. By utilizing the elf-friends in his stories, Tolkien allows the reader to experience not just the story but the world, to see not just the elf-friend but also what the elf-friend sees. Having a character to learn about the elves/Gods/Faerie allows the reader to hear about this background without having to slog through a supplementary history textbook. It makes the world feel more real. To Tolkien, having this character to tell a story through adds the depth to the book that makes it a mythology.
    More than any other example given above, Sam is a quintessential elf-friend. Never named such, either by the author or another character, Sam nevertheless acts as the reader's most accessible door into the Middle Earth of Lord of the Rings. He is shown as enamored with the elves from the start. He is the character most interested in meeting them and hearing their stories, and thereby learning about his world and his world's history. His love of stories is shown as far back as the Shire as well, as he listens to Hobbit tales of elves and dragons and longs to hear more, despite his elders' scolding. Once he and Frodo begin their journey, he is the one to listen closest to the elves they meet, and the one to think hardest on their tales. It is Sam who analyzes the elves for the reader, and it is through him that we learn about what elves are like and how they fit into the mythology of Sam's world: "'They seem rather above my likes and dislikes, so to speak,' answered Sam slowly. 'It doesn't seem to matter what I think about them. They are quite different from what I expected -- so old and young, and so gay and sad, as it were.'"(Fellowship, p. 96). He hears their stories and is changed, understands more about his world and theirs, and resolves even more to follow Frodo into the dangerous unknown. Sam is the best mediator for the reader, most often giving his experiences and impressions so that the reader can truly enter Middle Earth. He is the doorway.
    However, given this purpose for an elf-friend, to act as a mediator for the reader to hear the myths of the Secondary World, what should we make of Smith of Wootton Major? There are two elf-friends of note in this story: the Master Chef and Smith. The Master Chef does not have time to act as an elf-friend for the reader, for he quickly exits the narrative. He seems to act somewhat as an elf-friend should for the village. He brings back songs and an apprentice for the village to meet from Faerie. While he does not share stories of Faerie that we can see, he does in a way share his experiences and bring something (Alf) for others to learn from. The Master Chef, while not as much an elf-friend as Sam, does in a way make Faerie accessible. However, Smith does not even do this. His contributions as an elf-friend to the village are only through his work in iron, which, while delightful to viewers, does not help them experience the depth and history of Faerie. For the readers as well, he acts as only a window, a way to look at the present, but not explore the world. We as readers do see his adventures, but they have no background and no explanation. Where were the mariners fighting and why? What was under the lake and why did the wind try to blow him away? Why were the maidens dancing? History, too, is ignored, with none of the stories that The Lord of the Rings contains. We are never told the tales of the Queen's and King's past, We are not told of the impetus for whatever war is being fought, or how flames came to be under a lake. As a typical Tolkien elf-friend, Smith fails. However, I do not believe he fails in being the essence of an elf-friend.
    The main question becomes: what is the most basic purpose of an elf-friend? To give a reader answers? Or to make them feel like the Secondary world is a real world to explore and experience? I would argue that it is the second option. In such a long saga as The Lord of the Rings, the elf-friends in the story need to learn about the mythologies of Middle Earth. The story is too involved and complex, and if the histories were neglected as in Wootton Major, the book would fall flat. The reader would not feel that it was real, would not be able to experience Middle Earth. In Wootton Major, however, the feeling that Faerie is real comes from Smith's experiences. The fact that he is in the world is enough. I would argue that in fact that Smith is more of an elf-friend, at least in-story, than any other in Tolkien's works, simply because Frodo, Sam, and the rest left only an account, a book. Whether that book is the Red Book of Westmarch (in-story) or The Lord of the Rings (for us readers), it is only a book. Although it is enough for a reader to feel they are experiencing Middle Earth, it is not a true experience. Smith, however, does give both his world and ours the experience. By showing us his travels without added explanation, we see as he does. We truly live in the world with him. Smith does not get an explanation for the Wind or the war or the flames. However, he experiences them, and we do so as well. And in the end, Smith does the most elf-friend-like thing he can: he gives up the star and allows another person to take his place. He gives, not only a knowledge of the experience but the experience himself. He leaves hope for both young Tim and the reader that we can mediate for ourselves, find the story ourselves and see ourselves in it. He leaves hope that we can become the next elf-friend. And that is the elf-friend's true purpose: to give us a link to a world we can explore. Be that a story or a star, it is a way to find the door to a Secondary World and give the reader a key.

- Fiona Helgren

Works Cited
Tolkien, J. R. (1978). The Fellowship of the Ring (2nd ed., Vol. 1). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Tolkien, J. R. (n.d.). Smith of Wootton Major. n.p.
Tolkien, J. R. (n.d.). Tolkien's Legendarium (V. Flieger & C. F. Hostetter, Eds.). London: Greenwood Press.

The Unnecessity of an Anglo-Saxon National Epic

I’ve never enjoyed the blending of history and myth. As a self-professed medieval history nerd, particularly the era of the third crusade and the early Plantagenet kings of England, the widespread belief in Robin Hood as a real historical figure irks me. Belief in King Arthur as a real, historical king of England or acceptance of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain as fact are both ludicrous beliefs. As we discussed, while melding myth and history gives a semblance of truth to the myth, it also cheapens the history.

Tolkien is blending myth and history to a massive extent. Though much of his legendarium takes place in an era before we have records of the actual historical truth, including Creation, we do have rough ideas of the politics and cultures of the world throughout its history. Certainly, we have artifact records of early complex societies, and we can be fairly certain that Gondor and Arnor did not exist. Similarly, we have accepted theories for the creation of the world (from science) and the development of biodiverse life that do not mesh with the stories Tolkien says. By tying himself to the real world through his fragments (Hey Diddle Diddle, King Scefing, et cetera), Tolkien is presenting a fantastical version of his world which we already know some things about.

We know--or at least, are fairly certain, scientifically--that complex life formed through evolution. It was not created in its present form. As lovely as New Zealand is, we can be fairly certain by studying the formation of geographical features and the geology of the world, that Mordor never existed, and if precursor elves ever walked the Earth and built towers and kingdoms, we should have come across their ruins. And if Middle-Earth is some other place, inaccessible to the modern human, then how did we get the fragments that Tolkien placed in his works? How did Hey, Diddle Diddle make its way to the real world?

However, Tolkien isn’t trying to create an alternative history of the world. He is not, to my understanding, arguing that his narrative is actual, literal history, but is rather of the same vein of mythological-historical blending of which the Eddas or Gilgamesh are parts. Tolkien is creating this sort of mythological-history as a national epic for the English people. Much like Sturluson did with the Prose Edda, or existed with the Song of Roland for France, the national epic is an important part to a culture’s development. Tolkien, as an Anglo-Saxonist, believed that England--particularly Anglo-Saxon England--was missing such an epic, and set out to create one.

In class, we based our discussion off the premise that Tolkien wrote his apology and explained his reasoning for creating his legendarium for a good reason. To a certain extent, I reject this premise for two reasons. The first is that England has a national epic to the extent that England has a national culture. The second is that the mythos of the Lord of the Rings is so distinct that it does not truly function as a national epic.

England already has a multitude of epics. The problem is not that England does not have an epic, but that it is missing a unified culture to agree on which cultural epic can become national. Denmark has been comparatively stable, culturally, and thus the Sagas can adequately address the culture present there. England does not have a monolithic culture. It is a country of continuously supplanting cultures: Celts to Britons to Anglo-Saxons to Norman. The fact that the English mythos is similarly mixed, with its primary features of King Arthur being Anglo-French, is apt considering the nature and makeup of English culture and history. Tolkien’s desire for an “English” epic, meaning an Anglo-Saxon epic, is fulfilled by Beowulf. Tolkien would then argue that Beowulf is too focused on Danes to be the story of Englishmen, but Anglo-Saxon culture come from Denmark and from the Netherlands. Beowulf thus accurately serves as an epic for that culture, and the comparatively indigenous Welsh already have their own epics. Thus, the gap Tolkien seeks to fill simply does not exist, at least not in the size that Tolkien tried to fill.

Moreover, even if Tolkien had an adequately large space to fill, he does not fill it particularly well--not in terms of quality of writing, but it terms of fulfilling the essential function of a national epic. Certainly, other national epics relate the stories of creation, of elves, and of heroes. Tolkien ties his stories by using fragments of modern culture (Hey, Diddle Diddle, among others) to try to force his story to relate to England, but for all but the analytical reader, the connections to England can be entirely missed. A national epic exists to inform the parts of the nation about a mythological past, and is generally not subtle with its relation to the nation. Snorri Sturluson does not couch his writings behind fictional countries--he relates the stories of the Kings of the Danes. By hiding his ties to English history, by relating to the real world only through fragments, Tolkien hides the nationalism of his national, Anglo-Saxon epic. Thus he fails to fill the void he intended to fill.

The Lord of the Rings stands alone as an excellent work of fiction. Tolkien succeeded in creating an entire world that seems as complex and historically rich as our own. Such a task is monumental and impressive by itself. As a Game Master for D&D and a fan of fantasy novels, I admire Tolkien’s creation of Middle Earth. However, in a quest to craft a new national epic for the Anglo-Saxon people, Tolkien attempted to tie himself to history, but in a way too hidden and fantastic for it to succeed as a national epic--particularly in the modern age, when so much more is known about the historical history of the world. Middle Earth can stand on its own, without needing to rely on the crutch of English history; the way most people read Tolkien, unknowing of his quest to create a national epic and without diminished enjoyment for that ignorance, proves it.

-LTA

Tom Bombadil and the Human Condition

If there’s anything that I have learned during my first-time Tolkien journey, it’s that fans of The Lord of the Rings absolutely love Tom Bombadil. “He’s the best character,” gushed a friend. “I’m still mad he wasn’t in the movies.” I was somewhat surprised to find this character, who inspired such devotion, to be a truly minor character: Tom enters the narrative on pg. 119 and all but departs from it on pg. 148. Although his role is largely unexplained within the text, his story’s confusing relationship with the mythology regarding the Garden of Eden as well as the ways that he reflects Tolkien’s own views on storytelling as an innately human project.

            Tolkien actively invokes the Genesis account of the creation of man in the section where the hobbits take temporary refuge with Tom, but it’s the mythos of Adam and Eve twisted in very specific ways. Tom is aligned directly with Adam:

            “Who are you, Master?” [Frodo] asked.

“Eh, what?” said Tom sitting up, and his eyes glinting in the gloom. “Don’t you know my name yet? That’s the only answer. Tell me, who are you, alone, yourself and nameless? But you are young and I am old. Eldest, that’s what I am. Mark my words, my friends: Tom was here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He made paths before the Big People, and saw the little People arriving. He was here before the Kings and the graves and the Barrow-wights. When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless—before the Dark Lord came from Outside.” (Tolkien 131)

Tom is the first person, he says, and was a present spectator throughout all of the early history of Middle Earth. Although he sees all and knows all, he is not the originator or participant in any of these acts, which enhances his Adam-ness because Adam too was just a caretaker and resident of Eden. Like Eden, the Old Forest is also threatened by a powerful evil from the “Outside”: Satan is replaced with Sauron, but neither of them belong in the land they menace. The Old Forest, like the Garden of Eden, is a place where things can grow and prosper, and prior to the encroachment of Sauron, they do so without fear or restraint because evil does not yet exist there. More broadly, the similarities between Adam and Tom are numerous: he has a wife who serves as his sole non-plant or animal companion, he enjoys a privileged relationship with nature, and he lives in a bounded natural space (just like Adam doesn’t leave the Garden until he’s kicked out, Tom refuses to leave his Forest). Besides all that, both also contend with an evil tree.

Tolkien is consciously drawing upon these parallels, and in so doing, he transports the hobbits to an older time, an ur-world, if you will. In this most ancient, basic setting, Tolkien gives storytelling and especially poetry primacy. Tom speaks in verse, and often breaks into song. I think this is a large part of what makes him seem so magical: everything he says feels half like a spell or incantation. However, it also has the effect of making verse seem an older mode of speaking than prose: prose is the way the “young” hobbits speak, not “old” Tom. And indeed, one of his most important roles in the book is as a storyteller. His tales ground the hobbits in the lore of Middle Earth at the beginning of their epic quest, becoming foundational to their later understandings of the lands and people they come across. The process of understanding they go through serves to widen and contextualize the world the hobbits are venturing into: “As they listened, they began to understand the lives of the Forest, apart from themselves, indeed to feel themselves as the strangers where all other things were at home.” (Tolkien 129-130). Tom’s storytelling, as stories generally, has the power to show them different perspectives and thereby lend them a sort of empathy: in order to “feel themselves as the strangers where all other things [are] at home,” the hobbits must be able to see the Forest the way its inhabitants see it. They must leave behind their impressions and fears of it in exchange for a greater truth.

Tolkien’s strongly defined views on storytelling, especially the genre of mythology or fantasy, are clearly the driving force behind the Tom Bombadil episode. Storytelling has this power and this importance because it is a basic response to the very condition of being human. In his “On Fairy Stories,” Tolkien writes, “Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.” Fantasy is fundamental to the human condition because to be a human is to reflect a greater creative process on a divine scale. The process of creation that goes into storytelling is a sacred and worshipful act, so Tom Bombadil’s purpose within the story is a consecrated one. Tolkien foregrounds this urgent need to create stories within the very story that he himself is creating: this nesting of creation in itself echoes the Creator-creator relationship he describes. This is also magnified to a general human construct by Tom’s position as the “Eldest” because Tom represents the most basic, natural impulses of humanity. Nothing about Tom is contrived, nothing he does reflects the corrupting potential of society or modern life: he is pure in a way no other character can be, except perhaps Goldberry, by sheer virtue of the fact that she also exists within this sphere. If Tom values storytelling so highly, then, how can it be otherwise?

RHL

The Limits of the Sub-Creator

    J. R. R. Tolkien put a lot of effort into making characters that are fun to analyze. The choices each person makes in the narrative, the emotions they show, the relationships they form, these are all sources of interest and exploration enough for any reader and/or scholar. However, Tom Bombadil is a fascinating character to analyze, simply because he is less characterized than almost any other being in the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien's characters are, to most readers, almost real, with a depth of emotion, thought, and experience that make them seem like they could so easily exist in our world and not only in Middle Earth. This strength of Tolkien's writing is one of many things that makes Lord of the Rings a great book. However, it is just as interesting to analyze when Tolkien did not give that amount of character depth. Tom Bombadil is introduced as a mysterious being. He is deliberately given no history or origin. His powers go unexplained. His thoughts and emotions are rarely stated and never analyzed. In many other stories less well-executed, he would be what we call a one-dimensional character, badly written and uninteresting. And yet, readers continue to love his character, and his lack of existence in the films is still a source of bitterness for many a fan. Why? Because that mystery is what makes his character so real, and so interesting.
    We will probably never get an answer for who or what Tom Bombadil is supposed to be, either in the internal world's history or as an author's device. As was discussed in class this week, however, a reader may make a shrewd guess that Tom Bombadil is meant to represent the creator; he is, in a way, Tolkien himself. This guess opens up several lines of thought for future discussion, but I was most drawn to one I had questioned when first reading the story: why does Tom not accompany the Hobbits to Bree?
    His explanation in-story makes a good enough sense in that world, I suppose:
           "...he laughed and refused, saying: Tom's country ends here: he will not pass the borders. Tom has his house to mind, and Goldberry is waiting!" (The Fellowship p. 159).
As a mysterious character, Tom does not need more explanation than that. He has his land and that is what he concerns himself with. He need not and does not want to extend his influence further. However, it seems to me that there may be meaning beyond a simple plot device. If we accept that Tom is at least somewhat representative of Tolkien himself, the idea that Tom cannot leave his land, or, better stated, that Tom does not feel he can or should influence or control events outside of his set sphere, illuminates some of Tolkien's ideas about sub-creating. In a letter to a student, who wrote to ask him questions related to her thesis, Tolkien spoke some about his writing process. She likely asked him something along the lines of 'How did you determine how the plot would go? Did you plan the whole story ahead of time, or write as the story unfolded?'. Tolkien's answer was that it was a mix of both:
           "The general idea of the Lord of the Rings was certainly in my mind from an early stage...From time to time I made rough sketches or synopses of what was to follow, immediately or far ahead; but these were seldom of much use: the story unfolded itself as it were" (Letters p. 258).
Here, Tolkien explains that his story was, in many ways, not under his control. He wrote as the story came to him, rather than planning ahead to a controlled ending. This restraint reminds me of Tom and his refusal to go beyond his sphere of influence.
    Tom is presented in Lord of the Rings as a sub-creator. Tolkien defined Fantasy as the result of a person combining the Sub-Creation Art (sub-creation being the creation of a Secondary World  and Art being the transference of that world to the reader) and the "quality of strangeness and wonder" that makes Fantasy so otherworldly (Reader p. 68). This process is mirrored in the chapter of the Lord of the Rings in which the hobbits stay in Tom Bombadil's house. In fact, most of the chapter consists of Tom telling the hobbits the history of Middle Earth, telling the tales of the world. These stories are a Secondary World in two ways: to the hobbits, the past of Middle Earth may as well be another world, so different is it to their own; and to the reader, the stories are background for the book they are currently reading. Tom is weaving stories of fantastic other world and telling them to the hobbits and the reader. Consequently, Tom is a sub-creator within his own creation, he is Tolkien in Middle Earth.
    But that influence does not extend past the present moment; Tom, while having a good deal of control that other characters do not have (e.g. he can touch the ring without being affected and see Frodo while the ring makes him invisible (Fellowship p. 144), does not tell the hobbits the future. He does not set their path or even advise them beyond a few more general maxims and suggestions; he is only a guide. Like Tolkien, much of the story is unveiled to him as it is to the other characters: in time. He is not all-knowing. Tolkien's writing style, that of having only vague plans if any, matches well with Tom's simultaneous power and control over his domain (power over what is already written) and lack of power and control over anywhere else (uncertainty about what will be written next) [whether this is by inability to or choice not to interfere does not matter to this argument; Tom's influence does stop. As does Tolkien's knowledge].
    Most of our guesses as to Tom Bombadil are exactly that: guesses. Tolkien purposefully did not define him within the story, and if there is further explanation of his existence in supplementary texts, I am not aware of it. This lack of information should be annoying; as Tolkien has said, the mark of a true Fantasy is internal consistency, which cannot be created without world-building. A reader should not be blind-sided by unexplained or random aspects of the Secondary World that remove them from the story, and Tom Bombadil is introduced rather suddenly and never explained. But in fact he is intriguing to so many readers of the book, including myself. One of the best parts of reading a well-created Secondary World is that rather than be distracted by the mysteries that should already have been explained, you are distracted by the mysteries the author made to catch your attention. Tom is one such mystery. He does not need to be explained to make sense in the world, but he was created to catch our attention and make us wonder. And in that way, too, he is very like Tolkien. Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings to make us think and wonder, and Tom Bombadil is both an exemplary microcosm and a reflection of the writer's mind.

- Fiona Helgren

Works Cited
Tolkien, J. R., & Tolkien, C. (2000). The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (H. Carpenter, Ed.). Houghton Mifflin.
Tolkien, J. R. (1966). The Tolkien Reader. New York: Ballantine.
Tolkien, J. R. (1978). The Fellowship of the Ring (2nd ed., Vol. 1). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Elrond vs. Elric: Situating Tolkien in Modern Fantasy

Some people do not like The Lord of the Rings.

 This, of course, is as it should be. I for one would be far more concerned if there were not a certain difference of opinion on the matter, and indeed I harbor certain reservations about Tolkien's work myself. What is more striking is the reason many give for their dislike: they find Tolkien unserious, even juvenile. Andrew Rissik's biting "Middle Earth, middlebrow" is a fairly typical criticism of the kind, in which references to "the twee doggerel of Tom Bombadil," Middle-earth as a "strangely simplified mock-Teutonic never-never land," and Tolkien's own "essential simplicity of temperament" make it clear that the author considers The Lord of the Rings a children's novel at best. It would be easy to dismiss Rissik as the very sort of literary gatekeeper Tolkien himself decries in "On Fairy-Stories," a biased critic who believes that tales about elves and dragons are fit only for the nursery. In Rissik's case, this may indeed be so, but such a defense of Tolkien generally is undermined by the fact that his work has been subject to similar criticism from other fantasy writers. I am speaking, of course, of Michael Moorcock, a critic so vocal that a 2014 profile in The New Yorker was simply titled "The Anti-Tolkien."

Before I turn to his criticisms of Tolkien, I would like to take a moment to evaluate Moorcock. So far as name recognition is concerned, he's hardly Tolkien, or even Pratchett or Le Guin, and yet Moorcock's influence on fantasy as a modern genre is equal to any of them. Tellingly, while Tolkien's elves, dwarves, and hobbits—excuse me, halflings—were always an important part of the Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game, the RPG's original cosmology was based primarily on Moorcock's, and the first edition of the Deities and Demigods sourcebook included an entire section on his mythos and characters, particularly Elric of Melniboné, his signature fantasy antihero, until a lawsuit forced its removal. Modern luminaries of the genre regularly cite Moorcock as an influence—see, for example, Neil Gaiman's story "One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock." In 2000, the same year Tom Shippy declared Tolkien the "author of the century," Moorcock was awarded the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement. His qualifications to criticize even a fantasist of Tolkien's reputation are beyond doubt, and criticize he does.

Moorcock's most significant piece of Tolkien criticism is the essay "Epic Pooh," in which, as the title suggests, he unflatteringly likens The Lord of the Rings to an elf-filled version of A. A. Milne's children's classic. "The sort of prose most often identified with 'high' fantasy," he writes, "is the prose of the nursery-room." He proceeds to rip into Tolkien on this front, with textual examples, then moves on to complaining about his politics. Eventually, he returns to the point, even more strongly than before: "The Lord of the Rings is much more deep-rooted in its infantilism than a good many of the more obviously juvenile books it influenced." At this point, one gets the sense that Moorcock's complaint runs deeper than the quality of Tolkien's prose, or the conservatism of his politics. And, indeed, it does, though he dithers a while longer before finally spitting it out:

Tolkien, going against the grain of his subject matter, forces [a happy ending] on us—as a matter of policy.
...

The great epics dignified death, but they did not ignore it, and it is one of the reasons why they are superior to the artificial romances of which Lord of the Rings is merely one of the most recent.

 Moorcock goes on, but he hardly needs to. This, here, is the beating heart of his objection to Tolkien. It is, I think, the true heart of all of them, even Rissik's, if they could but get past their petty biases and articulate it properly.

As Moorcock's objection has its roots, ultimately, not in The Lord of the Rings, but rather in the philosophy of the "eucatastrophe" which underlies it, I shall turn now to "On Fairy-Stories," the essay in which that claim is articulated, in order to examine it. Tolkien's discussions of the definition and origins of fairy stories are irrelevant to us here, and can be safely ignored for the present. The first section of note is the one entitled "Children," for though his objection to the classification of fairy-stories and fantasy as children's things indicates that he aspires to something more, both Rissik and Moorcock suggest that he has failed to achieve it. Here, it may be helpful to compare the literary backgrounds of Tolkien and Moorcock's respective works. Tolkien's deepest sources are, of course, the ancient myths and epics, but his treatment of fairy-stories as having been tragically relegated to children's literature, along with his self-classification as a writer of fairy-stories, transitively suggests that he sees himself as arising from a literary tradition most recently incarnated in the form of tales for children. Moorcock, by contrast, got his start as a writer and an editor in pulp magazines, in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and H. P. Lovecraft, and although his creation of Elric was a deliberate attempt to cast aside a number of Conan-era pulp conventions, even this refutation served to further cement him as heir to a tradition in which children had precious little place. Thus, Tolkien, unlike Moorcock, is in the position of trying to move beyond the childishness of his predecessors. As Rissik and Moorcock claim, he is not wholly successful.

Reading further in "On Fairy-Stories," certain contradictions begin to emerge. Close to the end of the essay, Tolkien writes that "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" as existing in Faerie. Here, Tolkien errs, first because I can most certainly conceive of such a place, and second because he reduces Fairy to simple binaries. But Fairy resist such easy categorization; it is an in-between place, full of tangled briars and crooked trees and twisting paths, and it is no easier there to tell good from evil at a glance than it is in our own world. One wonders if Tolkien is not here mistaking Fairy for Heaven or Hell, which are much neater places, despite his own admonition that it is neither of those. In this oversimplification, we can see that yes, perhaps, the charges against Tolkien—that he has failed to avoid the childishness he himself railed against—are merited, and that Moorcock's objection stands: the eucatastrophe is not the particular triumph of Tolkien's fantasy, but rather its undoing.

However, it would take a measure more misanthropy than I possess to simply leave the matter there, with Tolkien's idealism broken like some once-loved doll, for while I must conclude that Tolkien's methodology was flawed, even Rissik had to recognize a measure of nobility in his intentions. Perhaps there is something to be built from the wreckage. I am not a Christian, but I shall attempt to formulate my argument in the terms of that faith, in order to better be in dialogue with Tolkien. Before I begin, however, I must briefly two vital sources of criticism which shall inform my reconstruction.

First, in his essay "The Death of the Author," Roland Barthes writes that "every text is eternally written here and now;" that is, every reader, indeed, every reading, brings a new formulation, created in the moment. If we take this to be true, we find that suddenly not only the architect of a given secondary world but rather every reader to inhabit that world must be considered as a sub-creator of that world, generating a unique instance with each reading. For while, as in Tolkien's example, every reader may see a green sun, no two of them will see it the same. Each must take their own green—from grass, or from trees, or from some beloved's eyes—and apply it to their own sun. Though such is beside the point, this formulation also presents a far better argument than any that Tolkien actually gives against dramatic or visual representations of fantasy: that in creating such representations definitively, they deny the audience their own sub-creative power. I do not necessarily agree with that particular argument myself—I've seen too many fine works of visual fantasy to wholly believe it—but I cannot help but feel that Tolkien would have approved of the sentiment.

My second source is "The Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde, and while I may not use it in the way that Wilde intended, my earlier citation of Barthes should make it quite clear that I do not especially care. Wilde writes:

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.

No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

At first, these lines seem to suggest that art must have no relationship with what is ethical at all. However, as Wilde notes just a single line earlier, "the moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist." Rather, these lines are a caution against judgement. A writer of fiction, for example, I may create characters I find morally repugnant, and yet it is my duty as their creator to write them, if not dispassionately, then at least without judgement, for if I judge them in my own person, I am not writing justice, merely a scripted, predetermined farce. I must not yield to a desire to prove anything wrong in my fiction, but rather portray it as fairly and honestly as I am able—which will, of course, still be somewhat subjectively—and let it condemn itself on its own. I must, as Wilde says, have no ethical sympathies. I must express everything. In Christian theology, this forbearance of judgement and gift to the condemned of their own fates has another name. There, it is called grace.

Just as grace is an essential function of the Creator, it must also be understood as an essential function of any sub-creator. In this, we find Tolkien's eucatastrophe obsoleted by something yet grander, for, following my earlier point, grace must be a function of every sub-creator, reader and author alike, and thus a well-built fantasy will induce it in all who come into contact with it, bringing them closer to a supreme understanding and mercy. Whether the end of the story is happy or sad is irrelevant, because, as Tolkien notes early one, it is in fact the human beings in Fairy who hold our interest, and if they are rendered well, their tragedy will elicit as much a depth of feeling in us as their triumph. And perhaps, just perhaps, a sub-creator might carry some of this grace with them out into the Primary World. Just a sliver would be enough to justify the whole exercise.

So, Tolkien was not perfect. He was not, perhaps, the greatest author of the 20th century. But his methods, while flawed, were quite a step beyond what he was coming from, and moving in the right direction. He may not be the be-all and end-all of modern fantasy, but he nevertheless deserves the credit he receives for having shaped it, and if nothing else, we can forgive him for not getting everything right on the very first try. The Road, after all, goes ever on and on.

—Nathaniel Eakman