What If Waking Life Is the Dream?

What if the world that feels concrete and ordinary is actually a dream? Tolkien suggests this at the end of The Lord of the Rings, when Merry says to Frodo that their adventure “seems almost like a dream that has slowly faded,” and Frodo replies “to me it feels more like falling asleep again.” This exchange quietly flips the way we usually think about dreams. In life, we often treat dreams as the thing that is unreal, the thing we leave behind when we wake up. But Frodo suggests the opposite. Maybe ordinary life is the dimmer state, and the journey has been more real. Once that idea comes to mind, it is hard to miss throughout Tolkien’s writing. Dreams in his work rarely feel like random psychology. They feel more like flashes of a deeper world, beyond normal perception. 

This idea builds early on with Frodo’s recurring dream of the Sea. In that dream, “he knew that it was not leaves, but the sound of the Sea far-off; a sound he had never heard in waking life, though it had often troubled his dreams.” What makes this so strange is that the dream contains knowledge Frodo does not have. He has never seen the Sea, and yet he recognizes it. The dream is not making something up. It is revealing something true before Frodo has experienced it for himself. Tolkien pushes that feeling further by giving the dream direction: Frodo sees “a tall white tower” and feels “a great desire” to climb it and look out toward the Sea. That does not feel like the usual loose logic of dreaming. It feels intentional, almost like a summons. The dream points beyond the Shire toward something larger that exists whether Frodo understands it or not. In that sense, dreams in Tolkien are not really escapes from reality. They are more like early contact with it. 

He progresses this idea at Tom Bombadil’s house, where Frodo has an experience that does not fit neatly into either sleep or waking. Tolkien writes that “either in his dreams or out of them, he could not tell which, Frodo heard a sweet singing running in his mind.” That uncertainty matters. By this point Tolkien is no longer treating dreams as things safely contained by sleep but experiences that spill into waking life. The song itself transforms what Frodo perceives. It “seemed to come like a pale light behind a grey rain-curtain…until at last it was rolled back, and a far green country opened before him under a swift sunrise.” What stands out here is the language of unveiling or revealing. Frodo is not simply inventing a place in his head, something is being uncovered. The dream is another way of seeing reality. 

If dreams in Tolkien let characters brush up against a deeper reality, language, especially poetic and Elvish language, often does the same thing. In Rivendell, Frodo listens to an Elvish song and slips into something dream-like. Tolkien says that “the interwoven words…even though he understood them little, held him in a spell,” and that “visions of far lands and bright things that he had never yet imagined opened out before him.” Frodo does not fully understand the words, but they still work on him. Meaning does not arrive first through explanation. It arrives through sound, rhythm, and atmosphere. The experience becomes “more and more dreamlike,” until Frodo feels carried away by “an endless river of swelling gold and silver…too multitudinous for its pattern to be comprehended.” Language here does not just describe another world. It opens one. Tolkien’s other writings make that idea even clearer. In The Lost Road, names are described as feeling real, as if they are discovered rather than invented. In The Notion Club Papers, dreams are treated like imperfect translations of a deeper reality breaking into the mind. Both ideas help explain what is happening in Rivendell. Language and dreams work in similar ways. In both cases, something is felt before it is fully understood. 

At the same time, Tolkien does not treat language as automatically good or comforting. It can open reality, but it can also trap and darken it. The Barrow-downs make that very clear. Frodo first hears only “a cold murmur, rising and falling,” but gradually “strings of words would now and again shape themselves: grim, hard, cold words, heartless and miserable.” Language here is no longer fluid or illuminating. It becomes oppressive. When the voice hardens into an incantation “Cold be hand and heart and bone, and cold be sleep under stone” the effect is almost physical. Frodo feels his own agency weakening, as if the words are imposing a frozen reality on him and the others. What breaks the spell, though, is language again. Frodo remembers Tom Bombadil’s rhyme and says, “Ho! Tom Bombadil!…for our need is near us!” As he does, his voice “seemed to grow strong.” One kind of language deadens the world while it seems that another can restore movement and life. 

The most complicated version of all this comes in Lothlórien, in the Mirror of Galadriel. The Mirror is not exactly a dream, but it behaves like one. Galadriel says it reveals “things that were, and things that are, and things that yet may be,” and adds that “which it is that he sees, even the wisest cannot always tell.” Frodo can’t always tell whether what he experiences belongs to the times when he is sleeping. Here he can’t even tell whether what he sees and experiences belongs to the past, the present, or the future. Even Sam’s vision moves “like a dream,” shifting before it can be fixed in place. This is also where The Notion Club Papers helps. In it Tolkien imagines dreams as partial and difficult translations of a reality that cannot be easily interpreted. The Mirror works the same way. It does not hand over neat truth but something partial, unstable, and easily misunderstood. But that doesn’t make it not real. Actually, Tolkien seems to suggest the opposite, that the deepest realities are often the hardest to solidify. 

By the time we return to Frodo’s final comment, it no longer feels like a strange line tossed in. When he says the journey feels “more like falling asleep again,” it’s what Tolkien has been building toward all along. Dreams, songs, visions, and more all offer partial access to a reality that lies beyond understanding. Waking life starts to look less like the stability we think of it as and more like one limited mode of experience. Dreams are moments when a very deep reality rushes closer to the surface. Language can do the same thing. Whether in Elvish song, incantation, or remembered rhyme, words do not simply report the world. They open it or distort it. If Frodo feels as though he is “falling asleep again,” it may be because he is returning to a world where that deeper reality is harder to perceive. A world where the dream has not ended, but has become harder to recognize. 

- ZSK 

What Remains: Language, Dreams, and the Fragmentary World of Tolkien

Looking at the works of Tolkien through the lens of language and dream help us situate the sense of reality behind his tales. But the very subjectivity of dreams and language also introduces a barrier of access. Both seem to offer access to something deeper: a past that is not constructed but inherited, not fully known but nonetheless recognized. At the same time, however, this access is neither stable nor universal. Because it depends on something as subjective as linguistic “taste” or the experience of dreams, it is never fully available but appears unevenly and under particular conditions. What emerges is not a continuous or complete reality, but one encountered in fragments, shaped not only by what survives, but by who is able, or willing, to perceive it.

We see language as a central part of Tolkien and understand it as a tool for building depth, but there is still this, often overshadowed, quiet function of language as a boundary. At the most obvious and lived level, language already separates those who can understand those that cannot. Yet, Tolkien complicates this by suggesting another less visible form of exclusivity: amongst those who understand, there is a distinct experience ties to each person. In The Lost Road, Alboin describes language as having a “flavour”, noting that “the languages he liked has a definite flavor”, (43) and that he is drawn in particular to the “Northern” one. This preference is not rational or fully explained, it is felt. It is not comprehension that matters but attraction. Tolkien reinforces this in Letter 163 to W.H. Auden, where he describes linguistic pleasure as something closer to appetite than intellect, “more like the appetite for a needed food” (312) and admits that Spanish is “the only Romance language that gives me a particular pleasure of which I am speaking of” (312). Language, then, is not neutral or equally available, it is experienced unevenly and shaped by what Tolkien calls “linguistic taste”, which “changes like everything else, as time goes on”, and which may even function as a “test of ancestry as blood-groups.” (313) The implication is that language carries with it a past that is not accessible to all, to responds to a language there seems to be the need to put effort to belong to it or be aligned with the history it carries. Tolkien, I believe unintentionally, leaves this subtle but quite significant distance, not everyone is equally positioned to access what a language preserves and therefore cannot all equally perceive the reality that emerges through it. So, language is not simply connecting us to the past but determining who is able to recognize it as such. 

Beyond language’s uneven form of access, The Lost Road also suggests that this access comes at a tradeoff. Alboin’s experience is marked beyond this attraction to certain “flavors”, but by a societal pressure away from them. Early on, he anticipates that “I shall dream tonight […] The Latin-mood will go,” (46) as if the two states cannot coexist, this contrast becomes sharper as he begins to advance within the structures of ordinary life. His father’s disapproval causes his response to the dreams as “Confound you dreams!” (46) seeming to be a rejection of the mode of experience that resists control and a shift toward discipline. This “Latin-mood”, then, comes to signify more than a preference but the societal expectation of orientation towards a certain language, and by means, a certain past. This shift is reinforced through Alboin’s increasing alignment with institutional life, he “had behaved himself moderately well at the university,” and the narrative retrospectively marks this period as coinciding with “the strange, sudden cessation of the Dreams.” (46) This again reassures us of the duality within society of abiding and learning languages (thereby histories) deemed worthy of society and those that we have true preference towards. Languages like Greek and Latin are presented in the Lost Roads as legitimized, having fragments worth unfolding. Thereby, access to these fragmentary, inherited forms of reality requires a certain openness, one that structured, forward-moving life tends to close off. The barrier, then, is not only linguistic or ancestral, but also self-impose. To move forward in one mode implicitly means to leave another behind. 

This leads us to the realm of dreams. Through Tolkien’s own imaginative material, we get the feeling that what is accessed is never whole. In Letter 257 to Colin Bailey, he keeps returning to what he calls “the dreadful dream of the ineluctable Wave,” something that “still occurs occasionally,” (486), that always ends in the same way of surrender without resolution. We see the themes of decadence constantly present in Tolkien’s worlds, and we can draw a line from the languages as a past that have left traces of a world that no longer pertains. Tolkien’s mythmaking comes from this repetition of something partial not necessarily grounded on a stable origin. This same structure extends into Middle earth itself. The world we encounter is not one coming into being, but one that has already passed its height. The movement toward Weathertop is marked by ruins, where past greatness is only available through what remains of it. Even spaces that seem to resist this decay, such as Bombadil’s house or later Lothlórien, do not offer permanence so much as interruption. They exist briefly outside time or power, but cannot be sustained, and the narrative moves on from them. What follows is not preservation, but this diminishment: the Shire returns altered and reduced, and the Grey Havens mark the point where what cannot be integrated into the present must leave it entirely.

What Tolkien ultimately reveals is not simply a hidden world, but a particular condition of access to it. Language distinguishes who can perceive it, social structures determine what is worth preserving, and dreams offer only partial returns of what has already been lost. Even the world itself, as it appears in The Lord of the Rings, does not present a complete reality, but one that persists through what remains after it. The past survives not as something fully recoverable, but as fragment, as echo, as repetition. What Tolkien’s work suggests is that there is more to reality than this, but it exists in forms we are not always prepared to sustain.

-LMN

Death and Decline

The passage of time is a defining characteristic of Tolkien’s Legendarium. As Arda grows older, a sense of diminishment is ever-present. From the destruction of Beleriand to the disappearance of the bloodlines of Numenor and the bending of the world, time brings a great sense of loss as the world changes. Knowing about Tolkien's recurring dream of a civilization-ending deluge, we can better understand the world that Tolkien has crafted in The Third Age as one existing in the remnants of a more noble and elegant past. The characters of the tales we love exist within their shadow. We notice its length through their perspective, whether it be the Fellowship of the Ring traveling through the long-deserted Kingdoms of Eregion (Hollin), Thorin’s Company observing the gloomy ruins of Arnor, or the bloodlines of Numenor dissipating within Gondor.  

If we were made to choose the race in Middle-earth that has the best grasp of the passage of time, we would undoubtedly pick the Elves. Their immortal nature allowed them to experience most of history, from their awakening under the stars to the end of the Third Age. However, their inability to accept the natural passage of time and their attempt to cling to it led to the creation of The Rings of Power, one of their greatest transgressions. Sauron plays on their desire to prevent the diminishment of their respective kingdoms, helping them craft rings that manipulate the flow of time within them.

A final chance at permanence is presented to Galadriel when Frodo offers her The One Ring. This gives her an opportunity to stop the oncoming decay of Lothlórien, as Frodo will either destroy the power of her current ring or, in failure, bring it under the control of Sauron. Ultimately, she forgoes her attachment to Middle-earth and accepts the inevitability of diminishment, “passing” her test and choosing to go into The West. Surrendering a chance at the ultimate power in a way redeems the earlier mistake of the Elves. Galadriel's decision represents the Elves' now fully putting their faith in the doom of the world and rejecting the opportunity to exert undue influence beyond their mandate, acknowledging that their time in Middle-Earth must come to an end and entrusting the fate of the world to men.  

Within the hearts of men, specifically Faramir and Boromir, we find a similar conflict to that faced by Galadriel and the Elves, as their reactions to dreams and the presence of The One Ring represent the dichotomy of choosing to remain faithful or falling short in the face of hopelessness. Boromir, influenced by his dream about Isildur's Bane, attempts to snatch The Ring from Frodo and use it as a weapon in hopes of saving Minas Tirith. In contrast, Faramir, who had the same dream, famously says he would not take it up even if  “Minas Tirith [was] falling in ruin and [he] alone could save her,” preferring to leave it “by the highway,” fearing it would turn him into a ruthless warlord, albeit a victorious one (Book IV, Ch, 5). His restraint allows Frodo and Sam to continue on their journey, resulting in the destruction of The Ring.

Faramir's temperance may be explained by another of his visions, the famous great wave over Numenor inherited from J.R.R. Tolkien himself and the characters from The Lost Road. When asked by Eowyn whether he fears an oncoming “Unescapable Darkness” similar to that which overtook Numenor in his dreams, Faramir responds that, despite reason telling him the end of days are near, he feels undeniable hope and joy in his heart, and that darkness will not endure (Book VI, Ch, 5). Faramir has put his belief in an ultimate resolution despite all that seems to be lost or deteriorated around him, refusing to let grief best him as it did his brother. Perhaps it is this strong faith in what is to come that protected him from The Ring’s seductive power, which plays on the desire to control one's own fate, which, for men, is death. Sauron succeeded in exploiting this disordered desire, sapping the faith of the men of Numenor in both The Lost Road and The Akallabeth (where it had been brewing before his arrival), promising them the ability to escape death, playing on their pride by offering a way to preserve their power through immortality. This ultimately delivers them straight to their fall and punishment. Similarly to Galadriel helping redeem the Elves, Faramir's decision not to take The One Ring, knowing it would lead to catastrophe, in a way, helps redeem not only his family but also the Men of Westernesse, of whom he is descended.  

Tolkien mentioned in his letter to Milton Waldman that while his stories don't explicitly include religion, they contain, in solution, “elements of moral and religious truth (or error)” (Letter 131). The ever-present feeling of decline and diminishment within the world feels like the aftermath of an Edenic fall from grace, with the plight of man growing with each passing century, taking them further and further away from the beautiful past. When viewed through the lens of decline, we can see why Tolkien wrote, in his letter to Herbert Schiro, that at the core of The Lord of the Rings is a story about “death and the desire for deathlessness” (Letter 203). To not accept death is to not have faith in or understand your role within the great tale, an attempt to influence the order of things out of an over-attachment to the world, which is what overcame both the Elves and Men of Numenor. Death is the fate of all men; its certainty stems from the inevitability of time. The decline within oneself matches that which permeates throughout Tolkien’s world. That decline creates a stark reality for the characters to face. The crushing nature of a long, drawn-out defeat tests their faith in the final victory and will to continue the struggle, and to do so by right means, even if they won't see it through, as Aragorn was prepared to do at The Black Gate or Theoden did at Pelennor Fields. The contrast of the resulting actions of the characters who remain steadfast and those who falter points to what Tolkien seems to have held to be an important truth: to maintain faith in ultimate victory in the face of despair and to play the right role suited to you during your allotted time.

-SDV

An Experiment with Dreams

 I believe that considering J.R.R. Tolkien as a reader of An Experiment with Time can help us understand why Tolkien’s world felt for him—and countless readers—real. 

Traditionally, one could understand this “reality” of the story due to its basis on semi-historical events. “The Lost Road” is based on the legend of the Lombards, and the characters of the story existed at some point; this is described in great length as a commentary by Christopher Tolkien (The Lost Road and Other Writings, “The Lost Road: Commentary on Chapters I and II). Similarly, Tolkien describes the “beginning of the legendarium” as “an attempt to reorganize some of the Kalevala” (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 163). One could say that basing his own legends on existing legends and basing his own language on multiple existing languages makes Tolkien’s world feel more real. Even though modern understandings of legends tend to refute their accuracy, many agree that the bases of these stories are real, which makes legends at least partially real. 

But this isn’t what Tolkien seems to think, because Tolkien does not see himself as a creator of this world, but instead as a finder of it, as someone who brings his findings to light. One could call Tolkien an archeologist, who finds a deep, hidden truth and makes it public for all to see. 

In The Notion Club Papers, we are introduced to a group that creates stories, presumably fiction, but we are told by one of the characters, Ramer, that his seemingly fictitious stories are, in fact, real. As Ramer says, “I’ve never gone anywhere…But I suppose I could say that I’ve been in places…Yes, I’ve been to several strange places” (Sauron Defeated: The End of the Third Age, The Notion Club Papers, Part One). Tolkien himself is able to make at least part of the The Notion Club Papers real, since the end of the novel predicts the “Great Storm” of 1987, although the date of the storm is off by a few months. So, one could say Tolkien’s dream of the storm was largely accurate—that it was a vision or a prediction. Dunne’s work in An Experiment with Time is described as an account of precognitive dreams, or dreams which predict the future—the end of the The Notion Club Papers could be considered a precognitive dream.

And these types of dreams are present in much of Tolkien lore. For instance, take Boromir’s inspiration to head to Rivendell, a dream in which he hears a voice saying, 

Seek for the Sword that was broken: 

In Imladris it dwells; 

There shall be counsels taken

Stronger than Morgul-spells.

There shall be shown a token

That Doom is near at hand,

For Isildur’s Bane shall waken,

And the Halfling forth shall stand. (The Lord of the Rings, Book II, Chapter 2)

It is Boromir’s belief in this dream that forces him to search for said sword, upon his father’s counsel going to meet Elrond at Rivendell. It is indeed true that the Sword that was broken is in Rivendell (Imladris); it is accurate, as well, to say that Isildur’s bane (the One Ring) wakens again, i.e. is exerting its power, on Sauron, Gollum, and Frodo alike. Now, take instead Frodo’s dream in Tom Bombadil’s house, where he dreams of Gandalf’s rescue (LotR, Book I, Chapter 7; Book II, Chapter 2); Frodo’s dream is one of the past—a past whose memory he doesn’t have. Tolkien’s account of dreams can appear to be visions, showing fractions of the past or future, in the case of Boromir even becoming a prophecy. In a way, Tolkien’s distinction of dreams or visions is blurred, since visions are shown to sometimes be inaccurate and dreams are shown to be sometimes extremely accurate. As Galadriel Notes, “Remember that the Mirror shows many things, and not all have yet come to pass. Some never come to be, unless those that behold the visions turn aside from their path to prevent them” (LotR, Book II, Chapter 7). 

I believe that Tolkien’s explanation of dreams in his works, as well as his following of An Experiment with Time, can help explain why Tolkien believes that his stories were “given” to him, that he simply recording something that “was already 'there', somewhere: not of 'inventing’” (Letters, 131). Tolkien has a dream (which he includes in his writings) which is also dreamt by his son (Letters, 180); it would make sense then to think of the dream as containing some innate truth, of seeing or accessing another world through these dreams, such as it is described in The Notion Club Papers. But why is it that only this dream should be true? If this one dream is shared by others, it is possible that some of his other dreams are as well. And, if Tolkien believes dreams are real in this instance and that these are real also for hobbits, then is it possible they are real also for his own dreams of the Middle-earth? That is, it is possible that, since Tolkien considers his “creation” to really be findings, that he then believes these findings are real and that he has some sort of special access to these findings, since he has access to the Middle-earth and its languages. 

It may be that only Tolkien had the original access to this world, that no one else had a dream quite like his before his writings were released into the world. But, while we might have been once shut off from this world, Tolkien has given us a portal to access the Middle-earth through his books, a sort of palantíri that shows us a world far away, but in the past, or a Mirror that shows us a vision of what has already passed.

- CB

Great Tales Never End: The Reality of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth

You would be hard-pressed to find a reader of Tolkien who does not describe Middle Earth as ‘alive,’ in some way or other. When we, as readers, travel through Middle Earth alongside the Fellowship, or Bilbo and the dwarves, we cannot help but feel a sense that we are beholding a real, definite world that exists outside of us – not merely as a fragment of our imagination. Indeed, the places we encounter in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (which doubtlessly are the reason so many of us fell in love with Tolkien’s work) seem to be steeped in history, the languages of the Elves and other species of Middle Earth work through internally consistent linguistic structures, even the geographies and biological compositions of various regions – from the Shire to Lorien to Rohan – are carefully examined.

Tolkien himself agreed with this ‘realness’. In fact, in a letter to Milton Waldman (about the matter of publishing The Lord of the Rings) from 1951, Tolkien claims that he has “the sense of recording what was already ‘there’, somewhere: not of ‘inventing’” (Letters, 204). However, this perspective does not suffice to explain the reality of his work. Goethe, in his dedication for Faust, Part One, addresses the characters he created as if they were real people:

Ye wavering shapes, again ye do enfold me,

As rest upon my troubled ye stole;

Shall I this time attempt to clasp, to hold ye?

Still for the fond illusion yearns my soul?

Ye press around! Come then, your captive hold me,

As upward from the vapoury mist ye roll;

Within my breast youth’s throbbing pulse is bounding,

Fann’d by the magic breath your march surrounding.

 

To Goethe, it too seemed as though his epic creation took on a life, a reality of its own. Mephistopheles and Faust do not act on Goethe’s whim, but in accordance with their own motives and reasons. In fact, one might even argue that all great novels possess some sort of ‘reality’ – perhaps in the character’s psychology, in the story’s plot, in the overarching themes. What, then, makes Middle Earth different? Tolkien’s sentiment, just like ours, reaches further than great characters. Answering this question wholly is almost impossible. There have been many posts that touch on language, geography, and many other elements (much more eloquently than I could), all of which contribute to this reality. Thus, I wanted to think about the ‘layering of stories’, as we discussed in class.

 Before even finishing The Fellowship of the Ring, we feel that there exists a lot more in this strange world than the tale we are reading. On the very first page, we feel the history Middle Earth is imbued with – The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are but sections in the larger Red Book of Westmarch (LotR, Prologue), and various pieces of information about Hobbits and the Shire are relayed to us in a manner almost resembling a textbook. Thus, we begin to understand larger structures, social, political, historical, geographic, that precede the story we are reading and in which our beloved heroes exist. This feeling is amplified by the fragments of other, older stories that Aragorn, Bilbo and other tell us of. By Weathertop (which itself carries history, as Aragorn explains to the hobbits), Aragorn tells the hobbits about “the tale of Tinúviel” (LotR bk. I, Ch. XI), an age-old love story of Beren and Lúthien; Gandalf’s account of the One Ring’s history (LotR bk. I, Ch. II) reveals that the scope of this struggle supersedes that of Frodo’s journey; Frodo exclaims that “We are forgetting our family history!” (LotR bk. I, Ch. XII) when the company travels past the stone trolls (which readers would recall from The Hobbit).

However, this history does not merely aesthetically exist to enhance the world of Lord of the Rings – the story is rather a manifestation of and continuation of a much grander tale, in which everything fits. Readers have an intuitive sense of this during Lord of the Rings, later made explicit in The Silmarillion – the War of the Ring is but a minute section of the cosmological story of Middle Earth and its creation. Sam makes this pivotal realization on the stairs of Cirith Ungol, exclaiming that they ultimately in the same tale as that of Beren: “Why, to think of it, we’re in the same tale still! It’s going on. Don’t the great tales never end?” (LotR bk. IV, Ch. VIII) Tolkien thus situates the story in a much larger history, in which greater forces are at play. Here again, the reader subconsciously feels that acute sense of reality, for we in our primary world are participants in grand workings that overshadow us ourselves.

Tolkien takes the reality of Middle Earth’s history and the cosmological forces driving it one step further. As a philologist and a scholar of medieval history, Tolkien is able to replicate much the same techniques we use for studying medieval history onto Middle Earth. Thus, the world is steeped in its own history – even the chronicle of the Lord of the Rings is given to us by way of Bilbo’s translations and transcriptions. This mirrors the transmission of our understanding of medieval history through manuscripts and the transcriptions thereof. The Red Book of Westmarch – a compilation of manuscripts about histories of the Shire and Middle Earth – itself is modelled on the Red Book of Hergest, a medieval manuscript Tolkien was familiar with. As we widen our vision from the adventures of The Hobbit to the cosmological scope of The Silmarillion, we see Tolkien’s vision: “a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story – the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths” (Letters, 203).

If we expand our vision even further, we find the root of Middle Earth’s reality. Although not allegorical, Middle Earth’s existential trajectory, from its creation to the later tales and happenings, is very familiar to us through Christian beliefs. We feel a reality that mirrors the path of our world, replete with its methods for history, its languages, its mythologies. This beckons the question – are we part of this tale? We know how Lord of the Rings ends, but Frodo reminds us: “No, they never end as tales, (…) but the people in them come, and go when their part’s ended.” (LotR bk. IV, Ch. VIII) Tolkien connects our primary world to the secondary world not through allegory, but by understanding the substance of reality. He understood how histories and stories intertwine, how they shape each other, how this creates the framework of reality. The great tales never end, and Middle Earth’s reality can be found between the lines of the stories that inhabit it, just as ours can be.

—EP