Tolkien and the Too Real Story

We readers of Tolkien are often struck with a strange sense of longing after completing his corpus. We have a thought akin to “All right, now I know the background of Middle Earth. But where is it?” The mythos of Tolkien’s narrative goes so deep that its expanse of history, language, character, and detailed descriptions leave the careful reader with a sense that this world really did exist and should still exist now. What shifts of tectonic plates, losses of languages, or eradication of races led to this world we have now? Beneath which mountain or ocean now lies the Shire?

Part of this sentiment Tolkien encouraged. In his forwards and appendices, he makes reference to the Red Book of Westmarch and the history contained therein. There is an intensity and a solidity to his fictional world that Tolkien never anticipated would be grasped. He was amazed at the fervor with which his works were received in America particularly. This was not just owing to the hippy embrasure of the books; rather, Americans took to the myth largely without the mental encumbrance of categorizing it as mere fancy. Perhaps the vestiges of deference the American has for the literature of the mother country encourages this acceptance.

Regardless of the cause, the Middle Earth stories enjoyed a phenomenal success in the English-speaking world and beyond. Could this be due simply to Tolkien’s beautiful writing? I think not. The true power of the tales of Middle Earth is that they encapsulate the good, the true, and the beautiful in ways seldom matched. Aragorn is not merely a king returned to his rightful throne. Frodo is not just a conflicted hero tormented by his burden. These characters evoke the deepest feelings of sympathy and admiration through the masterful framing of Tolkien’s writing.

We feel these characters must have lived. No passion thus described or courage so displayed can be bound only to the pages of a book. The virtues they arouse are in fact real. These characters, this world of Middle Earth, has a reality not diminished by its lack of instantiation. Because the ideals are real and dormant within us, we impute to the fictional world a substance. We are right to do so. To borrow a phrase from the scriptures, man does not live by bread alone, but by the pure imagination contemplated by the image bearers of God.