Why I Love Tolkien

They say you love most what you love first.

 This is certainly true of Tolkien.

 My mum was a great reader of stories. Growing up, every day and every night, she would pick up a book and transport my six siblings and I (yes, six) to some new, exciting, and mysterious world.

 The Hardy Boys, Biggles, Sherlock Holmes, Pankration, Rolf and the Vikings Bow… So great many novels. So many cherished memories.  

 Yet Tolkien was the one who truly stole my heart. My first true love.

 But he wasn’t just my first love—a mere boyhood phase or adolescent fad. My love for Tolkien has proved the most enduring. I have re-read The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion numerous times over every decade of my life. And every time, there is a delight. A comfort. An enthrallment. A yearning for adventure. Somehow, there is always something new and, most impactful of all—that deep, almost painful yearning of the soul for the eternal and the sublime. An experience of awe that is surely akin to C.S. Lewis’s description of Joy:

 “…distinct from pleasure in general but even from aesthetic pleasure. It must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing.” (Surprised by Joy)

 I’m sure most of you know what I mean. For those who don’t and find all this a bit tacky, I pity you.

 But why? What was it about The Hobbit and especially the LOTR that captured me so? It’s strange. When I was a boy, hearing and then reading these novels, I felt like I was a part of something really big and really important. I felt that I belonged to it. I sensed a depth and a meaning in these novels, though I couldn’t put them into words.

 How could I? I was just a boy.

 Well, I’m a man now, and though I’ve thought about this many times and tried explaining it a few, I have never attempted to put it into words.

 Until now…

 I first dived into Middle Earth when I was eleven.

 And though I was one of seven kids (yes, seven), I was profoundly lonely. I had been homeschooled my whole life and had moved house and bounced about the state of Western Australia every year or two since I was born. And though I loved the adventure of moving house, it meant saying goodbye to whatever friendships I had kindled.

 When I first read The Lord of the Rings, I had no friends.

 None.   

 Not one.

 How easily I can recall the loneliness. The ever-present heaviness of heart. The endless emptiness. Looking back, I’d say I was pretty depressed.

 If this all sounds a bit ‘boo-hoo, I had a rough childhood’, fair enough. I had many blessings growing up, and people definitely have it worse. But I’m just being honest and articulate how transportive and transformative LOTR was.

 So, there I am. Eleven years old, lonely, a lover of stories, and ripe for the picking.

 I whisked through the Fellowship. “What a fun ride!”

 I devoured The Two Towers. “How awesome!”

 But with the Return of the King, I was pulled into the novel. I felt one with it. I was there—with Frodo and Sam, crossing the bleak and black hellscape of Mordor, carrying my own heavy burden. I connected with Frodo and his seemingly hopeless situation, though I knew not why, only that I did.

 And there, in the dark heart of Mordor, beneath a mountain aptly called Doom:

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.”

Hope.

More than mere emotional resonance and validation, through Frodo and Sam and many other characters, Tolkien offered a compelling vision of a triumphant, transcendent Hope—an impossible Hope that endures despite the hardships of the present moment and the apparent bleakness of the future, affirming that Goodness, Truth, and Beauty are forever unassailable.

When I was eleven, Tolkien was with me.

I’m thirty-six now, and still, Tolkien remains—deep within my heart, instilling hope with his timeless words.

 C. S. Laundy

Clinical Psychologist & Fantasy Author