Heren Istarion

Tolkien's Perfect World
by Anthony S Burdge

Those of us familiar with Professor Tolkien’s life know he lived through some very difficult time: his parents’ passing, his serving in World War I, including the Battle of Somme, and witnessing the rise and fall of Hitler. With this in mind, we can study how these events influenced his work. ”, His son and heir to his estate, Christopher on the PBS’ program “A Portrait of JRR Tolkien” said that his father had a sort of melancholy view of the world. I would like to bring to light some of Tolkien’s thoughts and views of the world, and speculate on what I think his ideal world would be.

From the trade paperback version of the Letters of JRR Tolkien, compiled by Humphrey Carpenter, a portion of letter number 64, pg. 76 reads:

“I sometimes feel appalled at the thought of the sum total of human misery all over the world at the present moment: the millions parted, fretting, wasting in unprofitable days-quite apart from the torture, pain, death, bereavement, injustice. If anguish were visible, almost the whole of this benighted planet would be enveloped in a dense dark vapour, shrouded from the amazed vision of the heavens! And the products of it all will be mainly evil, historically considered.”

Now the Professor continues about man’s part in this, and his faith and beliefs to strengthen against the evils of the world. In my pondering of these words from the Professor, I wondered how Tolkien expressed his feelings about living in a world clouded by such a “shadow” in his work. The following passage answered this for me. From Fellowship of the Ring ( Ballantine paperback 1983,

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater."

These words mirror Tolkien’s in letter 64, then Haldir speaks of Lorien,

“…evil had been seen and heard there, sorrow had been known; the Elves feared and distrusted the world outside…but on the land of Lorien now shadow lay.”

Now this makes me think that perhaps Middle Earth, most especially Lorien, was the Professor’s refuge from the world outside. We all know of his dedication to its perfection, the painstaking detail that went into this world and its history. If in fact the lands of Middle-Earth were his ideal refuges, then surely he strove to make them as perfect as possible, for others to take the same refuge. Clearly he has succeeded; readers turn to Middle-Earth for a home away from home, to relieve their stresses of our own world. The lands of Middle-Earth do contain their own shadow but it is there that we can learn how to deal with our own.