3) Accepting for the moment that in using these themes and images,
Tolkien may have been working out his response to his wartime experiences, why
does that make for a story that appeals to us? What's the parallel in our lives
or psyches to the experience of a young Edwardian English academic, transported
nightmarishly "there" to the trenches "and back again," that makes this story
resonate so?
Paul Fussell, in his seminal book The Great War and Modern Memory (and I
recommend it to anyone with the slightest interest in this discussion) shows
how World War I fundamentally altered the psyche of the modern era, through its
influence on literature, writing, and thinking in subsequent decades.
Remember that Tolkien's story is not about WWI. He uses WWI for imagery and
themes that resonated with him, and resonate still for his readers three
generations later, because they are burned into our cultural upbringing. His
appeal to us transcends any specific experience he personally lived through,
because he was a literary artist gifted with tremendous imagination.
Garth has found a topic that too few Tolkien fans know about, and so is worth
reading. But World War I, as far as imagery and experience is concerned, is
just one of the many sources Tolkien drew upon.
More than the battlefield's horrors, Garth's book focuses on the lived
experience of WWI that most Europeans suffered through -- the cumulative loss
of friends, comforts, health, money, years of ones life, engrained assumptions
about the world -- and the impact that had on a maturing poet's
sensibilities.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
squire online:
Footerama: "Tolkien would have LOVED it!" (improved!)
The Valaquenta discussion
