Tolkien Friendship Quotes

I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things, Sam.

But it does not seem that I can trust anyone,' said Frodo. Sam looked at him unhappily. 'It all depends on what you want,' put in Merry. 'You can trust us to stick with you through thick and thin--to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours--closer than you keep it yourself. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo.

A hunted man sometimes wearies of distrust and longs for friendship.

You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin – to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours – closer than you yourself keep it. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo. Anyway: there it is. We know most of what Gandalf has told you. We know a good deal about the ring. We are horribly afraid–but we are coming with you; or following you like hounds.

Still, I wonder if we shall ever be put into songs or tales. We're in one, of course, but I mean: put into words, you know, told by the fireside, or read out of a great big book with red and black letters, years and years afterwards. And people will say: "Let's hear about Frodo and the Ring!" And they will say: "Yes, that's one of my favourite stories. Frodo was very brave, wasn't he, dad?" "Yes, my boy, the famousest of the hobbits, and that's saying a lot." 'It's saying a lot too much,' said Frodo, and he laughed, a long clear laugh from his heart. Such a sound had not been heard in those places since Sauron came to Middle-earth. To Sam suddenly it seemed as if all the stones were listening and the tall rocks leaning over them. But Frodo did not heed them; he laughed again. 'Why, Sam,' he said, 'to hear you somehow makes me as merry as if the story was already written. But you've left out one of the chief characters: Samwise the stouthearted. "I want to hear more about Sam, dad. Why didn't they put in more of his talk, dad? That's what I like, it makes me laugh. And Frodo wouldn't have got far without Sam, would he, dad?"' 'Now, Mr. Frodo,' said Sam, 'you shouldn't make fun. I was serious.' 'So was I,' said Frodo, 'and so I am.

Those were happier days, when there was still close friendship at times between folk of different race, even between Dwarves and Elves.' It was not the fault of the Dwarves that the friendship waned,' said Gimli. I have not heard that it was the fault of the Elves,' said Legolas. I have heard both,' said Gandalf[.]

I'll get there, if I leave everything but my bones behind," said Sam. "And I'll carry Mr. Frodo up myself, if it breaks my back and heart.

I go now to the halls of waiting to sit beside my fathers, until the world is renewed. Since I leave now all gold and silver, and go where it is of little worth, I wish to part in friendship from you, and I would take back my words and deeds at the Gate. . . If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

Elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo

But I don't think I ought to leave my friends like this, after all we have gone through together.

You renounce your friendship even in the hour of our need ' he said. 'Yet you were glad indeed to receive our aid when you came at last to these shores fainthearted loiterers and well-nigh emptyhanded. In huts on the beaches would you be dwelling still had not the Noldor carved out your haven and toiled upon your walls.

At that moment there was a knock on the door, and Sam came in. He ran to Frodo and took his left hand, awkwardly and shyly. He stroked it gently and then he blushed and turned hastily away.

But Olwë answered: ‘We renounce no friendship. But it may be the part of a friend to rebuke a friend’s folly.

But it may be the hard part of a friend to rebuke a friend's folly.

If I stayed beside you, love would lead me, not wisdom

Both [Tolkien and C.S. Lewis] regarded twentieth-century modernization as a threat to human societies because they viewed the natural world as the handiwork of God and thus integral to human happiness.

But I must admit.' he added with a queer laugh, 'that I hoped you would take me for my own sake. A hunted man sometimes wearies of distrust and longs for friendship. But there, I believe my looks are against me.

If you turn Hell upside down, you’ll find ‘Made in Germany’ stamped on the bottom.

no person fully escapes the assumptions of his age.

Tolkien and Lewis were attracted to the genres of myth and romance not because they sought to escape the world, but because for them the real world had a mythic and heroic quality.

As a lord was held for the strength of his body and stoutness of heart. Much lore he learned, and loved wisdom but fortune followed him in few desires; oft wrong and awry what he wrought turned; what he loved he lost, what he longed for he won not; and full friendship he found not easily, nor was lightly loved for his looks were sad. He was gloom-hearted, and glad seldom for the sundering sorrow that filled his youth... (On Turin Turambar - The Children of Hurin)

Where are Haldad my father, and Haldad my brother? If the king of Doriath fears a friendship between Haleth and those who have devoured her kin, then the ways of the Eldar are strange to Men.

You speak as a friend of Túrin son of Húrin?’ said Thingol. ‘I was, but I have loved truth more and longer,’ Mablung answered.

You can't trust us to let you face trouble alone.

Part of the achievement of Tolkien and Lewis was to reintroduce into the popular imagination a Christian vision of hope in a world tortured by doubt and disillusionment.

Here, then, is one of the most striking effects of the Myth of Progress. Even war itself—a process inherently destructive to human life and human societies—was believed to have regenerative properties.

But that will leave no place for us!’ cried Pippin in dismay. ‘We don’t want to be left behind. We want to go with Frodo.’ ‘That is because you do not understand and cannot imagine what lies ahead,’ said Elrond. ‘Neither does Frodo,’ said Gandalf, unexpectedly supporting Pippin. “Nor do any of us see clearly. It is true that if these hobbits understood the danger, they would not dare to go. But they would still wish to go, or wish that they dared, and be shamed and unhappy. I think, Elrond, that in this matter it would be well to trust rather to their friendship than to great wisdom. Even if you chose for us an elf-lord, such as Glorfindel, he could not storm the Dark Tower, nor open the road to the Fire by the power that is in him.

Farewell, good thief,” he said. “I go now to the halls of waiting to sit beside my fathers, until the world is renewed. Since I leave now all gold and silver, and go where it is of little worth, I wish to part in friendship from you, and I would take back my words and deeds at the Gate.

Tolkien and Lewis offer an understanding of the human story that is both tragic and hopeful: they suggest that war is a symptom of the ruin and wreckage of human life, but that it points the way to a life restored and transformed by grace. In

I say, Théoden King: shall we have peace and friendship, you and I? It is ours to command." "We will have peace," said Théoden at last thickly and with an effort. Several of the Riders cried out gladly. Théoden held up his hand. "Yes, we will have peace," he said now in a clear voice, "we will have peace, when you and all your works have perished--and the works of your dark master to whom you would deliver us. You are a liar, Saruman, and a corrupter a men's hearts. You hold out your hand it to me, and I perceive only a finger of the claw of Mordor. Cruel and cold! Even if your war on me was just--as it was not, for were you ten times as wise you would have no right to rule me and mine for your own profit as you desired--even so, what will you say of your torches in Westfold and the children that lie dead there? And they hewed Háma's body before the gates of the Hornburg, after he was dead. When you hang from a gibbet at your window for the sport of your own crows, I will have peace with you and Orthanic. So much for the house of Eorl. A lesser son of great sires am I, but I do not need to lick your fingers. Turn elsewhither. But I fear your voice has lost its charm.

to shrink the circle of intimate community to the smallest possible circumference. This is the spoiling of faithful friendship.

Is everything sad going to come untrue?' asks Sam[wise Gamgee]. Here we find, beyond all imagination, the deepest source of hope for the human story. For when the King is revealed, 'there will be no more night.' The Shadow will finally and forever be lifted from the earth. The Great War will be won. This King, who brings strength and healing in His hands, will make everything sad come untrue.

Christians who like to write might do as a description of the genus. But the actual species shared more precise characteristics, including intellectual vivacity, love of death, conservative politics, memories of war, and a passion for beef, beer, and verbal battle.

How shall a man judge what to do in such times?” asks Éomer. Aragorn’s response is unequivocal: “As he ever has judged,” he says. “Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man’s part to discern them.

As a small token only of your friendship Sauron asks this,” he said: “ that you should find this thief,” such was his word, “and get from him, willing or no, a little ring, the least of rings, that once he stole. It is but a trifle that Sauron fancies, and an earnest of your good will.

We renounce no friendship. But it may be the part of a friend to rebuke a friend’s folly. And

As biographer George Sayer sums up the mood: “Most tutors encouraged their pupils above all to doubt.

Lewis spoke for almost every member when he said, "There is no sound I like better than adult male laughter.

Since I leave now all gold and silver, and go where it is of little worth, I wish to part in friendship from you, and I would take back my words and deeds at the Gate.

Tolkien would play a crucial role in Lewis’s conversion to Christianity, while Lewis would be the decisive voice in persuading Tolkien to complete The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Thus Huan spake, who never before had uttered words, and but twice more did speak in elven tongue again; 'Lady beloved, whom all Men, who Elfinesse, and whom all things with fur and fell and feathered wings should serve and love - arise! away! Put on thy cloak! Before the day comes over Nargothrond we fly to Northern perils, thou and I.' And ere he ceased he counsel wrought for achievement of the thing they sought. There Lúthien listened in amaze, and softly on Huan did she gaze. Her arms about his neck she cast - In friendship that to death should last.

in the following Appendices, especially A to D, see the note at the end of the Prologue. The section A III, Durin’s Folk, was probably derived from Gimli the Dwarf, who maintained his friendship

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, King Caspian tangles with slave traders who, with statistics and graphs, try to justify their operations as 'economic development.' Caspian wants the trade ended: 'But that would be putting the clock back,' gasped the governor. 'Have you no idea of progress, of development?' 'I have seen both in an egg,' said Caspian. 'We call it "Going Bad" in Narnia. This trade must stop.

it was said to me by Elrond Halfelven that I should find friendship upon the way, secret and unlooked for. Certainly I looked for no such friendship as you have shown. To have found it turns evil to great good.

advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill. But what would you? You have not told me all concerning yourself; and how then shall I choose better than you? But if you demand advice, I will for friendship’s sake give it.

Now is the hour come, Riders of the Mark, sons of Eorl! Foes and fire are before you, and your homes far behind. Yet, though you fight upon an alien field, the glory that you reap there shall be your own for ever. Oaths ye have taken: now fulfil them all, to lord and land and league of friendship!’ Men clashed spear upon shield.

Evil is a mutation, a parasite, an interloper. It is an ancient Darkness that fears and despises the Light. At war with the good, it is an immensely powerful force in human life and human societies. “If anguish were visible,” Tolkien once explained, “almost the whole of this benighted planet would be enveloped in a dense dark vapor, shrouded from the amazed vision of the heavens!”23

Safely on my way.' 'Safely!' said Sam. 'All alone and without me to help you? I couldn't have a borne it, it'd have been the death of me.' ' It would be the death of you to come with me, Sam,' said Frodo,' and I could not borne that.' 'Not as certain as being left behind,' said Sam. 'But I am going to Mordor.' 'I know that well enough, Mr. Frodo. Of course you are. And I'm coming with you.

And it is also said,' answered Frodo: 'Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.' 'Is it indeed?' laughed Gildor. 'Elves seldom give unguarded advice, for advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill. But what would you? You have not told me all concerning yourself; and how then shall I choose better than you? But if you demand advice, I will for friendship's sake give it. p84

Tolkien shares his Christian belief that evil represents a rejection of God and the joy and beauty and virtue that originate in him.22 Evil is a mutation, a parasite, an interloper. It is an ancient Darkness that fears and despises the Light. At war with the good, it is an immensely powerful force in human life and human societies. “If anguish were visible,” Tolkien once explained, “almost the whole of this benighted planet would be enveloped in a dense dark vapor, shrouded from the amazed vision of the heavens!”23

Tolkien began work on The Hobbit, a story set “long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was less noise and more green.”111 Its chief character is Bilbo Baggins, a small, half-elf creature known as a hobbit. He displays the virtues and vices of a middle-class Englishman. He has a comfortable life and shows no interest in adventures: “I can’t think what anybody sees in them.” Explained Tolkien: “The Hobbits are just rustic English people, made small in size because it reflects the generally small reach of their imagination—not the small reach of their courage or latent power.

Without friendship, the ring never would have made it, and Middle Earth would have been destroyed. Actually, we never would have imagined Middle Earth in the first place because, without friendship, Tolkien never would have finished writing the story. He said that it was only C. S. Lewis’s steady encouragement that kept him writing. Perhaps this is why the theme of friendship stands out so prominently in the story. In Tolkien’s day, authors only produced “fairy stories” (as they were called) for children, not adults. But Tolkien wrote for adults too. He eventually wrote The Lord of the Rings, but it was only because of his relationship with Lewis. Two years after Lewis died, Tolkien reflected on Lewis’s role in his life: The unpayable debt that I owe to him was not “influence” as it is ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement. He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my “stuff” could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more I should never have brought the L. of the R. to a conclusion.13 Lewis and Tolkien experienced true friendship. They knew that their experience was both wonderful and rare in their culture. This is why both men wrote to promote the joys of true friendship in their own day—Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings, and Lewis in The Four Loves.

Since I leave now all gold and silver, and go where it is of little worth, I wish to part in friendship from you, and I would take back my words and deeds at the Gate.” Bilbo knelt on one knee filled with sorrow. “Farewell, King under the Mountain!” he said. “This is a bitter adventure, if it must end so; and not a mountain of gold can amend it. Yet I am glad that I have shared in your perils – that has been more than any Baggins deserves.” “No! said Thorin. “There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

They listened to the last enchantments of the Middle Ages, heard the horns of Elfland, and made designs on the culture that our own age is only beginning fully to appreciate. They were philologists and philomyths: lovers of logos (the ordering power of words) and mythos (the regenerative power of story), with a nostalgia for things medieval and archaic and a distrust of technological innovation that never decayed into the merely antiquarian. Out of the texts they studied and the tales they read, they forged new ways to convey old themes—sin and salvation, despair and hope, friendship and loss, fate and free will—in a time of war, environmental degradation, and social change.

Great War: On upward curve and easily, for them both maid and man And beast and tree and spirit in the green earth could thrive. But now one age is ending, and God calls home the stars And looses the wheel of the ages and sends it spinning back Amid the death of nations, and points a downward track, And madness is come over us and great and little wars.71

War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all,” he explains. “But I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.

For let us make no mistake. All that we fear from all the kinds of adversity, severally, is collected together in the life of a soldier on active service. Like sickness, it threatens pain and death. Like poverty, it threatens ill lodging, cold, heat, thirst, and hunger. Like slavery, it threatens toil, humiliation, injustice, and arbitrary rule. Like exile, it separates you from all you love.

As Lewis wrote, many years after his wartime service: For let us make no mistake. All that we fear from all the kinds of adversity, severally, is collected together in the life of a soldier on active service. Like sickness, it threatens pain and death. Like poverty, it threatens ill lodging, cold, heat, thirst, and hunger. Like slavery, it threatens toil, humiliation, injustice, and arbitrary rule. Like exile, it separates you from all you love.87

I have always been impressed that we are here, surviving, because of the indomitable courage of quite small people against impossible odds.

You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher or the Christian by staring into his eyes as if he were your mistress: better to fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him.104

As we will see, it is their moral imagination that exerts a unique power: the proposition that every person is caught up in an epic contest between Light and Darkness.

If they won’t write the kind of books we want to read,” Lewis told his friend, “we shall have to write them ourselves.”110

MacDonald hinted at one of his objectives in using the genre of the fairy tale. “The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is—not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself.

The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually—their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t.

It is one thing to join a struggle against evil in the world, but it is another thing to persevere—to continue to resist the dark temptations inherent in the contest.

In Frodo we are meant to see ourselves: our weaknesses, our rationalizations, and our lack of resolve in combatting evil. But we also get a glimpse into a life of courage and perseverance in the ongoing struggle: you resisted to the last. Tolkien’s story reminds us that evil is a sleepless force in human lives, and that the war against it demands constant vigilance. After

As in Tolkien’s trilogy, Lewis’s Narnia series depicts war not as an opportunity for martial glory, but as a grim necessity. When victories are won, there is a striking lack of triumphalism; we find instead amazement and gratitude for surviving the encounter. Battle scenes, though never lengthy, are described with surprising realism.

Retrieving the medieval concept of the heroic quest—reinventing it for the modern mind—is one of the signal achievements of their work. Whether in epics such as Beowulf or romances like Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, Tolkien and Lewis both found in medieval literature a set of motifs and ideals worth recalling.81

Emperor Wilhelm II, who also served as supreme bishop of the Prussian Church, delivered this message to his troops at the outbreak of war: “Remember that the German people are the chosen of God. On me, on me as German Emperor, the Spirit of God has descended. I am His weapon. His sword and His visor.

Without an equal growth of Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, Science herself may destroy all that makes life majestic and tolerable,” he wrote. “There never was a time when the inherent virtue of human beings required more strong and confident expression in daily life.

Galton’s gospel of eugenics found fertile soil in Britain, in the intellectual salons of Europe, and in the United States. Beginning in the early years of the twentieth century, eugenics scientists called for programs to manipulate human reproduction. They advocated for laws to segregate the so-called feebleminded into state colonies, to live out their lives in celibacy. They led the drive to restrict immigration from countries whose citizens might pollute their national gene pools. And they supported sterilization laws aimed at men and women whose “germplasm” threatened the eugenic vitality of the nation.

Since they were to come in the days of the power of Melkor. Aule made the Dwarves strong to endure. Therefore they are stone-hard, stubborn, fast in friendship and in enmity, and they suffer toil and hunger and hurt of body more hardily than all other speaking peoples; and they live long, far beyond the span of Men, yet not for ever.

Gwindor son of Guilin was wounded to the death. But Turin came to his aid, and all fled before him; and he bore Gwindor out of the rout, and escaping into a wood there laid him on the grass. The Gwindor said to Turin: 'Let bearing pay for bearing! But ill-fated was mine, and vain is thine; for my body is marred beyond healing, and I must leave Middle-earth. And thoughI love thee, son of Hurin, yet I rue the day that I took thee from the Orcs. But for they prowess and thy pride, still I should have love life and Nargothrond should yet stand a while. Now if thou love me, leave me! Haste thee to Nargothrond, and save Finduilas. And this last I say to thee: she alone stands between thee and thy doom. If thou fail her, it shall not fail to find thee. Farewell!

Food and drink and walking and conversation and friendship—those have to be five of the greatest things in the world.

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.” — Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

There Lúthien listened in amaze, and softly on Huan did she gaze. Her arms about his neck she cast— in friendship that to death should last.

But Hobbits have never, in fact, studied magic of any kind, and their elusiveness is due solely to a professional skill that heredity and practice, and a close friendship with the earth, have rendered

Now is the hour come, Riders of the Mark, sons of Eorl! Foes and fire are before you, and your homes far behind. Yet, though you fight upon an alien field, the glory that you reap there shall be your own for ever. Oaths ye have taken: now fulfil them all, to lord and land and league of friendship!’ Men clashed spear upon shield.

The war against evil is the moral landscape of our mortal lives: a journey of souls degraded or redeemed, dragged into the Darkness of self or led into the Light of grace.

Given the contemporary infatuation with “virtual” relationships, Tolkien and Lewis’s achievement not only remains but continues to grow in stature. Like few other writers over the past century, they show us what friendship can look like when it reaches for a high purpose and is watered by the streams of sacrifice, loyalty, and love.

Then all listened while Elrond in his clear voice spoke of Sauron and the Rings of Power, and their forging in the Second Age of the world long ago. A part of his tale was known to some there, but the full tale to none, and many eyes were turned to Elrond in fear and wonder as he told of the Elven-smiths of Eregion and their friendship with Moria, and their eagerness for knowledge, by which Sauron ensnared them. For in that time he was not yet evil to behold, and they received his aid and grew mighty in craft, whereas he learned all their secrets, and betrayed them, and forged secretly in the Mountain of Fire the One Ring to be their master. But Celebrimbor was aware of him, and hid the Three which he had made; and there was war, and the land was laid waste, and the gate of Moria was shut.

Beginning in 1907, states such as Indiana passed sterilization laws “to prevent procreation of confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles and rapists.

How far back his treachery goes, who can guess?’ said Gandalf. ‘He was not always evil. Once I do not doubt that he was the friend of Rohan; and even when his heart grew colder, he found you useful still. But for long now he has plotted your ruin, wearing the mask of friendship, until he was ready. In those years Wormtongue’s task was easy, and all that you did was swiftly known in Isengard; for your land was open, and strangers came and went. And ever Wormtongue’s whispering was in your ears, poisoning your thought, chilling your heart, weakening your limbs, while others watched and could do nothing, for your will was in his keeping.

This freedom to either fulfill or evade the Calling on one’s life is central to Tolkien’s work—and to his understanding of the human condition.

Writing in the 1940s, Tolkien lamented 'the tragedy and despair of all machinery laid bare.' The tragedy, as he saw it, was the attempt to use technology to actualize our desires and increase our power over the world around us--all of which leaves us unsatisfied. Tolkien attached a spiritual significance to the problem: 'And in addition to this fundamental disability of a creature, is added the Fall, which makes our devices not only fail of their desire but turn to new and horrible evil.

In Middle Earth a motley crew assembles to save the world as we know it. Four hobbits, two men, a dwaft, an elf, and a wizard, too. They rambled to destroy the ring in the mountains of Mordor. Now it is you time. Dare you join this fellowship? The rules are simple. Twelve more clues will be hidden. One for each month. You have a month to solve each riddle. Plenty of time. On the full moon of each month, the next clue will be hidden. Seek it. Leave each where you found it for the next traveler. Where does this quest lead? What is the endgame? Follow and you shall find out. You must be wise, learned, disciplined, and above all, not a FROG. If you agree to join this fellowship, proceed with your first clue: MY WORDS are legend. Legends are HISTORY, My field of study. ONE BOOK only in your shire. With your strength, the book has been found, and now you must climb to the Scholar's Shrine. Four travelers begin this talle: Hlaf Elf, Troll, Halfling, and Thief. To make it to the end, you will need to build a motley crew. Find a wizard to see you through. You walk a long and winding path to find your next clue. Shall the Half Elf teache you his songs to pass the time? Perhaps that will draw an elf lord into your presence. The road is long, and the leaves do change color. You have demonstrated your strength, and your intelligence: now you must go boldly into battle. Be wise with your strategy: though it my seem like a game, there is more to the story.

It is… easy to see why Authority frowns on Friendship. Every real Friendship is a sort of secession, even a rebellion… Hence if our masters… ever succeed in producing a world where all are Companions and none are Friends, they will have removed certain dangers, and will also have taken from us what is almost our strongest safeguard against complete servitude.   C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

He discovers that God is the very source of our existence. As Lewis will put it: "He is the opaque centre of all existences, the thing that simply and entirely is, the fountain of facthood.

Though written for children, the same might be said of Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia. There is an ultimate triumph of light over darkness in the story, but not without bloodshed, terrible loss, and the fear of death. “Take my advice,” says Mr. Beaver, “whenever you meet anything that’s going to be human and isn’t yet, or used to be human once and isn’t now, or ought to be human and isn’t, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet.

As Tolkien fought alongside these soldiers, he witnessed again and again their remarkable determination under fire. Indeed, as he later acknowledged, one of the great heroic figures in The Lord of the Rings is based on his firsthand knowledge of the men in the trenches of the Great War: “My ‘Sam Gamgee’ is indeed a reflection of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself.

We know from the experience of the last twenty years,” wrote Lewis in 1944, “that a terrified and angry pacifism is one of the roads that lead to war.”28 Tolkien decried “the utter stupid waste of war,” yet admitted “it will be necessary to face it in an evil world.”29 Their recourse was to draw us back to the heroic tradition: a mode of thought tempered by the realities of combat and fortified by belief in a God of justice and mercy. Perhaps the character of Faramir, the Captain of Gondor in The Lord of the Rings, expresses it best.30 He possesses humility as well as great courage—a warrior with a “grave tenderness in his eyes”—who takes no delight in the prospect of battle. As such, he conveys a message that bears repeating at the present moment, in a world that is no stranger to the sorrows and ravages of war. “War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all,” he explains. “But I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”31

By the start of the twentieth century, attitudes about war and what it could accomplish were bound up with a singular, overarching idea. Let’s call it “The Myth of Progress.” Perhaps the most widely held view in the years leading up to the Great War was that Western civilization was marching inexorably forward, that humanity itself was maturing, evolving, advancing—that new vistas of political, cultural, and spiritual achievement were within reach. The Renaissance message of Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486), in which the Creator extols mankind’s fearsome possibilities, fairly captures the mood: “We have made you a creature neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine.

Shire “is based on rural England and not any other country in the world.”15 The house of his famous hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, takes its name—“Bag End”—from his aunt’s farm in Worcestershire. “I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size),” he admitted. “I like gardens, trees and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking.

they are no more than slaves in his realm. Thus we see the use of genetic engineering—the creation of robotic orcs—to extend the dictatorship of Mordor throughout the world. At its heart, the War of the Ring is a struggle to preserve the essential freedom and humanity of the inhabitants of Middle-earth. “It would be a grievous blow to the world,” says Gandalf the Grey, “if the Dark Power overcame the Shire; if all your kind . . . became enslaved.

millions. As Tolkien wrote in Mythopoeia: “I will not walk with your progressive apes / erect and sapient. Before them gapes / the dark abyss to which their progress tends.”52 Likewise, Lewis warned that the final stage of this process would arrive when human beings achieved full mastery over themselves. Eugenics, prenatal conditioning, education, and psychology would all play a part in “the abolition of man,” the surrender of our essential humanity. “For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please.

Oliver Wendell Holmes was an apostle for the new science, having authored the 1927 Supreme Court opinion upholding Virginia’s sterilization law. “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind,” he wrote. “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”56

Church, delivered this message to his troops at the outbreak of war: “Remember that the German people are the chosen of God. On me, on me as German Emperor, the Spirit of God has descended. I am His weapon. His sword and His visor. . . . Death to cowards and unbelievers!

no creatures are born for captivity, and none have a birthright to oppress others.

In The Lord of the Rings, the followers of Sauron, the Dark Lord, serve him out of fear; they are no more than slaves in his realm. Thus we see the use of genetic engineering—the creation of robotic orcs—to extend the dictatorship of Mordor throughout the world. At its heart, the War of the Ring is a struggle to preserve the essential freedom and humanity of the inhabitants of Middle-earth.

Indeed Bilbo found he had lost more than spoons—he had lost his reputation. It is true that for ever after he remained an elf-friend, and had the honour of dwarves, wizards, and all such folk as ever passed that way; but he was no longer quite respectable. He was in fact held by all the hobbits of the neighbourhood to be ‘queer’—except by his nephews and nieces on the Took side, but even they were not encouraged in their friendship by their elders. I