Review: A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and A Great War

 Joseph Loconte.  A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-1918. Nelson Books, 2015. 

I enjoyed and learned from this book. Loconte illuminates Lewis and Tolkien's bond of friendship and their shared experiences in WWI.  He shows us how their friendship and their military service impacted their fiction stories. 

During the first "war to end all wars," Lewis and Tolkien saw, and were surrounded by, horrific destruction of land, property and persons.  Most of their close friends did not survive.  They witnessed an inhumane disregard for life. 

Many men were shattered by the war while others turned to pacifism and/or atheism.  Lewis was originally an atheist while Tolkien retained his faith, though it was sorely bruised.  Eventually, Tolkien was instrumental in Lewis coming to faith in the crucified and risen Christ as Savior.

In their fiction, Lewis and Tolkien portrayed malevelant darkness and evil for the oppressive and consuming force that it is.  In the midst of the struggle against this crushing darkness, Tolkien created memorable characters who prevail through their courage, sacrifice, and friendship.  

Loconte observes that as veterans of the Great War, "Tolkien and Lewis chose to remember not only its horrors and sorrows: they wanted to recall the courage, sacrifice, and friendships that made it endurable.  Retrieving the medieval concept of the heroic quest - reinventing it for the modern mind - is one of the signal achievements of their work." (page 170)

These men possessed a Moral Imagination that made their fiction different and that provided hope in the midst of the heavy darkness.  Loconte describes their use of the Moral Imagination as "the proposition that every person is caught up in an epic contest between Light and Darkness.  In the worlds of Tolkien and Lewis, the choices of the weak matter as much as the those of the mighty. Here we are not left as orphans, for a force of Goodness stands ready to help." Tolkien has Gandalf the Grey.  Lewis has Aslan who will give his life to rescue Narnia from the evil that grips it. 

  As Loconte leads the reader into a deeper understanding of their fiction, he elucidates the American and British culture leading into WWI.  Progressives held the day.  In that time period, Progressive included the understanding that man was perfectible through machine or other manipulations.  Eugenics was heavily promoted by all manner of public commentators including the liberal side of the church.  

WWI demonstrated the abuse of the tools of progress.  

In Tolkien and Lewis' fiction, they work out the tension between Destiny and Free Will, amongst other things.  They rejected triumphalism and fatalism.  They believed that the individual has a moral responsibility in the face of daunting evil.  In support of his argument, Loconte quotes this memorable  conversation between Frodo and Gandalf. 

"Immediately after Gandalf explains to Frodo that Sauron the Great, the Dark Lord, has arisen again and returned to Mordor to pursue his wicked designs, Frodo shrinks back. 'I wish it need not have happened in my time,' he says.  'So do I, says Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times.  But that is not for them to decide.  All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.'" (Lord of the Rings, page 51; Loconte, page 150-151)

Loconte has most certainly provided us with a good read worthy of the time and effort.  Readers will come away with a better knowledge of the writers, their fiction, and their Sitz im Leben.