#272： C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Myth of Progress
Episode Stats
Summary
The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia are filled with epic battles between the forces of good and evil. But many people don t realize that the author of these works, JR. R. Tolekien and C.S. Lewis, had firsthand experience with the war themselves. Both fought the bleak trenches of World War I, and both were dramatically shaped by that experience in a way that would influence their later work. My guest today explores the history of Tolekenes and Lewis s battlefield experience and how it influenced their viewpoints and writing careers.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well both the
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lord of the rings and the chronicles of narnia are filled with epic battles between the forces
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of good and evil what many people don't realize that the author of these two works jr r tolkien
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and c.s lewis had firsthand experience with the war themselves both fought the bleak trenches of
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world war one and both were dramatically shaped by that experience in a way that would influence
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their later work my guest today explores the history of tolkien's and lewis's battlefield
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experience and how it influenced their viewpoints and writing careers his name is joseph lucanti
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he's a professor of history at king's college and the author of a hobbit a wardrobe and the great war
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how jr tolkien and cus lewis rediscovered faith friendship and heroism in the cataclysm of 1914
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and 1918 on today's show joseph and i discuss what c.s lewis called the myth of progress
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that swept the western world leading up the first world and why it contributed the war's catastrophic
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damage and how the myth shaped both lewis's and tolkien's view about good evil and warfare
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we then get into detail about tolkien's and lewis battlefield experience and how it inspired
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specific characters and scenes in the respective works and we end our conversation about how the
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fantasy work of these writers carved a middle path between cynicism and unbridled optimism while
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simultaneously showing readers that even the lowliest of individuals can play a decisive
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role in the great adventure of life if you're a fan of lord of the rings or the chronicles of narnia
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you don't want to miss this episode after the show is over check out the show notes at aom.is
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joseph lucanti welcome to the show well thanks for having me brett it's great to be with you
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so you wrote a book called a hobbit a wardrobe and a great war and it's all about c.s lewis and
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j.r.r tolkien's uh experience in the trenches of world war one and how it influenced their lives and
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later on their writing i'm curious what prompted you to look at their war experience specifically
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to see how that influenced their writing in the chronicles of narnia and the lord of the ring series
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yeah well there are several things brett i i teach uh western civilization and american foreign policy
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at the king's college in new york city and having to teach the first world war year after year the
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more you read and think about that conflict the more you realize how cataclysmic it really was
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for the west for the europeans for the united states really for the world and then when i picked
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up a wonderful biography of of tolkien uh several years ago by uh a carpenter uh and i realized that
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tolkien had fought in the first world war i knew lewis had fought in that conflict i didn't realize
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tolkien had fought as well so finally the light goes on in my head i think well wait a minute
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we've got tolkien and lewis who both survived the trenches of world war one they go to oxford
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they meet there they become great friends and then both of them go on to write these epic stories
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stories of heroism sacrifice valor where war is really at the center of both their stories
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so you just begin to wonder how might the experience the furnace of combat in the first world war how
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might that have influenced their literary imagination and that's really what the book is about and how
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much do we know about their war experience do they have like do they write diaries i mean what
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sources did you use to research the book you know there have been a couple of good uh accounts john
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garth has a very good account of tolkien's war experience really taking from beginning to end
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uh his friendships uh his work there as a second lieutenant as a signals officer there uh at the
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soam uh lewis was probably better in some ways at keeping a diary although uh you know both these men
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were pretty careful about of course i say modest about uh drawing too much attention to themselves and
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their war experiences lewis's autobiography uh surprised by joy is where he probably tells us
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the most about his war experience so a combination of their letters uh some very good biographies of
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those men uh and then of course looking in their works and trying to discern how might that war of
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experience literally have worked its way into their into their great epic stories so the one thing i
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loved most about your book is that you do such a great job of providing the cultural backdrop of
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what was going on in the west in europe in the united states uh before world war one and um particularly
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you talk about this idea of the myth of progress um what was that that myth what what entailed the myth
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of progress yeah this is kind of the uh the historian's task here brett is to try to put
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these authors in their historical context and i think if there's one narrative that is shaping the
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mind of western civilization particularly the europeans but also the americans uh on the eve of the
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outbreak there of of the first world war it's this myth of progress that's an expression i borrow
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from c.s lewis himself this idea that not not just in a technological sense or in a scientific sense
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or in an industrial sense is mankind progressing that all that is true according to people living
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there at the turn of the 20th century we're advancing technologically scientifically but also we seem
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to be advancing morally and even spiritually that there's this unstoppable train of progress
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uh everything is getting better in every way every day and that that mood that psychological
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outlook is so strong it really infects virtually every discipline the academy popular culture the
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scientific community and even the churches the idea that mankind himself is slowly ripening toward
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perfection and that's part of what makes the war the first world war the most devastating war that
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the west had ever experienced that's part of what makes it so disillusioning to such to a generation
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of men and women and why that then becomes so important to token the lewis so i mean how did it
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manifest this myth of progress manifest itself in the academy or particularly or the church let's talk
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about the church because like you know lewis and tolkien um their faith is really um uh woven into
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their works how did this idea the myth of progress affect uh christianity it's a terrific question it's a big
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question i think on the more on the more liberal side of the churches and um uh it certainly affects the
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conservative churches as well but on the more liberal side i think the way this myth of progress
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influenced the churches is was at several levels one level was that um even war itself uh became seen
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as something that could be redemptive and cleansing so if you look at the sermons uh once the war begins
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you look at those sermons during the first world war and this is true across the board in europe and in the
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united states you have so many preachers expecting a kind of spiritual revival renewal a transformation
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of society it'll be the purging of of all kind of unpleasantness autocracies will will fall to the
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wayside democracy is the wave of the future and you really see this coming from the pulpits and and many
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ministers not so much the so much the guys in the trenches but many ministers uh transformed this
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conflict into kind of a holy crusade uh and and that i think is is part of the uh the legacy of the myth
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of progress that even war itself which think about it it is an inherently destructive enterprise you're
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destroying things you're destroying human life but even the war could be seen uh as a an agent of
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progress by by by the church uh by our politicians by our social thinkers really a remarkable thing
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uh to be occurring uh at the outset of war and i think it's interesting because it was christians
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fighting christians right these are these are europe you know british fighting germans americans fighting
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germans and you know so it was like everyone thought they were on the right side but they were like
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saying they're on the same side at the same time that's exactly right everyone believes that god is on
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their side and this again is part of what makes the aftermath of the war so important especially for
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tolkien and lewis what happens then in the aftermath you've had this build-up that the war is going to
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it's going to be a short war it's a war it's a war to end all wars it's a war to make the world safe for
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democracy none of that happens it becomes the most devastating and lethal conflict in history
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and so in the aftermath of that with all of these promises going into it that the sense of
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disillusionment and gloom and then the the rejection of liberal democracy the rejection of
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christianity which had been so associated with this war these alleged christian nations engaged in a
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sort of massive global suicide pact and so the the mood of gloom and cynicism and doubt is so strong
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it's such a strong current in the 1920s and 30s i think that helps us to understand really the
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achievement of tolkien and lewis that they are not swept up in that in that mood of gloom and disillusionment
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yeah we'll talk about that in a bit but i thought was interesting your book is you lay out this myth
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of progress and how everyone's getting swept up by it but it seems like both lewis and tolkien were
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immune from it um why was that why didn't they buy into the myth of progress well it's a it's a
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terrific question i think that uh lewis admits and i'll quote here if i could uh brett from the from
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the book here from lewis he says i grew up believing in this myth and i have felt i still feel it's almost
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perfect grandeur it is one of the most moving and satisfying world dramas which has ever been
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imagined it was incredibly powerful lewis as a young atheist they're going into the war he goes
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into the war as an atheist he comes out uh an atheist and he is caught up in that myth up to a
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point certainly i think the the realism of the trenches the mortars the machine guns uh the flame
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throwers the chemical gas the barbed wire the human devastation that sobered a lot of people
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about that myth i don't think uh tolkien was as caught up in it as as lewis was tolkien went into
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that war as a believing catholic and so he has a pretty good sense of the fall of man the doctrine
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of sin the doctrine of the fall and i i think that helps to restrain tolkien because of his his catholic
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christian faith it helps to restrain him from being pulled into this myth of progress though lewis
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though is very much as he goes into the war i think he's he has that uh idea going in it it gets
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chastened and then of course he will have a spiritual journey uh throughout the 1920s and 1930s as he meets
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tolkien and other christians there at oxford i thought was interesting about interesting about tolkien is
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that even before the war uh he had a very and i wouldn't say he wasn't a luddite uh per se but like
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he had an appreciation for creation for nature and he saw um this mechanization as sort of a uh
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i don't know an apostasy i guess would be the right word of like what god had intended for man
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yeah that's a great point uh tolkien is growing up in birmingham which becomes a real industrial hub
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uh there in england at the turn of the century and he like lewis you know these are men who
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they they go on to become medieval scholars professors of english literature uh and there's
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something about that simpler life closer to the earth that is so appealing to both of them and of
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course you see it in both their works just one example you know the lord of the rings the the last
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march of the ents well what is that these tree creatures who are rebelling against the the abuse of
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technology and and weaponry the destruction of the earth those men experienced the destruction of the
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earth uh in the first world war i mean the iconic images of the war trees laid bare because of the
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mortar fire the machine gun fire so they they experienced that that assault on nature at a first
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hand level and i think their rebellion against that that technology the abuse of technology not only
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against man but against nature that finds its way in both their works doesn't it yeah it does so at
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what point did lewis and tolkien get into the trenches did they were they one of the ones that
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just volunteered right away or did they were they reluctant soldiers these were reluctant soldiers
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these neither of them were holy warriors uh going into the first world war i think you know by the
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time uh tolkien is ready to enlist in 1916 remember the war is on for two years already britain has
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about i don't know at least a million men on the continent of europe at least 200 000 british soldiers
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have already been killed by 1916 so when he leaves he writes in his journal parting from my wife was like
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a death because even even british uh officers were being were being killed by the dozens every week and
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every month he didn't think he was going to come back alive when he departs there in june of 1916
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and he goes right to the front and tolkien will become part of the battle of the somme which to
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this day is the july 1st the opening day of the battle of the somme there in france it is the single
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bloodiest day in british history uh close to 20 000 men perished in that battle alone tolkien will
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survive that battle but he'll lose as he says almost all of his closest friends perished in the first
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world war yeah it seems like tolkien kind of lucked out he caught uh trench fever and he was a ship
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back to england and after that point all of his friends and comrades died yes a severe bout of trench
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fever will take him out of the war uh by 1918 uh now for lewis uh he he's he's a little bit uh younger
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than tolkien he goes into that war uh in 1917 so even more killing more bloodshed and again a reluctant
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uh a guy who who is who enlists by 1916 or so brit britain has instituted the draft he enlists
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he arrives on the front on his 19th birthday imagine being a 19 year old man with your whole future in
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front of you all these ambitions for an academic life a peaceful academic life have to put on be put
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on hold uh and he goes in as an officer as well lewis will be injured a mortar shell will go off close
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to him kills the sergeant standing close by lewis is injured in three places by shrapnel and in a sense
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he gets the best possible injury because it's the kind of injury that will not be uh life debilitating
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but it will take him out of the war for the remainder of the war uh and when you read his
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letters there the sense of relief and and sheer joy at now escaping the trenches it's unmistakable and
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it's it's so sobering uh and it will change the course of his life and why were lewis and tolkien
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both reluctant warriors i mean what was the how was their attitude um about war and warfare in general
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uh different from this holy war attitude that most europeans and americans had you know that's a great
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question brett and uh it's a little hard for me to unpack all of it but based on their letters
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uh at the time and then their correspondence looking back on it later i think for different
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reasons as you as you piece together their letters at the time and then their correspondence
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later on reflecting on that war uh they were either not uh of age lewis was not of age in 1914
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to have enlisted uh tolkien is is involved in his academic career begins his academic career
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uh and i think that the the bloodshed the sheer bloodshed in the first year of the war which
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surprised everybody remember a lot of men went off to war jubilant exuberant at the prospect of war
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but but a year into the thing uh all of the allied forces and the axis powers they have rushed to
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stalemate and now we're getting back the reality of the war even with all the propaganda the the the
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the suffering and the horror of the trenches those stories firsthand stories are being delivered back to
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the home front uh and tolkien and lewis are very aware that they have information now that men in
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1914 did not have that's part of the reason i think that's part of the reason okay so i mean what big
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picture themes did both tolkien and lewis develop while they were in the trenches that would later emerge
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in their respective works well i guess one of the most obvious of course and perhaps the most surprising
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given the the mood of their age it is heroism it's the idea of valor a sacrifice for a noble cause
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that some wars will be necessary some wars are just even as we fight them perhaps in an unjust way
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uh they can have a a noble decent and humane purpose uh and outcome and that becomes one of the themes for
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both these men in a way that is really surprising because there was so much anti-war literature
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anti-war memoirs novels poetry i mean scores and scores of books and and and poetry uh that came
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out in the 1920s and 1930s you know you think of of novels like all quiet on the western front uh goodbye
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to all of that uh t.s elliott the wasteland i mean these these are fiercely anti-war uh novels and and
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and poetry and literature and tolkien and lewis resist that they are not going to let go of this
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idea of heroism and sacrifice for a noble cause and i thought it was interesting too you talk about
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the idea of the hobbit right uh tolkien said kind of the the soldiers in britain like he they were the
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inspiration for the hobbits yeah that's exactly right brett and that was one of the things that
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convinced me once i read that once i discovered that in in tolkien's work in his own private letters
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and then i knew this is a book that somebody had to write and maybe i should write it because
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as as what what i knew about tolkien i and you know loving the hobbit loving uh the lord of the
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rings i had no idea that tolkien uh based his hobbit the creature of the hobbit sam gamgee and frodo
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on the soldiers that he knew as he says it explicitly in one of his letters my sam gamgee uh is is based
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on the on the batman the people who served and helped uh the officers the batman and the soldiers
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in the trenches that i knew in the first world war and considered as so far superior to myself
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so what he saw under fire was the resilience and the courage the kind of stubborn bravery and loyalty
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of the ordinary english soldier and the british expeditionary force 1914 15 16 right through the war
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it was a remarkable fighting force uh and tolkien got to experience that up close and it impressed
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him deeply and i think they're very much the same for c.s lewis they were officers who had seen the
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loyalty the stubborn loyalty and the sacrifice of the men around them and besides the the idea of the
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hobbit coming from the british soldiers are there any other specific instances in either lewis's work or
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tolkien's work where they could they said like that that was inspired from exactly that battle inspired
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this scene in my book yeah i think there are a number of them let's take uh tolkien for a minute
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here uh brett and you know uh we can't be certain about this there are moments when when tolkien will
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make some references uh that where it's clear other times you have to kind of imagine all right does this
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sound like a soldier in the trenches of the first world war or not so for example when tolkien is
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describing the siege of gondor as he puts it where fires leaped up where great engines crawled across
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the field and the ground was choked with wreck and with bodies of the slain and then busy as ants
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hurrying orcs were digging digging lines of deep trenches in a huge ring just outside the bow shot from
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the walls that is starting to sound like uh the battlefields there along the western front uh right
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there it seems to me would be one example i mean the other place you think about with tolkien again
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sticking with tolkien if we could for a moment uh the description of the dead marshes the desolate path
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to mordor how does tolkien describe it he says the dead grasses the rotting weeds looming up in the
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mist like ragged shadows of long forgotten summers and then sam gamji looking intently into the grimy
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muck startled by what he sees tolkien says there are dead things dead faces in the water and then gollum
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laughing the dead marshes yes that is their name well think about it if you're a soldier on the western
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front in 1916 what are you seeing there you are you're experiencing that what every soldier
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virtually every soldier experienced finding men dead in these craters that had been caused by the
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mortar shells filled up with water and discovering these bodies days or weeks later and we know this
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because martin gilbert who interviewed martin gilbert the great uh war historian who interviewed
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tolkien in the 1960s and asked tolkien about this explicitly and gilbert goes on to say this is
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exactly what soldiers would have experienced on the front and then tolkien himself says the dead
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marshes owe something to northern france after the battle of the somme well that's pretty conclusive
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evidence of the the riveting horrifying experience of war how it makes its way into his great epic work
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so after the war both lewis and tolkien go back and they begin or tolkien start restarts his academic
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career lewis starts his and that's where they um and i guess is that oxford where they yes at oxford
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they meet in 1926 right and that's where the whole inkling started um a world famous sort of mastermind
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group but they also formed an intense friendship between the themselves yeah um did the two of them
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talk about the war or write each other letters about their experience in the war you know it's a terrific
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question a couple points on this brett uh when we when we think about this group of fellow scholars
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and fellow christians that they formed at oxford the inklings think about the first world war
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and the intense comradeship that men experienced in combat we associate that with the second world war
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you know the the film band of brothers but but the men who went into the first world war the british who
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enlisted they often enlisted uh from the same town the same village and so they experienced the same
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kind of comradeship friendship deep friendship that that men know under fire and they don't quite
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experience anything quite like it in civilian life and i think the formation of the inklings
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was an attempt by tolkien and lewis to recapture something of that comradeship but with a different
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cause a different purpose the the the writing of great literature which is kind of fun to think about
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but uh more to your point then on the on the question well did they discuss the war with each
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other uh it's pretty clear that they did uh in different ways and and and tolkien and lewis met not
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only in the inklings but they would meet at the east gate hotel a place they would meet at the eagle and
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child pub uh just the two of them sometimes uh they met regularly you know there's a place there's a
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letter here let me see if i can find it uh digging back here uh in this book where um lewis is thrilled
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about the uh the completion of tolkien's work the lord of the rings he reads it in manuscript tolkien
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read virtually every chapter of the lord of the rings out loud uh to lewis which is just amazing to
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think about lewis was was tolkien's uh really greatest encourager and fan of of this of this book
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and tolkien says at one point that he never would have brought the lord of the rings uh to a to a
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completion had it not been for lewis's encouragement uh and so it's just an amazing
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friendship that they have that he has that kind of uh relationship with lewis that he shares this work
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so close to his heart which is a war story and i think that's part of the reason he can share it
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with lewis it's a war story and as a war story it avoids two great extremes now if i could just
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make this point uh brett that's worth making it avoids two great extremes this war story it avoids
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the typical triumphalism uh that you might find with some writers romanticizing conflict i don't think
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these these authors neither tolkien nor lewis ever romanticized war but it also avoids the kind of
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fatalism and cynicism of what became a motif of their generation the anti-war fatalism it avoids
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both those there's a realism a grim realism in their war stories but also the sense of hope
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and valor and sacrifice and you i'm just so confident that these men had those conversations
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there's a letter uh that lewis wrote to tolkien back to this point after his manuscript was published
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i can't find it here in in my in my work but i can almost quote it from memory where lewis says to
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tolkien he says um commenting on this manuscript on the lord of the rings he says so much of our life
00:26:02.700
together so much of the war meaning the first world war so much of the war now has been captured
00:26:09.460
in this work so much of their shared life together and so much of the war has been captured in this
00:26:15.820
in this great epic work that's the impact that the work had on lewis that's how he interpreted
00:26:22.540
the lord of the rings that it was somehow in a way that he couldn't even fully describe
00:26:28.200
it had captured their common experience of war that's pretty remarkable when you think about the
00:26:34.040
lord of the rings and its impact not just of course on on lewis's life but on the lives of so many
00:26:38.880
people afterwards yeah this idea of how tolkien um sort of carved a middle path between sort of
00:26:46.120
cynicism and existential despair and sort of this romantic romanticizing um warfare he it sort of
00:26:53.680
ties in with his idea of eucatastrophe i think tolkien it's a greek word that tolkien invented
00:26:59.500
um yes what is eucatastrophe yes eucatastrophe e-u and then the word catastrophe
00:27:07.260
according to tolkien it's the sudden miraculous grace it's the happy ending but it's such it's
00:27:15.240
such a surprising ending when all seems lost when it really seems like it's all coming to a dreadful
00:27:21.480
end that we're going to be overwhelmed by this by the great shadow of evil there's a sudden miraculous
00:27:27.420
grace that brings about redemption a rescue now and i think this this you see this in both their
00:27:34.220
stories tolkien the lord of the rings uh and lewis and the chronicles of narnia think about tolkien's
00:27:40.040
story uh this is where their understanding of heroism is not like our modern understanding of
00:27:46.440
heroism the modern hero uh saves the day by his or her strength ingenuity good looks and usually
00:27:54.960
great firepower at hand right but for tolkien uh the hero the heroic it's defined by your
00:28:03.700
resilience your willingness your your uh readiness to sacrifice everything for this great noble cause
00:28:10.900
despite the fact that it looks like your cause is doomed so what happens in the lord of the rings
00:28:15.860
well at the end of their quest frodo and sam frodo the hero one of the great heroes in the story
00:28:23.700
frodo in a sense he succumbs to evil he succumbs to the great temptation of the ring and what does
00:28:30.660
he say at the end he says i will not do the thing that i came to do the ring is mine and he puts the
00:28:38.900
ring back on his finger in in that sense he fails in his quest well how is it resolved well the ring is
00:28:47.060
destroyed but not by frodo and not by the great company his his his allies in this not by the
00:28:54.820
fellowship the ring is destroyed by gollum this wicked wretched creature who seizes it from frodo
00:29:02.500
puts it on his own finger and then falls into the great catechism of the fires of mount doom and so the
00:29:12.740
ring is destroyed by a sudden and miraculous grace it's a you catastrophe according to tolkien and now
00:29:18.860
look at lewis how he picks up this theme as well in the last battle the children they are they're they're
00:29:26.840
tossed they are they are hurled into the stable they're forced into the stable which as far as they
00:29:33.020
understand it this is where the great evil is this is their end it means doom it means certain doom and
00:29:39.920
death and poggin says i can think of a hundred deaths i would rather have died rather than being
00:29:46.500
tossed into this drawn into this stable certain death and what happens well the lion the great lion as
00:29:53.260
long is in the stable and he has cast out the demon tash and now he has recreated narnia and so there's a
00:30:02.240
great what there's a great rescue and redemption of sudden and miraculous grace uh but it's not the
00:30:09.300
children of narnia who have brought it about it's aslan the great lion so uh for both their stories
00:30:16.000
this eucatastrophe if you think about it this really is the christian story uh the christian
00:30:21.260
narrative a grace a source of goodness beyond us that has to rescue us yes we have to be willing
00:30:28.660
willing partners in this great story but at the end of the day we don't save ourselves we are saved
00:30:35.600
and rescued by a force of grace and goodness outside of ourselves that is a deeply christian
00:30:40.440
idea isn't it it is um and you see you mentioned earlier that after the war this sort of um feeling
00:30:48.280
of cynicism and disillusion saturated the culture um but again both tolkien and lewis were immune from it
00:30:55.860
um why is that was it their christian faith that kept them immune from it or
00:31:00.680
i'm sure other christians who felt that this was the holy war before world war one started
00:31:06.660
they must have been disillusioned but uh tolkien and lewis weren't that is a fabulous question and i
00:31:12.280
can only give you a partial answer to that because it's it's it's sometimes a little hard to know
00:31:18.900
what does prevent people from succumbing uh to the spirit of the age and it is a pretty dark uh
00:31:26.740
spirit of the age if you think about it um you know there's a there's an amazing uh moment there
00:31:32.840
where people like t.s elliot who you know writes writes the wasteland a real agnostic for a good
00:31:37.860
chunk of his life but then he converts uh t.s elliot does to uh christianity and uh there's a there's
00:31:46.240
a line here from virginia wolf a letter uh t.s elliot was part of the bloomberry set a literary set
00:31:53.020
very skeptical uh group of authors in britain in london virginia wolf is one of them and when she
00:31:59.340
discovers just to give you a sense of how dark the mood was here but when she discovers that t.s
00:32:05.600
elliot or her former friend and colleague has become a christian she writes a letter to one of her
00:32:10.860
friends about all this and here's what she says in the letter i've had a most shameful and distressing
00:32:16.560
interview with dear tom elliot who may be called dead to us all from this day forward he's become an
00:32:22.900
anglo-catholic believer in god and goes to church i was shocked a corpse would seem to be more credible
00:32:29.680
than he is i mean there's something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in
00:32:37.340
god well that is the mood of the intellectual set uh in much of europe particularly in the academy
00:32:45.960
at oxford at cambridge and elsewhere to become this a believing christian and that's what these
00:32:52.760
men most definitely are by the 1930s uh certainly when lewis converts to christianity uh partially
00:32:59.200
because of the great help of tolkien and his friends and and more directly to answer your
00:33:03.860
question how did they resist this mood of gloom cynicism doubt and disillusionment uh in part by
00:33:11.620
forming uh a group called the inklings this like-minded men uh christian men uh authors uh accomplished
00:33:21.860
and aspiring authors who are serious thinkers serious scholars and so they they meet every
00:33:29.440
week i think for at least a 13 year period through the 1930s through the second world war they meet
00:33:37.240
every thursday evening in lewis's rooms there at oxford and they meet again also tuesday mornings at the
00:33:44.160
eagle and child pub and that that commitment to each other that friendship i think is one of the
00:33:49.820
explanations for their capacity uh to maintain their sense of calling as christian writers in a very
00:33:56.460
dark skeptical uh gloomy period i think it's interesting too their embrace of nordic myths of
00:34:03.100
romantic fairy tales that also had a role in in there as well yeah it did they are they are men who have
00:34:11.320
steeped themselves in terms of their scholarship their writing their thinking uh in these epic tales of
00:34:17.360
heroism tolkien a translated beowulf uh this ancient uh english story of war and heroism uh and his scholarship
00:34:28.640
on tolkien just did on on beowulf it it just it changed the scholarship and how he interpreted it and for for
00:34:35.440
lewis it's it's it's very similar it's it's ancient uh stories the aeneid the iliad uh they are raised with these
00:34:42.720
stories grow up with these stories um uh the death of arthur uh and so there's a there's a way in which
00:34:49.840
these men they take these ancient and medieval stories of heroism but i think brett they they reinterpret
00:34:56.400
that ancient story for the modern mind and they give it a kind of modern cast and i think that helps to explain
00:35:04.080
its enduring relevance and appeal in our own day there is a there is a grim realism to both their
00:35:11.840
stories and particularly with tolkien it is almost overwhelming the sense of dread you pick up this as
00:35:18.400
well in the chronicles of narnia but remember those stories are for children so they're not quite as dark
00:35:24.320
and as graphic tolkien is is willing to go a little bit further uh in in how real how realistic this the
00:35:32.160
story is and you just you just can't escape it the battle scenes uh the the sense of gloom
00:35:39.760
the the darkness of the story no one is immune to the dark forces in their stories uh that's that's one
00:35:47.520
of the most striking things no one is immune to to to being pulled into the to the darkness of the
00:35:53.520
story uh the the lore and temptation of evil is so real and palpable and i think that also speaks
00:36:00.080
to all of us if we're honest with ourselves uh none of us is immune uh to the to the darkness within
00:36:07.040
right yeah no it is it is gloomy i'm listening to the lord of the rings with my son right now in the car
00:36:11.920
and uh yeah there's that impending sense of doom and always and you always feel like and even gandalf
00:36:17.120
right you feel like the gandalf's this guy he's gonna help them but even some even the gandalf sometimes
00:36:21.760
can't help and i always feel bad for the hobbits when gandalf's not there for him
00:36:28.160
yes even gandalf says i can't take the ring you know frodo you you've been appointed to this task
00:36:34.160
this this mission this mysterious blending of of free will but also it seems providence you know
00:36:40.400
you've been chosen for the ring but you know you also have a choice to make and it and i think this
00:36:45.280
goes back again to the war experience it's the it's the hobbit these these little creatures tolkien
00:36:50.880
says explicitly that you know i made my hobbits of small stack small and stature reflecting the
00:36:58.400
ordinary english soldier these these little people so much depends on them and the choices that they
00:37:05.200
make and things that almost seem to be out of their control and yet they have this free will they
00:37:11.360
have the capacity to join the side of goodness and decency and humanity and ultimately joining
00:37:17.920
god's side of of the story god's side of the fight the side of light not the side of darkness
00:37:24.640
the smallest of creatures can make this immense difference in in the great story of redemption
00:37:29.840
so true to both their stories joseph this has been a great conversation where can people learn more
00:37:33.920
about your work well it's been a great pleasure and joy for me to join you uh they can go to my
00:37:39.120
website www.josephloconte.com and you'll see my various works and articles and essays and you
00:37:47.920
can order the book from amazon.com uh love to have people join that website join me in conversation
00:37:53.280
facebook as well fantastic joseph loconte thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure
00:37:57.600
thanks so much sir great being with you my guest today was joseph loconte he is the author of the book
00:38:02.400
a hobbit a wardrobe and the great war it's available on amazon.com you also find more information
00:38:09.600
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:38:26.080
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy our show please
00:38:30.640
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always thank you for your community support until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay