What a gem of a collection! The collection starts and ends with essays by people who knew JRR Tolkien personally, giving this collection the perfect start and finish. Tolkien's literary legacy, as expounded on in these essays, is bursting with layers and wonders of meaning. Take this: the ring of power symbolises the will turned in on itself. It is empty in the middle, the gradual but sure erosion of the true self. Wearers of the ring become invisible, cut off from all normal relations in the world.
Or this: Samwise Gamgee represents all the readers. Like us, he loves to listen to stories, and he is pulled in by his ears by Gandalf while listening at the window. Near the end of the novel, he wonders if others will speak of his and Frodo's stories as well, linking this story into the larger narrative of myth and reality.
Or Lambas as the eucharist.
Or Frodo being the chosen one to destroy the ring -- hobbits being the shortest, weakest, humblest, simplest creatures -- just as the last shall become the first.
Or how the heroes pass through a kind of darkness and death experience to new life -- Gandalf on the narrow bridge of Moria, Aragorn in the Paths of the Dead, and Frodo when stung by Shelob.
Or the prevailing sense of hope even in utter despair.
NB: This is a collection of writings on JRR Tolkien's works and the spiritual values that undergirded his imaginery Middle-earth. It is edited by Joseph Pierce and the essays include the following: Recollections of J.R.R. Tolkien, George Sayer; Over the Chasm of Fire: Christian Heroism in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings, Stratford Caldecott; The Lord of the Rings - A Catholic View, Charles A. Coulombe; A Far-Off Cleam of the Gospel: Salvation in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Colin Gunton; Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: An Interview with Walter Hooper
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on Wednesday, June 01, 2005 at 10:37 AM.
:)
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