Book Review: The Terror, by Dan Simmons

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The Terror (2007) is my favorite Dan Simmons novel and one of my favorite novels ever. (See earlier intro post about Simmons here.) This is historical fiction and horror. It is based on the historic lost Franklin Expedition, a British expedition of two ships, the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror, sent to look for the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic in 1845 under the command of Captain Sir John Franklin.
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Historically, the two ships and all hands were lost without a trace except for the graves of three crewmen and a note left behind. It is still one of the great arctic mysteries. Simmons researched the case, as well as arctic exploration in that age, and then added his own imaginary spin to it. As we read, we experience the deep cold of the six-month arctic night as the ships are frozen into the icepack. Added to this is Eskimo mythology and the associated terrors of the Far North.
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One reason that I like this book is because of its authentic descriptions of true cold. I have bivouacked out in the cold down to 40-below-zero but never in the amazing deeper cold experienced by these men. While I had lived outside at minus-40 for a week in 1970s gear, these guys had inadequate clothing and gear, and they were starving to death over a long, long time. It gives you the shivers, and this might be a good book to read on oppressively hot summer days. If you read it during a long northern winter, it will take you into a long dark tunnel of terror.
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I also like the main character, Captain Francis Crozier, historic captain of the HMS Terror and second-in-command of the expedition under Franklin. Crozier was an Irishman, and thus an outsider in the mainly English naval establishment. He was also a melancholic and a substance abuser – much like me in my younger military days.
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Simmons also gives Crozier memories of alienation from his earliest days, of standing alone outside a village on a winter’s night, looking at the village lights but feeling completely estranged from his community. I had this same winter experience – many, many times while growing up – e.g., standing alone in a frozen pasture, or a wood lot, or on a snowy hilltop above my own native village after dark, watching the snowstorm against the town’s lights, feeling apart from all humanity. The character of Crozier really touched me, and my own experience of expatriate re-birth outside of my native culture makes me appreciate him and the destiny Simmons gives him even more.
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The only previous literary background required to enrich the reading of this novel is just a minor familiarity with English philosopher Thomas Hobbes – and I can provide the context you need right here. The few references in the novel are more of an inside joke. Hobbes was an extreme pessimist and an advocate of completely authoritarian political rule. His most famous work was Leviathan (1651) in which he argued for an extremely strong government because human nature is perversely wild and dangerous.
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Caveat: I do not agree with Hobbes about human nature, and I am completely opposite him in politics. I advocate little or no government while Hobbes wants absolutism.
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One of Hobbes’ primary arguments is that the horrible religious warfare of his times was because of too much freedom of religion – too much choice – and that one absolute ruler or ruling group should dictate one religion for all to follow in order to stop the fighting between sects. (But I would say that, while a large amount of religious freedom did encourage the flowering of countless religious sects, it was precisely the mix of government power with religion that caused the insane wars within Christianity in Hobbes' day.)
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When Crozier is assigned, against his inclination, to conduct a Sunday religious service on his ship, he announces that he will read from “The Book of Leviathan, Part One, Chapter Twelve,” and he reads from the very cynical Hobbes on historical religious flights of fancy from the most ancient of days. That whole episode is – to me – a philosophical joke, one of my favorite passages in the book.
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In addition to the above, certainly the most famous quote of all from Hobbes’ Leviathan is that, without an absolute government to intimidate and control people, man’s life will be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Keep that quote in mind, as it identifies Crozier's attitude before his redemption.
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A final note on this book. I was reading it while waiting for supper at The Saxophone pub in Bangkok and listening to a good jazz band, and I came upon its description of a bonfire on the ice as a “Guy Fawkes Day above the Arctic Circle.” I checked my calendar, and indeed it was 5 November, Guy Fawkes Night, that very night. (“A penny for the old guy.”)
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I love this book.
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-Zenwind.
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Review: Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons

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The first Dan Simmons works I read were the four big science fiction novels making up his Hyperion Cantos series. This had a lot of background involving the English Romantic poet John Keats. Keats – or a clone of Keats – even appears as a minor character. I had always been a great fan of Keats’ shorter poems, but I had never read his slightly longer attempts at epic poetry in his poems “Hyperion” and “Endymion.” The four novels of this Cantos series are Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, and The Rise of Endymion. Read them in order.
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The narrative style of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales also figures into to the beginning of this series, as various characters give their backgrounds during a long journey. One is also reminded of Boccaccio’s Decameron, where everyone tells their tales.
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Before I started those four books I did some major homework, finding a volume of Keats’ complete poems with biography, extensive commentaries on the poems, selected letters of his, etc. I read his drafts of the epics “Hyperion” and “Endymion” for the first time, and I immersed myself in the world of Keats, ending with his young death of TB in Rome near the Spanish Steps. With this background I enjoyed the Simmons’ novels more. When the Keats clone is in his room near the Spanish Steps, I already know what it looks like. Reading it, homework and all, was a major project which I really enjoyed.
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Book Review: Ilium / Olympos, by Dan Simmons

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One of Dan Simmons’ best is the science fiction double novel, Ilium and Olympos, in which the Greek gods are reincarnated or duplicated as characters on the planet Mars of the future. Mons Olympus, the old volcanic cone on Mars is the highest mountain in the solar system, and a lot of action will happen there in a new Olympos. Action on the battlefield at ancient Troy is featured, with all the Homeric heroes there in this revised story. There are anomalies of time and space in the story, so that over 5,000 years in time and the entire reach of the solar system are involved. You simply will not believe how the stories of both Achilles and Odysseus end up.
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The background literary context of these two huge books is Homer, most especially The Iliad, but also to some extent The Odyssey, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Those are the most important sources and are most important to read as background, but Simmons also refers to Nabokov’s novel Ada or Ador: A Family Chronicle and to Proust’s multi-volume work In Search of Lost Time, aka Remembrance of Things Past. Since certain literary/mythic characters and their stories pop up in these novels, I first refreshed my readings of some of those classics, re-reading The Iliad, The Tempest and surveys of classical mythology. However, I passed on perusing Proust, and I never got a chance to acquire the Nabokov novel. I really enjoyed Ilium and Olympos and recommend them. Read the two in their proper order.
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Reviews: Dan Simmons' novels

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Dan Simmons is one hell of a fiction writer and one of my favorites. (I thank Jeff Riggenbach for pointing out his works many years ago.) Simmons writes in many genres: science fiction, historical fiction, horror, fantasy, mysteries and thrillers – and he sometimes mixes several genres in one book. Some of his works stand alone while others are part of larger series, and most of the individual novels are huge. I have only yet read a fraction of his voluminous body of work, but I’ve never been disappointed.
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Simmons excels in “intertexuality,” where his stories and characters often refer back to other works of literature such as Homer, Shakespeare, Keats, etc. I had heard about this aspect of his work, so I have always made sure to first do my homework – i.e., to find out which authors/works are referenced in any one book, and then to try reading those works – before beginning a new Simmons novel. He is richly versed in literature. When he often delves into themes of Classical Antiquity, it is wise to have a reference work on Greek and Roman mythology close by, such as the ones by Bulfinch or Edith Hamilton.
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I will soon review here, separately, some of Simmons’ novels that I’ve read: The Terror, which is my personal favorite; The Hyperion Cantos, consisting of four novels; and Ilium and Olympos, a set of two.
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(About his first novel, The Song of Kali, I’ll only say this here: Don’t read this one unless you have a perversely excessive taste for true horror; Simmons may have gone way over the line with it. One of Simmons' latest novels is Drood, which is concerned with Dickens' last and unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It is told from the viewpoint of Wilkie Collins, a friend of and frequent collaborator with Dickens.)
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-Zenwind.
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Vampire Book Review: The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova

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If you love history and are fascinated by Dracula stories – both the gothic tales and the real history of Vlad III The Impaler -- you should enjoy this novel.
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More precisely, if you appreciate the sound methodology and scholarship of true historians, if you love libraries and old books, if you can get hooked on well-told arcane histories of exotic places and times such as the late medieval Balkans as the Ottoman Turks are over-running Southeastern Europe, if gothic tales of vampirism tempt you, and if you like good fiction writing mixed with it all, then The Historian (2005) by Elizabeth Kostova should be well worth reading.
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I had heard good things about this book, but I was not prepared to like it so much. I had read In Search of Dracula and follow-up histories about the real Vlad Dracula, aka Vlad III Tepes (1431-1476 CE), when they were first published several decades ago, and of course I was a major fan of Bram Stoker’s novel, of Bela Lugosi’s movie classic and of a few other of the better-made vampire films.
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In this novel, the historical detail fascinated me, and the historian-as-detective plot delighted me. The action sweeps across many decades in the 20th century – as well as the 15th century and other times – and much of it takes place in the 1950s in an Eastern Europe that is still behind the communist Iron Curtain and in the grip of sinister masters.
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I could not put the book down until I had finished. You might want to keep an Atlas or world map handy while you read, as the scenes often include travels to places most of us usually do not visit or know much about.
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-Zenwind.
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Book Review: David Gibbins’ Novels

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If you do NOT like history or archaeology, stop reading this review now. But if you do love these sciences – as well as good fiction writing – this is one author of fiction that you might appreciate, as the historical parts of his books are outstanding.
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A reviewer once wrote, “What do you get when you cross Indiana Jones with Dan Brown? Answer: David Gibbins.” That sums it up.
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David Gibbins is a leading marine archaeologist and an authority on shipwrecks and sunken cities. He did his studies in archaeology at Cambridge and has taught university courses on archaeology and ancient history in England. He now does fieldwork and writes one novel per year.
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Gibbins’ five novels feature a modern marine archaeologist, his colleagues and support teams (many with military experience), former professors, and world-class scholars. The historical knowledge revealed in their conversations is fascinating. These stories are primarily historical detective adventures and partly thrillers, following the clues from archaeological finds or discoveries in ancient libraries to unexpected links through time.
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The action involves a lot of travel to historic sites throughout the world, tons of ancient history lessons, and usually sinister institutions and villains somewhere in the background. Very dangerous black market grave robbers and arms dealers are often lurking. His historical research is very good, with the added imaginative fiction taking you further out.
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At the end of each novel is an “Author’s Notes” section where he debriefs the reader by sorting fact from fiction in the story you have just read. He tells you what in the story is considered to be fairly solid history and why, briefly mentioning the documentary sources (e.g., Plutarch, Josephus, Greenlanders’ Saga, Christopher Wren, Sima Qian, Plato, various modern authors, etc., with many of these sources already mentioned in conversations within the story). Where he has added fictional content to the stories, he tells you, and it is often about actual longstanding historical rumors, puzzles, implications or speculations which he uses with a “what if?” kind of imaginary development.
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Ideally, it might be good to read the novels in order of their publication, because the characters’ back-stories accumulate and build on one another. But you can still fully appreciate each individual novel if read out-of-order by starting with any one of them.
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The first novel in this series is Atlantis, where they stumble into historic clues of the possible location of this legendary lost sunken city. We are taken from clues in a dusty dig in the desert of Egypt on to Plato’s legend, then to a Minoan shipwreck in the Mediterranean, and on to the Black Sea and the wreck of a long-lost Soviet nuclear submarine, then to nearby Abkhazia (a former autonomous region in the Georgian Republic USSR, and now a gangster haven). A lot of ancient history is sifted through and reviewed.
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The next novel, Crusader Gold, finds our heroes searching for the lost menorah from the Temple in Jerusalem that Titus had brought to Rome after the Roman conquest of Judea in AD 70. After the fall of Rome it may have gone to Carthage or Byzantium. The story involves the Varangian mercenaries in Byzantium led by the historic Viking Harald Hardrada, who once even went to Jerusalem; then there is more about the crusades. Then it is the findings of maps and documents in an old English cathedral; and then startling evidence in the ice from Greenland’s medieval times as well as in the 20th century involving a Nazi agent. A lot more geography and history is covered in this one book, and you won’t believe where they end up.
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The Lost Tomb (aka, The Last Gospel in the UK) involves an excavation at Herculaneum, which was buried along with Pompeii by Vesuvius in AD 79. Then the underwater archaeologists think they may have found the shipwreck of St. Paul. A lot of ancient Roman history is covered and speculated on, including a lot about Claudius and Pliny the Elder. There is a dive through old sewers of Rome and one into an old submerged part of London. The history of the ancient Britons who resisted the Romans is involved. And much more.
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The Tiger Warrior starts with an archaeological dig on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea and about the site’s actual link to the sea trade routes connecting ancient Rome and the East. It talks about the lost Roman legions of Crassus that were defeated by the Parthians in 53 BC at Carrhae and whose survivors were led into slavery at Margiana (Merv, Turkmenistan); about India and the British colonial experience there including the 1879 Rampa Rebellion in southeastern India; about the overland Silk Road, which takes us high up in the mountains of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan and the Pamir Knot, then to northeastern Afghanistan’s lapis lazuli mines. The tomb of China’s First Emperor casts its shadow over the action.
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The fifth novel, The Mask of Troy, I just finished reading yesterday. The cover photo shows the golden “Mask of Agamemnon” that Heinrich Schliemann revealed at Mycenae in 1876. (Caveat about Schliemann: a controversial figure, he was a clumsy digger and boastful, but he showed the world that there might be some historical truth within old myths such as Troy; Gibbins debriefs us on him, warts and all, at the end.) This novel takes us underwater to naval wrecks from the harbor off Troy dating from the 1200 BC Trojan War to the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign. Nazi death camp experiences yield important clues to the mystery. There is speculation on Homer’s lost epic poem that followed The Iliad, the one that describes the actual Fall of Troy and about how horrific that final battle was.
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Gibbins is getting better all the time, and I highly recommend his books. His five novels thus far, in inexpensive paperback, are:
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Atlantis (2005)
Crusader Gold (2006)
The Lost Tomb (in the UK, The Last Gospel) (2008)
The Tiger Warrior (2009)
The Mask of Troy (2010)
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Book Review: Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War (2010) by Karl Marlantes

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This is a great Vietnam War tale – and although it is a work of fiction it is still authentic in spirit and in its every detail. Matterhorn is the name of a fictitious hill within the story in the Khe Sanh area of I Corps, South Vietnam. This is the best novel that I have ever read to come out of the Vietnam experience and one of the best war novels I’ve ever read. I highly recommend it.
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The author, Karl Marlantes, has been there. He was a highly decorated Marine platoon commander in Vietnam, earning the Navy Cross (the only higher award for Navy and Marine Corps personnel being the Medal of Honor), the Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts, ten Air Medals and two Navy Commendation Medals for valor. Keeping in mind the notorious stinginess of the Marine Corps in awarding medals of any kind, his achievements are noteworthy. Marlantes is also a Yale graduate and a Rhodes scholar. He spent over 30 years working on this, his debut novel.
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The novel gives you the experience of the Vietnam War, the insane horrors of combat, the constant filth, both the extremes of the tropical heat to the shivering cold nights when soaking wet and bone-weary. Race relation problems of the late 1960s are handled very well, and also the phenomena of “fragging” an incompetent officer or NCO. For Marines planning to stay in the Corps, there was a distinction between the more professional “career men” versus the “lifers.” A lifer was defined as “someone who can’t make it on the outside,” someone with enough rank to make your life miserable for no good reason, and these guys were sometimes targets of fraggings. The dialogues and the profanities are exactly right.
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The stupid politics of that war is everywhere a major theme, as lives are wasted taking hard-won territory only to abandon it soon after. On occasion an officer would think more about their own career advancements than the losses or hardships of their men. Those being killed and maimed are usually teenagers who haven’t even lived their lives yet. The book sometimes makes you very angry, but it is ultimately redeeming.
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The protagonist, 2nd Lt. Mellas, evolves from a spoiled college kid with military-political ambitions to a good combat officer and a compassionate commander of men. He learns from both the enlisted and commissioned Marines who have been in-country before him. The other characters are very well drawn and very authentic, especially Lt. Hawke, the kind of guy that men will follow anywhere. The humor in the midst of horror also comes through at times.
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There were many details in the story that really brought back vivid memories. For example, the concussion from the explosion of in-coming enemy mortar rounds sending a wave of pressure against your eyeballs as well as your eardrums. Also well-written are the times when you think that you will certainly die soon – e.g., Cortell and Jermain discuss Pascal’s Wager, although they have never heard of Pascal or his philosophical “wager” about what awaits us after death. We all knew about that bet in some way of our own and were forced to think about it. That is haunting.
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Before reading the novel, definitely read the “Glossary of Weapons, Technical Terms, Slang and Jargon” in back, and keep a bookmarker in place there so that you can refer back to it while reading. The Vietnam War had its own unique jargon, but so did the Navy and Marine Corps, and so a lot of it is esoteric to those services. But even I had to look over this Glossary many times for things such as radio call-sign protocol details, etc.
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Also, keep handy the three pages in front of the novel for the fictitious “Chain of Command and Principal Characters” chart (with their radio call-signs in italics), and also the two map pages: “Bravo Company’s Area of Operation” and “Matterhorn and Helicopter Hill.” The USMC units in this novel are fictitious, in that they are real Marine (reserve) units but they were never in Vietnam. Also, the map adds the fictitious Vietnam hills Matterhorn, Helicopter Hill, Eiger and Sky Cap, and this map goes farther west toward the Laotian border than it did in reality beyond Khe Sanh. Read the author’s disclaimer on the copyright page for the full details about his fiction versus the reality.
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I think this novel is going to be a war classic.
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Book Review: A Man on the Moon (1994) by Andrew Chaikin

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“Man must explore. And this is exploration at its greatest.” Those were the first words of astronaut Dave Scott on his first Apollo 15 moonwalk, and they sum up the spirit of this book. It is the story of, and a tribute to, the Apollo program right through to its last mission, and the book was the basis of the TV mini-series “From the Earth to the Moon.”
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I found this book to be a very exciting read (I read it twice) as it revealed that each Apollo mission was an incredibly unique journey in itself, with often gripping dangers, uncertainties and challenges. Many people are familiar with the triumph of Apollo 11 and the close-call of Apollo 13, but few of us paid much attention to later Apollo missions up through 17, the last one. Each new mission constantly upped the level of the technology and the expectations, building on the previous test flight experiences, and they marvelously expanded both science and the human adventure.
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Especially evident in this book is how the whole program exemplified the human virtue of Rationality. Even though it was an audaciously risky venture, it was done with a scrupulously rational risk-taking and with a carefully thought-out approach by a huge team – a combination of scientists, engineers, manufacturers and test pilots. Chaikin describes the approach as a “series of methodic, incremental steps that are the hallmark of test flying.” (p.54). E.g., they first had to test fly the Gemini program flights and the earliest Apollo flights in order to learn how to dock two space vehicles in space, etc.
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Test pilots have a reputation for being fighter-jocks and wild mavericks with balls of brass. True enough. But those chosen to be astronauts were also very highly educated and highly disciplined test pilots. For them and their fellows on the entire Apollo team, the drill was to plan, to make checklists, to practice, to test, then to re-think, re-plan, make new checklists, practice, test, etc. They did it by the numbers, and simulators were used constantly to practice, practice, practice. Thus, when unforeseen emergencies did occur, they were ready to think their way through the options. Odysseus with an engineering degree.
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When, in the far future, humanity looks back on its history, the Apollo program will be seen as one of those truly great human adventures. And A Man on the Moon will be one of its greatest celebrations.
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-Zenwind.
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Satori on Parris Island, 1968

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(“Satori” – a Japanese Zen term for a flash of sudden insight, a small shot of instant enlightenment, a profound step on the path to awakening.)
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November/December 1968: Parris Island, South Carolina, U.S. Marine Corps Boot Camp. It was one hell of a bad place for a sensitive student of Zen striving for peace of mind and a glimpse of enlightenment.
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One item of military business right off the bat was specifying vital info for our dog-tags: i.e., name, serial number, branch of military service, blood type, and religious preference. But on this last item, religion, I just didn’t fit in – as I never have fit in with any defined group anywhere in my life.
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The most relevant quasi-religious label for me in those days and nights of extreme discipline would have been “Zen Buddhist.” After all, some state of mind near that had been my solace and discipline in the years before my enlistment – and that was especially true of my last summer and autumn between high school and the Corps, where I meditated in the forest.
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(“Zen” – Japanese term for a higher meditative state. It is derived from the same word and concept in: Pali, “jhana”; Sanskrit, “dhyana”; Chinese, “Ch’an”; Korean, “Son.”)
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Yet “Zen Buddhist” was only partially true for me. I never identified much with it as a “religion” or with the modern Zen schools in Japan – except for their historical warrior ethos, their visual aesthetics and some of their great poets. I was always too much of a Thoreau-like loner with no drummer to march to. I just don’t belong.
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My own intro to Zen was scandalous, via Jack Kerouac’s Beat Zen and Gary Snyder’s translations of the “Cold Mountain Poems” of the ancient Chinese mountain hermit poet and Ch’an/Zen-lunatic Han Shan. So, should I have inscribed on my dog-tags something like “Ch’an-Zen-Taoist Beatnik forest hermit hipster”? Too big for the dog-tag plates.
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Also, I was afraid of writing down “Zen Buddhist” because I feared that I would have the living shit beat out of me by my Drill Instructors for my heathenish and un-American ways. These guys were all-American warriors but not thoughtful scholars. So I caved in to fear and had to choose the only obligatory religious label left: “No Preference.” That has embarrassed me ever since because I was so cowardly. After all, I was going off to war, and possibly to my death, so I should have customized my own epitaph.
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Ok, now to the satori.
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On Sundays we had choices of religious services to attend in the morning: Protestant, Catholic or Jewish. If you refused these you stayed at the barracks and were worked extremely hard by the D.I. there. I chose Protestant just to get out and get the chance to sit and meditate in a chair while the preacher droned about something in the background.
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Going to and from church was a more relaxed kind of march, where we stayed in step but didn’t have to put our heels down hard as the usual. The D.I. just took us there and back, with no pressure, and it was very peaceful – my favorite time of the week. A kind of “walking zen.”
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It was a Sunday morning in early winter, with a hard driving rain, very dark skies, and thunder and lightening. We all wore our green GI rain ponchos, the huge ones with the big hoods to fit over helmet and gear. I fell into a meditative trance as we stepped along on the wet pavement.
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Then, I looked up and around at my fellow boots/recruits. All heads and faces were bowed against the driving rain and were invisible because of the huge hoods, and everyone was just looking at the feet of the guy in front of them. All ponchos were waving back and forth together in perfect easy rhythm as we marched along in step.
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Satori! Suddenly it seemed that we were all Zen monks hundreds of years ago at a Kyoto temple, in perfect harmonious movement.
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That little flash has continued to fill me with immense joy and a meditative high whenever I think back on it.
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-Zenwind.
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Lord of the Rings & Philosophy

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Review of *The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy: One Book to Rule Them All.* 2003 edited by Gregory Bassham and Eric Bronson. Open Court Publishing.
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This is Volume #5 in a very interesting series from Open Court called “Popular Culture and Philosophy.” Series Editor is William Irwin.
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The book is dedicated: “To the entwives, wherever they may roam.” If this resonates with you, you may well love this book.
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If you are familiar with and enjoy J.R.R. Tolkien’s works connected with *The Lord of the Rings* and if you either have some small experience in reading philosophy or want to plunge into a widely diverse selection of philosophical writings for the first time, this book is a delight. There are 17 contributing authors, all of whom are professional philosophers and/or theologians who love Tolkien’s works and know them intimately. Each essay is about 10 pages.
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Because of the variety of philosophical viewpoints here, you will not agree with every essay. Indeed, I do not agree with even Tolkien on many points. You will find existentialists, theologians, greens, Aristotelians, and representatives from many other viewpoints. But every essay is interesting and thoughtful. I have always considered it to be fruitful to read philosophers and philosophies that I am in disagreement with. I consider this in many cases to be an exercise in “mind-stretching,” although in some cases it does seem more like being stretched upon the torture rack. Good for the mind, at any rate. (“That which does not kill me makes me stronger.” Nietzsche.)
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I am very much a fan of Tolkien. Before reading this book for the first time, I had read Tolkien’s *The Hobbit* and *The Lord of the Rings* (TLOTR) a number of times. I watched the excellent Peter Jackson films of TLOTR more times than I can count, along with the extra “Appendices” special feature interviews and commentaries in the Special Extended DVD Editions. Also, I have had the benefit throughout the years of many conversations with family members who are longtime diehard Tolkien fans.
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This volume of *TLOTR and Philosophy* was very understandable with my basic background of Tolkien reading (along with my undergraduate major studies in philosophy). But the authors also mention some of Tolkien’s other writings, *The Silmarillion* in particular, as well as material from his letters and essays. So, after I read this volume of *TLOTR and Philosophy,* I went on to read *The Silmarillion,* which is a much different reading experience, as it is rather unfinished and more like an epic than the adult fairy tale that TLOTR is. But it did give me a richer background on Tolkien’s fictional history of the elves and early Middle Earth, and I enjoyed it tremendously. After reading this, I then re-read the volume of essays reviewed here. The second reading was substantially more interesting and enlightening.
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My review follows.
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Part I: The Ring.
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Chapter 1: The Rings of Tolkien and Plato: Lessons in Power, Choice, and Morality. By Eric Katz.
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(I will state from the start that I think it is inexcusable that there is no mention in this entire volume about Lord Acton’s maxim on power: “Power tends to corrupt; and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In a story about the One Ring to Rule Them All with all of its seductive and corrosive power, I was very disappointed not to come across what I thought was an important and obvious point. Perhaps my life-long libertarian background made me assume that everyone knew this maxim. Perhaps also the editors did not want contention over politics to darken the mood of the book.)
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In this first essay, Eric Katz reminds us of Plato’s tale of Gyges’ Ring in *The Republic,* which makes its wearer invisible. Gyges finds the ring and uses its cloak of invisibility to seduce the queen and kill the king. Katz writes: “Plato’s question to us is whether or not one should be a moral person even if one has the power to be immoral with impunity. Does immense power destroy the need to be a moral person?” (p.6) He gives a brief outline of Plato’s story and the arguments surrounding it.
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Then Katz discusses how various characters in TLOTR deal with the seductive power of The One Ring, the Ring of Power. Tom Bombadil is not affected at all by the Ring, and he alone can still see Frodo when Frodo is wearing the Ring and is invisible to everyone else. Galadriel refuses to take the Ring. Gandalf will not take it. But these characters are not mortals. Among mortals, Gollum is destroyed by it and obsessed with it. Sam will not keep it. Boromir is seduced by it, thinking that he is strong enough to wield it for good purposes. Aragorn will not take it. (One might also note that, in the book version, Faramir will not take it either.) Also, Bilbo gives it up, although reluctantly. And poor Frodo…. The personal choices of all these characters are examined very well.
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Chapter 2: The Cracks of Doom: The Threat of Emerging Technologies and Tolkien’s Rings of Power. By Theodore Schick.
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The title gives you a good idea of the subject matter, and I will not say much more about it.
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Chapter 3: “My Precious”: Tolkien’s Fetishized Ring. By Alison Milbank.
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Milbank provides a very interesting discussion of TLOTR in light of Freud’s theories on fetishism, in light of feminist theories, and even in light of Marxist alienation theory. She has interesting thoughts on “rings” and “things” in Norse and Anglo-Saxon mythologies, with a great analysis of Northern language (which was Professor Tolkien’s domain). She explores the “wonder” of natural things and our connections to them.
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Part II: The Quest for Happiness. (I liked all of this Part very much.)
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Chapter 4: Tolkien’s Six Keys to Happiness. By Gregory Bassham.
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This is a great chapter. Bassham reminds us that Hobbiton, Rivendell, and Lothlorien (a.k.a. Lorien) are happy places, so he asks us to consider what their inhabitants might teach us about “the secrets of true happiness and fulfillment.” (p.49) He finds six important lessons.
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1. Delight in Simple Things. He notes that hobbits “have no real government.” (I remember reading or hearing somewhere that Tolkien considered himself to be a “Christian anarchist,” if I am not mistaken.) Elves love to sing and to gaze at the stars. Bassham brings in insights from psychological theories and studies. He talks of the simple pleasures recommended by Epicurus. We are also reminded of Thoreau – “the great American apostle of simplicity” – who told his readers to “simplify, simplify.” (p.51)
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2. Make Light of your Troubles. Bassham tells us that this is one of “The Quaker Dozen” rules to live by, and that hobbits have this virtue, as did Marcus Aurelius, the great Stoic philosopher.
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3. Get Personal. High praise is given to Aristotle’s *Nicomachean Ethics* in relation to his discussion of friendship and its role in the fulfilled life. Recent psychological studies are cited to reinforce the point. Bassham writes: “No doubt if some hobbit-Aristotle had written his or her *Nicomachean Ethics,* the goods of friendship and connectedness would have featured at least as prominently as they do in Aristotle’s version.” (p.55)
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4. Cultivate Good Character. In a letter, Tolkien wrote that one aim of writing TLOTR was “the encouragement of good morals.” (p.55; quoted from Tolkien’s *Letters*) (One might add here that this kind of cultivation of good character is also an important theme in Aristotle’s ethics.)
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5. Cherish and Create Beauty. The elves in Tolkien’s books are tall, graceful, wise, and beings of incredible beauty. (For equivalents in Ayn Rand’s works, I think of Ragnar and Kay.) In Tolkien, creativity is also essential to the happy life. (Again, I am reminded of similarities in Rand, who considered productivity to be among the greatest of virtues.)
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6. Rediscover Wonder. Tom Bombadil is in a continual state of rapturous wonder, and it is inexhaustible for him since he is ancient beyond all the memory of any others. Bassham says that the elves have “an almost endless appetite for poetry, song, gazing at the stars, and walking in sunlit forests.” (p.58) They see things with “ever-fresh wonder and delight.” (In this description of the elves, I get a sense of zen.) Bassham quotes Tolkien, from an important separate essay of his entitled “On Fairy-Stories,” where Tolkien talks of “recovery,” a regaining of a sense of freshness, of a “clear view,” “so that things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness and familiarity.” It is a “return and renewal of health.” (p.59) For Tolkien, fairy tales like TLOTR can be healing.
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Chapter 5: The Quests of Sam and Gollum for a Happy Life. By Jorge J.E. Gracia.
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I like this essay even though I only agree partially with the author on a few things. What I do like is his frequent references to Aristotle, e.g., the point that true happiness depends on one’s nature, on the kind of being one is. Gollum has “no resources, no friends.” He has no friends because “he has no love for himself,” and Aristotle is quoted to support this idea. Gracia says, “Gollum lacks this self-love.” (p.70)
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Chapter 6: Farewell to Lorien: The Bounded Joy of Existentialists and Elves. By Eric Bronson.
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I love this essay. (Note: The two philosophers of whom I have read most of their works – and have also read those works with the most care and intensity -- are Rand and Nietzsche; my picture of Nietzsche is close to that given by Bronson here.)
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Grace, beauty, serenity and wisdom are the striking attributes of elves. Elvin songs are joyful, and all the creations of their artistry are of incredible beauty. Galadriel is the Lady of Lorien (a.k.a. Lothlorien). She is more powerful, wiser, older and more experienced than all the other elves of Middle Earth.
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The elves are virtually immortal. They live on for thousands of years. They can die in battle or by a similar mortal injury, but there is some kind of reincarnation involved where they still keep all their memories. Elves can also die of a “world-weariness” that makes life unbearable.
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Galadriel has a hint of sadness, for she remembers the elf rebellion long, long ago in the paradise across the sea to the far West of Middle Earth. She remembers a great Golden Age when elves lived in the West among the god-like Valar, a time when there were no blemishes at all on their happiness and innocence. There was a Fall involved in this earlier elf history, and Galadriel remembers it. It was an act of hubris, disobedience and rebellion that took place when her elf-clan decided to leave the Western paradise and travel to Middle Earth in order to fight evil. (This story you will find in *The Silmarillion.*) Galadriel did not take the treasonous oath that her kinsmen took, but she came with them in exile to Middle Earth, thus she shares somewhat in their rebellion. The memory of this episode taints the joy of elves in Middle Earth with just a hint of sadness. They have an echo of yearning for the West. (p.75)
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Bronson describes how “Galadriel presides over Lorien with songs of joy…. But it is a happiness born of sorrow and dispossession, and that is why Tolkien can be placed in a wider tradition of European philosophers who still affirm life, while bearing witness to the passing shadows.” (p.76)
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Bronson continues: “Philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Jaspers, and Hannah Arendt agree that life carries with it a certain despair, but alongside the suffering stands a spontaneous affirmation of life as it is, though danger lurks behind every tree.” (p.77)
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Nietzsche has hope in dark times; he sees a powerful artist as being the one to give hope. This artist, in Nietzsche’s words, “should see nothing as it is, but fuller, simpler, stronger: to that end, their lives must contain a kind of youth and spring, a kind of habitual intoxication.” (p.77) (I would also ask you to compare this with Rand’s neo-Aristotelian conception of art depicting “life as it might be and ought to be.”)
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Nietzsche also says that world-weariness will set in if we do not learn how to forget certain things. Galadriel, as the elf in Middle Earth who carries the heaviest burden of memory, finds some measure of forgetfulness in that moment when she refuses to possess the One Ring. She remembers who she is, she will “remain Galadriel,” but since she passed this incredible test of will she is unburdened of a heavy weight.
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Part III: Good and Evil in Middle Earth.
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Chapter 7: Uber-hobbits: Tolkien, Nietzsche, and the Will to Power. By Douglas K. Blount.
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This was a painful chapter for me to read and to re-read because Blount and I have very different interpretations of Nietzsche. Blount is a theologian, so he cannot be expected to sympathize with Nietzsche to the extent that I do. Blount seems to be of that school that sees Nietzsche responsible for spawning Hitler, Sauron, and all other manner of evil. I think that Eric Bronson’s interpretation in Chapter 6 is a better one. Blount seems to me to be missing the point of the Will to Power, e.g., Nietzsche would also see scholars and artists (possibly including Tolkien) as exemplars of a Will to Power.
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One of my problems here is that my studies of Nietzsche were 30 years ago, so it is hard to put my finger on exactly where I think Blount is off-base here. Also, Nietzsche was not so much a systematic thinker as he was a poet. He expressed himself in aphorisms and short enthusiastic exclamations, and thus contradictions abound in his writings. (It just occurred to me that both Nietzsche and Tolkien were philologists, immersed in their linguistic specialties and in the wide traditions of wisdom in their respective fields of focus: Tolkien in that of Northern cultures and Nietzsche in those of the Classical world. Contradictions can be found in both.)
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Blount sees in Tolkien’s works a religious conflict, citing supporting evidence from his letters. Nietzsche can always be used to fill in as a great villain, and he often has been so used.
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Chapter 8: Tolkien and the Nature of Evil. By Scott A. Davison.
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Davison asks if Evil is an independent force. Is the world Manichean, where Good and Evil are two equally powerful opposing forces locked in eternal war? Some Tolkien scholars think so according to Davison, but he disagrees.
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He says that evil depends on goodness, taking the “Augustinian” view and citing Tolkien to show convincingly that Tolkien, a Roman Catholic, agreed. Augustine, Davison, and Tolkien see evil as a negation or a destruction of the good. In a letter, Tolkien wrote: “In my story I do not deal with Absolute Evil. I do not think there is such a thing, since that is Zero.” (p.102) (Ayn Rand also wrote of evil as being ultimately impotent and a negation, and she wrote of evil often showing itself as a “hatred of the good for being the good.” Strange bedfellows here, indeed.)
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One of the interesting things about the evil character Sauron in TLOTR is that he thinks everyone will want to possess the Ring and thus its power. He cannot conceive of the possibility that anyone would have the motive of instead renouncing great power and completely *destroying* the Ring. In this aspect, he shows a tremendous *absence,* a great lack of understanding, wisdom and vision.
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Chapter 9: Virtue and Vice in The Lord Of The Rings. By Aeon J. Skoble.
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(Apparently Skoble is a libertarian, but this is the first I have heard of him. His bio paragraph says that he is editor of *Reason Papers.*)
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This is my favorite essay and is in itself worth the price of the whole book. Skoble gives us a robust presentation and defense of Aristotelian “virtue ethics,” arguing for its superiority to either Kantian duty ethics or utilitarian ethics by using TLOTR characters as examples.
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I think that this would be a very good intro to Aristotelian ethics for one who was totally new to it. It is a great 10-page intro to important aspects of it. (Many Randians do not seem to realize how close Aristotle’s ethics are to Ayn Rand’s in many ways.)
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Skoble writes that Aristotle has a *developmental* focus on ethics: “what we need to do is *become* virtuous.” Certain “habits of thought and action tend to move our characters … towards states Aristotle calls virtues….” Of course, other habits of thought or action tend to move us towards vices. In his section titled “Developing Good Character,” Skoble writes: “For Aristotle, moral virtues are states of character one develops which, as they become more integral to one’s being, help one to lead a happier, more fulfilled life.” (p.111)
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How do we decide, in a particular situation, how we should act? Part of a virtue-ethics is the idea that a person who has “cultivated good character” will have developed a kind of “moral wisdom” – what Aristotle called “practical reason.” (p.111) Practical reason must make judgments in “reference to a predominant goal.” … “On the Aristotelian view, there is such an overall predominant value: life, or more specifically, a flourishing or good life.” (p.112) (Those familiar with Rand’s ethics will see a distinct resemblance here.)
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Aristotle stresses that one must learn to acquire a virtuous character by performing virtuous acts. (p.112) It must be developed and be made habitual. A helpful part of this process of self-development is finding and emulating the right role models. (p.113) (This reminds me of the Buddha’s advice to choose to hang around “Noble Companions” and to avoid the influence of ignoble ones.) Skoble then looks at several characters in TLOTR to illustrate both virtuous and vicious character traits in light of virtue ethics. Aragorn and Boromir are compared; Skoble points out that Boromir, although basically decent, has a flaw of intellectual stubbornness of the kind that Aristotle had criticized by quoting Hesiod: “He who grasps everything himself is best of all; he is noble also who listens to one who has spoken well; but he who neither grasps it himself nor takes to heart what he hears from another is a useless man” (Hesiod, *Works and Days,* quoted in Aristotle, *Nicomachean Ethics,* 1095b10). Skoble’s whole discussion of Boromir as a tragic figure is very interesting. (p.116)
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In the section “Virtue Ethics in Perspective,” Skoble makes some final comparisons between virtue ethics and both Kantian and utilitarian ethics. (pp.117-119)
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(If you have not read it yet, I highly recommend Aristotle’s *Nicomachean Ethics.* Buy a small paperback copy and carry it around for those times when you can browse it. Browsing is easy because most versions have a good Topical Table of Contents, allowing you to look up subjects according to what interests you might have at the moment. After some time of familiarization, read it straight through. It is absolutely a classic in ethical thinking.)
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Part IV: Time and Mortality.
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Chapter 10: Choosing to Die: The Gift of Mortality in Middle Earth. By Bill Davis.
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I found this to be a very interesting essay, even though I do not agree completely with Davis in the end. He may be much closer to Tolkien’s view than I am.
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Davis describes many of the most common ideas about death in TLOTR very well. Elves are immortal, for as long as the world endures. In the viewpoint of the elves, the death of a human means that human’s complete annihilation, and the elves actually call this “the gift” given to men. If an elf dies in battle, he is reincarnated into a similar body with memory intact. Elves never really die, and men consider this to be a “gift” given to the elves. Each envy the other.
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Davis Discusses “Death in Middle Earth” (pp.124-7) and then gives us a good treatment of “Death on Planet Earth.” In this last section, he discusses Socrates’ view of death as well as that of the Epicurean philosopher Lucretius in his *On the Nature of Things.* Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus are also mentioned. (pp.127-9)
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In the section “Immortality in Middle Earth,” Davis covers Tolkien’s references to elvin reincarnation, and he also suggests that elves find immortality to be *boring.* (pp.129-130) In connection with this last thought, the section “Immortality on Planet Earth” brings up ideas about immortality from Eastern and Western religions and philosophies. The eternal punishment-task outlined in Camus’ *Myth of Sisyphus* is mentioned, along with Wowbanger the Infinitely Prolonged in *Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.* Wowbanger is immortal and is so horribly bored by this condition that he institutes the personal project of insulting every single person in the universe, one at a time, in alphabetical order. When he shows up, he ascertains that you are the right person on his list, then he rudely insults you, checks off your name on his vast list, and then sets off to find the next name. (pp.130-133)
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The most relevant case in the actual TLOTR story is Arwen’s love for Aragorn, who is a mortal man. Arwen is a rare case of being half-elvin, from one elf parent and one human parent, and she must ultimately choose either to be immortal as an elf and forever leave Middle Earth, going over the sea to the ancestral elvin realm in the West, or she can give up her immortality so she can live one mortal life in Middle Earth with Aragorn. This is high romance. In *The Silmarillion* there is the similar story of the love between Beren and Luthien.
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Chapter 11: Tolkien, Modernism, and the Importance of Tradition. By Joe Kraus.
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Kraus writes that “the heroes of TLOTR often rescue themselves because they remember something important that their enemies have forgotten.” … “They have studied history, lore, tactics, languages, and geography, and they know as much as they can about whatever it is that they are attempting. They have their trusty swords and their quick wits with them all of the time, but they have also done their homework. Thus, Tolkien seems to tell us, knowledge is a crucial part of what it takes to be a hero.” (p.137-8)
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Kraus argues that one part of Tolkien’s vision in writing TLOTR was “to imagine a world where scholarship and respect for tradition provide real and tangible power.” Tolkien, as a professor, studied and taught ancient Northern European languages and “was committed to the values of the humanities.” (p.138) To Tolkien, “being heroic ties into being scholarly.”
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Kraus writes that Tolkien saw immense despair in a modern world that has rejected tradition. This despair is shown in TLOTR by Denethor and Saruman, who both were great scholars but have now disregarded their learned wisdom, followed false new hopes or visions, and have succumbed to despair. (pp.141-3)
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(Is Kraus arguing for conservativism? Or is he arguing for perennialism? A perennialist is one who values certain particular traditions chiefly because he sees true perennial value in them rather than just valuing them because they are old and traditional. I prefer being a “perennialist,” because I see value being timeless as value, whether it be old or radically brand new.)
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Chapter 12: Tolkien’s Green Time: Environmental Themes in TLOTR. By Andrew Light.
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By “green time,” Light means a perspective on the natural world that involves a tremendously long view of time, an evolutionary time-scale or longer. The ents and Tom Bombadil represent this perspective in the story. Light talks about the niches that the various free peoples of Middle Earth love the most: elves love the forests, dwarves love the mountains and the underground places, and hobbits love The Shire.
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Elves are immortal, thus they have the long view. Even such an ancient one as Treebeard says that “The Elves cured us [the ents] of dumbness.” Light suggests that this may mean the elves nurtured “a capacity of reason and eventually of speech” in the ents. (p.154) In a letter, Tolkien wrote: “The elves represent … the artistic, aesthetic, and purely scientific aspects of the Humane Nature raised to a higher level than is actually seen in Men.” (p.155)
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Part V: Ends and Endings.
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Chapter 13: Providence and the Dramatic Unity of TLOTR. By Thomas Hibbs.
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Hibbs argues, with good textual evidence, that in his stories “Tolkien manages to suggest the working of a higher, benevolent power, a providential orchestration of events.” (p.167) Hibbs launches into a discussion of the traditional philosophical problems with the idea of providence. Then he proceeds to argue that “Tolkien offers a dramatic demonstration of the reality of human freedom and action and of the way patience and compassion is used to overcome evil.” (p.168) The role of Gollum is considered as an instrument of providence. Also, the case of Boromir and his changes at his end are examined.
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Hibbs writes that “Gandalf explains that while we can’t always control life’s storms, we can control how we react to the inclement weather.” (p.172) (Said like an ancient Greek Stoic.)
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Kant’s (Enlightenment) view of nature being “disenchanted” is contrasted with Tolkien’s fictional view, where “the entirety of nature is not just enchanted but is permeated with reason and moral sense.” (pp.172-3) Hibbs then dismisses any reading of a Manichean vision in Tolkien, instead going with Augustine: evil has no real existence because it is merely an absence, a privation of the good. (p.174)
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Chapter 14: Talking Trees and Walking Mountains: Buddhist and Taoist Themes in TLOTR. By Jennifer L. McMahon and B. Steve Csaki.
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I had higher hopes for this essay, but it is still okay. The authors seek to “address the themes of sentience in non-human entities, man’s relationship with nature, the importance of the master and student relationship, and the balance between good and evil.” (p.179) (Yet none of these themes have had much relevance to me in my four decades of interest in and study of Eastern philosophies and religions, except for my “relationship with nature,” which is that I simply consider myself at home there.)
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The ents obviously cover the sentience part. As for sentience in non-human things in Eastern thought, the authors remind us: “This is particularly true of Japanese Buddhist sects which have incorporated some of the animistic elements of Shinto.” (p.181) (The Shinto belief that certain beautiful locales in nature – e.g., a rocky place, a streambed, a hilltop, a tree or a shoreline – may have their own spirit, or “kami,” has always had an aesthetic resonance with me in my enjoyment of nature, but I never interpret this as a possession of “sentience” on the part of the place or things.)
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As for master and student, and the mentoring process, they point out that sometimes the right master may seem to be unlikely. E.g., Zen master Dogen left Japan to find instruction in China, and he learned profound lessons from a Ch’an monastery’s cook whom he ran into on the docks. In TLOTR, Sam is sometimes the wise master that Frodo needs. Also, Gandalf, Elrond and Aragorn share their vast wisdom with the hobbits. (pp.185-188)
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As for a balance between good and evil, the Taoist yin/yang balance is discussed.
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Chapter 15: Sam and Frodo’s Excellent Adventure: Tolkien’s Journey Motif. By J. Lenore Wright.
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“Not all those who wander are lost.” (p.195) (A quote from Bilbo Baggins, my all-time favorite character in Tolkien. I always saw him as a fellow wanderer.)
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Wright talks about journey motifs: the journey out of the Cave into the light in Plato’s *Republic.* Augustine’s *Confessions,* depicting his spiritual journey from pagan Rome to Manichaeism to Academic Skepticism and finally to St. Ambrose. (pp.194-5)
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She reminds us that Descartes’ scientific journeys of discovery led him to turn inward, in his words, “to undertake studies within my self too and to use all the powers of my mind in choosing the paths I should follow.” Frodo and his fellow hobbits transform themselves throughout their journey, and they realize Nietzsche’s advice to “become who you are.” (pp.196-7)
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In their personal transformations, Gandalf, Aragorn and Sam all have some kind of name changes, which is an important journey motif, as in the great Chinese tale, *Journey to the West,* where “Monkey” eventually becomes known as a “Buddha Victorious in Strife.” (p.198)
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Sam and Frodo are Nietzschean “Yea-sayers,” who welcome life despite its burdens. But Smeagol and Saruman are “Nay-sayers,” becoming “inauthentic” in Heidegger’s terms. (p.199) Sam and Frodo are also pilgrims on a “Quest,” and they need guides such as Gandalf and Aragorn. Frodo, much like Dante moving with the guidance of Virgil through Hell, stumbles, faints and struggles against the spiritual weight of the Ring. (p.201)
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Chapter 16: Happy Endings and Religious Hope: TLOTR as an Epic Fairy Tale. By John J. Davenport. (Final essay in this collection, and one of my favorites.)
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This is a great essay, the kind that opens new avenues of thought. The title sums it up pretty well. It took me about three readings of this essay before I could really integrate it. Although I have a lot of major religious/philosophical differences with Tolkien (and Davenport), I think Davenport’s essay is a very important one when thinking about Tolkien’s works.
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Davenport starts by saying that some readers see TLOTR as an entertaining adventure, while others see it as a Christian allegory. He says: “I will argue instead that Tolkien conceived his masterpiece as an epic fairy tale with a kind of religious significance.” … “I will look at Tolkien’s theory of the fairy tale and his Arthurian romance model for the happy ending in TLOTR.” (p.204) I found what follows to be very interesting.
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Noting the long-standing critical debate about whether or not TLOTR is a fundamentally religious work, Davenport points out that Tolkien’s work is closer to Northern European mythology in many ways.
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In a footnote, Davenport writes: “…I would argue that Tolkien’s work is also deeply inspired by the Arthurian legends and the larger cycle of British national mythology. The very first story Tolkien wrote about his fictional world, ‘The Fall of Gondolin’, has clear links to the Fall of King Arthur.” (p.205)
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Davenport draws heavily upon Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories” (which was also cited earlier in this volume in Ch. 3 by Milbank and in Ch. 4 by Bassham) and claims it is an essential essay for understanding Tolkien. Rather than being stories for children, in Davenport’s words, genuine fairy-stories for Tolkien are a form of “serious literary art in which nature appears as a ‘Perilous Realm’, the world of ‘Faerie’.” (p.207-8)
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Tolkien always insisted in his letters on the importance of his theory of fairy stories to his work. Davenport mentions other good examples of this type of fairy story: the original *Perseus and the Gorgon* and *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.* (p.208)
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Tolkien coins a term, “eucatastrophe,” for the kind of happy ending in a fairy story that appears right in the middle of apparent catastrophe, a kind of joyous “turn” in the story. Davenport writes: “[Tolkien] conceives tragedy as the true form and highest function of drama, and eucatastrophe as the true form and highest function of fairy-tale.” (p.210)
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Talking about the New Testament stories of the Resurrection, Tolkien says, “The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories.” (p.211) Davenport says that the Gospels have a eucatastrophe – i.e., the Resurrection -- that holds out more direct hope than the more indirect ones of most fairy-stories.
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Davenport very convincingly argues that the medieval tale of *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight* is one that “…Tolkien studied closely and used in creating Frodo.” (p.211) Later Davenport writes that “…Gawain is Tolkien’s primary model for Frodo.” (p.212)
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The Green Knight is a variant of the “green man” nature spirit in ancient Celtic myth. (p.211) He is immensely powerful, and it looks certain that Gawain will die by his blade. But a eucatastrophe occurs, a “turn” in the story that saves Gawain from death, although Gawain receives a scar from the contest that he will carry for the rest of his life. (p.212)
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Davenport reminds us that Frodo, too, will receive a scar, the loss of a finger, during the eucatastrophe that occurs at a climactic moment in his story, saving him from near certain doom. (p.212) In Tolkien’s *The Silmarillion,* Beren’s quest for a Silmaril results in a similar scarring, the loss of a hand. (p.214) (I will also point out that Robert Bly’s book, *Iron John,* investigates fairy tales and emphasizes both the fictional and existential importance of wounds and scars in the journey to true manhood.)
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Davenport writes: “Tolkien’s primary goal in TLOTR was to create a fantasy for our time with the same eucatastrophic power that Gawain’s fantastic tale had for fifteenth-century Britons, and this is what gives his trilogy its encompassing religious mood.” (p.213)
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Davenport writes that, while the unfinished *The Silmarillion* was designed to be an epic, “…TLOTR is meant to *combine* the epic quest narrative with the eucatastrophic (or indirectly eschatological) significance of the true faerie tale.” (p.215) This combination had never been done before in British or Germanic mythology.
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Davenport then catalogs many of the eucatastrophes within TLOTR, ending with Aragorn’s act of “turning”: turning around to find the sapling of Nimloth, the White Tree of Numenor, that itself has a pedigree going all the way back to the earliest of days. (p.218)
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[End of my reviews of this volume’s essays.]
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After-notes by reviewer:
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I had been wondering for many decades and never really understood why it was that Tolkien could be so beloved by many I knew who are Christians. It seemed exceedingly odd and inappropriate to me, because in my experience Tolkien was a terrific hit mainly among neo-pagans I knew or knew of, many of whom are certain that Tolkien was one of the major influences in the 20th century revival of Paganism in the West. But I think many of the essays in this volume help explain the situation to me in some degree. TLOTR is a pre-Christian tale modeled on the very ancient pagan North, but some of Tolkien’s Roman Catholicism still does come through (including the Aristotelianism that Aquinas had synthesized into the Catholic tradition).
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One of my main disappointments with TLOTR has always been the episode where I felt that Frodo “dropped the ball” at a critical moment, thus he fell a notch or two in his heroic stature in my mind. The tiny hobbit, who heroically declared “I will take the Ring” on the Quest, later fell somewhat short of my expectations of a true hero. But Davenport’s discussion of Tolkien’s eucatastrophic vision of the fairy tale explains this all very well regarding the aesthetic purpose of the entire story. Tolkien – although being a 20th century writer -- is not really in the Romantic traditions of heroism that I so love and prefer, as were developed in the 19th and 20th centuries.
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Yet I love *The Hobbit,* *TLOTR* and *The Silmarillion.* I think I like them so much because of their sense of a history, as well as the poetry in them, and the nature-aesthetic that Tolkien makes so real. There are also heroes aplenty, in the roles of Sam, Strider, and many, many more. It really is an epic fairy tale.
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-Zenwind.

Ice Skating in the Swamp

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I used to ice skate a lot in my younger days, when winters were so cold. But the greatest experiences I ever had skating were a series of solo explorations on skates into the big swamp just east of Sugar Grove’s borough limits during one of those frigid winters in the early 1960s. I was anywhere from 10 to 13 years old at that time, and I saw things in that winter swampland I’ve never seen before or since.
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I had tried to explore this swamp in earlier years in the summertime, and it was almost impenetrable because of both the dense thickets of brush and also the deep, sticky mud in the meandering streams and pools that would go over your knees and stop you in your tracks. My friends and I could only get into the outer margins of the swamp during the warmer parts of the year, never into its heart. But in the cold of winter the watercourses actually became my trails.
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I had just received a pair of boy’s figure skates for Christmas, as I had out-grown my old hockey skates. Christmas afternoon I went back to the little stream going through our north pasture, Brand’s Creek, and tried them out. The frozen stream surface was rough from wind ripples on the water freezing into ridges, and the little gradual waterfalls now became horrendously fast downgrades that made me rocket down along the stream’s eastward course. It was almost like skiing on ice. After falling hard many times and finally hitting a couple of barbed wire fences that separated pastures and crossed over the creek, I gave up for the day, skated back upstream against the wind and went home to lick my wounds.
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But before returning to the farmhouse I glanced at Brand’s Creek’s course as it went eastward far beyond my day’s short excursion and on into the great swamp. I knew that our creek met the bigger Stillwater Creek somewhere after going into that swamp.
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There was a challenge taunting me here. My father had always told of Doc Grant once skating down the frozen Stillwater Creek from downtown Sugar Grove to some point far downstream. I am not sure how far Doc skated, but skating downstream would take you eventually through Busti, NY and end when the Stillwater meets the Conewango at Frewsburg. I was not a good enough skater to go any of those long miles, but I thought that I would be able at least to skate Brand’s Creek to the swamp on my next try.
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On another day that week I skated Brand’s Creek from our pasture through Carl Allen’s north pasture and Francis Thompson’s north pasture all the way east to the swamp. I didn’t hit a single fence, because instead I just hit the deck and slid under them.
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One odd hazard I faced was double ice layers, caused by initial freezing of a higher water level followed by a drop in water level and then the hard solid freeze of a lower level. I would suddenly, without warning, break through an upper ice level – which was terrifying – and be stopped by the lower, solid level. Once I slid down between the two layers, which were not much more than a foot apart, and I stopped with ice above me and below me. I felt stuck, I could hear the water gurgling below me, and I was in panic, really scared. I could not elbow or claw my way back upstream to exit the hole I had fallen through. At last I discovered the virtues of the front teeth of figure skates, and I used them for grip to struggle out.
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Continuing downstream, skating down even the gradual incline of such a small stream was frighteningly fast, especially with the wind at my back pushing me on. I fell many times, but I eventually reached the point where the creek enters the swamp. I had to give up and return home because of the extreme wind-chill and because of my numb fingers and toes. The return against grade and wind seemed endless.
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After returning home and thawing out, I announced my plans for skating into the unknown of the swamp, and my mother was positively horrified with worry, especially because I always went alone. But my father reasoned: “Ice is usually solid if you have had three or four sub-zero [Fahrenheit] nights in a row.” That was good enough for me. We had had prolonged sub-zero weather for almost a week, with temperatures minus-10, minus-15 or lower most every night. So I was determined to try it. The things I put my dear mother through.
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New Years Day was minus-10 at 9:00 AM with a stiff wind when I again went down Brand’s Creek to the swamp. When I crossed into the swamp on skates I got tangled trying to get through a barbed wire fence and I kept tripping in the underbrush, tree roots and grasses when the front teeth on my figure skates snagged. I finally found a small stream in the swamp and started exploring.
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The ice was immediately smoother, more level and more forgiving, because the trees and brush had shielded it from the wind. It was like glass with only a dusting of snow. This was the first time I had ever skated on smooth ice, and I was ecstatic. The little hummocks of grass and sod that would form a sort of stepping stone of dryness in summer travel were now obstacles that would trip me. I had a little open U-shaped area in the fork of this small stream were I could skate fast, and any falls would not be too rough. I skated back and forth on this area, faster each time. I remember once falling at great speed and sliding face-first across a broad area into the frozen grassy stream bank, and I was laughing so hard I could hardly stand back up.
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Later, as I was skating as fast as I could along my little course, a rabbit suddenly jumped out of hiding from somewhere among the grass hummocks, and he ran away from me skittering and slipping on the ice. He was having a hard time getting any traction, but I was already moving fast in his direction so that I was actually gaining on him. Now I feel bad for chasing the poor little guy, who was probably scared silly. I don’t know what I would have done if I had caught up to him, but the situation resolved itself quickly. The previously open stream was now turning into less and less ice with more and more grass hummocks and trees. As the rabbit jumped unto these little islands of dry land he gained traction and momentum, while I was dodging them, trying to keep my skates on ice and trying not to trip. The rabbit got further ahead, I finally tripped on the grass and crashed into a tree root, and the rabbit disappeared into the woods. Good for him.
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I visited the swamp again the next weekend. Again, it was sub-zero cold with even more extreme wind-chill. I explored further beyond my last point and found traces of a little tributary creek coming in from slightly upstream. I wound my way through sketchy ice patches in a mostly grassy stream-course, often having to walk over uneven hummocky dry ground, which made my ankles ache. I was ready to give up and go back until I saw a clearing up ahead and made my way to it.
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Entering this clearing was one of the most unique memories I have of my youth. Ahead of me was a beaver dam. It was low and broad, maybe 30 yards across. The area of ice dammed up in the pond above it was about the size of half of a football field. On one part of the pond was a beaver lodge. The dam of sticks was almost 3 feet higher than my stream level, and I found that I could use my figure skates’ front teeth to tip-toe up the frozen-solid weave of sticks making up the dam.
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Reaching up to this level of the broad frozen beaver pond, I was skating on the biggest area of ice I’d ever been on before. But I was feeling very cold now. This clearing in the swamp’s usual forest cover of trees and brush allowed the wind to reach me, and I was shivering and exhausted. I skated over to the beaver lodge, but all was still and silent there.
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Determined to explore a bit more, I skated in the upstream direction as the pond thinned out into little streams. Then I came upon another upper beaver dam. The dam was smaller, only about a foot and a half high. I front-pointed up it with my skates’ teeth and skated around a bit on this smaller area, but it was even more exposed to the wind. I now think that I was at that time suffering hypothermia from the wind-chill and my mind was getting sluggish.
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I don’t remember much about skating back except that I took a bad fall trying to go down the upper dam. By the time I got back to the lower dam I figured out that I must turn around and go down backwards while facing the dam, kicking my skates’ teeth into the wood of the dam much like modern ice climbers do. I do remember a painful return trip after leaving the forested swamp and going into the open fields again while skating back up Brand’s Creek, upstream and against the wind. I was frozen, with aching fingers and toes, and delirious. The open fire in the fireplace at home never seemed so comforting.
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I never made it back to the swamp that winter, because we had a January thaw and heavy rains that ruined the ice.
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The swamp was usually a remote, unknown and protected world, hard to reach. But the miracle of that winter’s hard-freeze allowed me a brief moment to peek into its inner mysteries. Truly a winter wonderland.
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-Zenwind.