A Hobbit A Wardrobe And A Great War by Loconte

A Book Review

I'm a huge fan of CS Lewis. I'm unashamed about that.

This is an excellent book that analyses CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien's friendship. It was the kind of friendship that changed the world!

It was the friendship that produced books that sold 200 Million copies for CS Lewis and 600 million books for Tolkien. (According to some estimates)

But what shaped this friendship? What made these men become friends and how did they influence each other? That's what this book is about!

The author uses a sweet narrative to pick up their lives from the First World War to their death. A major achievement of this book is that it describes the intellectual, philosophical, and moral climate of each of the periods in these two authors' life. This innovation gives us new insights into the originality, or rather, distinctness of these two authors.

For instance, the first world war started on the heels of an era that believed "progressivism" was vindicated. Progress alone had become a religion and everyone should follow it. Intellectuals were even proclaiming that we have become better humans by our own effort, science and technology had triumphed! Then the First World War came. Mankind was at war with itself. What made the First World War unique was that for the first time, mankind had weapons that could kill thousands in seconds. Sadly, that's exactly what happened! The nations of Europe used the very tools that a few weeks back were hailed as advancements to kill each other, by the end of four years millions had died.

A war lieutenant wrote "Humanity is mad. It must be mad to do what it is doing."

Then came the dissolution of intellectuals after the war. They could not grasp what had happened. Then many of them threw away their religion. When TS Elliot was baptized, the wider consensus amongst intellectuals is that he had become lost.

Why is this history important? This is what shaped Lewis and Tolkien. Their writings became bulwarks that explained Christian thinking in relation to this history. They were both active in the war. They both were at the war front and experienced war. It changed them, forever, for the better!

Their writings became an explanation for what the Christian message is, they used fiction to depict the battle of life, not on the cosmic level but using simple individuals to show what humans can do, but not just that, they insisted, through their writings, that there must be another force that will help humans. In the case of the Narnians, it was Aslan. In Middle Earth, it was Gandalf.

The worlds they created showed the fallibility of humans, eating Turkish delight and Frodo refusing to drop the ring at the last scene, and showed human courage. Their arguments are counter to everything else. They did not claim that human beings are extremely or extremely destructive. They showed that human beings are capable of good by the Grace of God! They showed that there is redemption for mankind. They showed that despite the enormous challenges that we will face, there is hope that good will triumph in the end. This is different from the activist optimism, this is a hope driven by the realization that we need another help.

Also, they described friendships, which they both enjoyed, in their works.

It was Lewis who listened to Tolkien's work while he was still writing. He was the one who pushed Tolkien to complete his work. On the other hand, it was Tolkien who fought to get Lewis a promotion. He was a big influence on Lewis becoming a Christian. They spent many evenings as "The Inklings" listening to each other, criticizing each other, commending each other, and enjoying the presence of one another! Theirs was a friendship we should be jealous of.

When Lewis died, Tolkien wrote of him;

“The unpayable debt” he owed to Lewis, he said, was his “sheer encouragement”—over many years—to keep on. “He was for long my only audience,” Tolkien explained. “Only from him did I ever get the idea that my ‘stuff’ could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more I should never have brought The L. of the R. to a conclusion.”

The sweetness of it all made Lewis wonder at some point; “What I owe them is incalculable,” he acknowledged. “Is any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a good fire?”

Tolkien even nominated CS Lewis for the Nobel Prize in Literature!

I am quoting directly from the book here;

"Against the temper of their times, these authors dared to reclaim some of the older beliefs and virtues. Their common Christian faith had much to do with this, but perhaps no more so than their mutual love of mythic and romantic literature. As Lewis described it, they were “both soaked” in Homer, Beowulf, Norse mythology, medieval romance, and George MacDonald’s fairy tales. The result was a bond of loyalty and comradeship that transformed both their lives. “Friendship makes prosperity more shining,” wrote Cicero, “and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it.”

Their experience reminds us that great friendship is a gift born of adversity: it is made possible by the common struggle against the world’s darkness. “Most gracious host, it was said to me by Elrond Halfelven that I should find friendship upon the way, secret and unlooked for,” Frodo tells Faramir. “Certainly I have looked for no such friendship as you have shown. To have found it turns evil to great good.”

Though their friendship experienced periods of frustration and strain, it persevered to the end. “This feels like an axe-blow near the roots,” Tolkien wrote after Lewis’s death in November 1963. “We owed each a great debt to the other, and that tie, with the deep affection that it begot, remained.”

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

May we enjoy such friendships during our lifetime.

PS: This book was a gift to me from a father, who is a true friend! Forever grateful for the gift of friendship.