A Unique Start for Tolkien and Lewis
As we are approaching the end of our six-week course, we are thinking about how to come up with striking beginnings and endings. So it was timely that our special guest expert was Joseph Loconte, documentary maker and academic, author of A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and the Great War. Schoolboys in 1911 had no idea what lay just around the corner. We saw an exclusive extract of Joe’s documentary which reminded us of the poignancy of the schoolboy club Tolkien formed heading straight for the trenches. Few of his friends survived. This was the horrendous start to adult life for his generation that also formed the central drama of the film Tolkien (2019), which brought the influence of war on his fiction vividly to life with black riders mingled with war landscapes. Yet it was another film that I thought of: the Oscar-winning 1917, a fascinating film not only for its technique of making the experience a breathless continuous shot, but also brought home in another way the tragedy of the friendships that bloomed so briefly under impossible circumstances. There’s a lot a writer can learn from 1917 about surprising beginnings, endings and how to treat a familiar subject in a unique way.
With Joe, we discussed how Tolkien and Lewis both had a different take on heroism than their contemporaries writing in the 1920s and 1930s. Both were veterans of the trenches yet they managed to maintain their belief of the goodness of the individual facing the overwhelming odds of battle - faith in the struggle itself - whilst being highly critical of those who sought power. Joe reminded us that there is a lot still to find out about the influence of the Second World War in particular and its influence on the writing of The Lord of the Rings.
As creative writers, though, we were free to speculate so we discussed Frodo as a kind of shell-shocked soldier, and what difference it would have made to the book if it had been written during the Vietnam War. Endings in Tolkien aren’t ‘happy ever after to the end of his days’ - though that is what Bilbo would like to write. Characters return changed and struggle to fit back in, just as many war veterans found after 1918 and 1945. Perhaps that is one of the marks of great fantasy writing that the ending wears the scars of the journey the characters have been on.
Hopefully, the participants on this course are leaving changed but not scarred! We certainly have those who wish it could go on for longer - which I take as a positive sign. Friendships are beginning to spark and we hope to keep everyone in touch via our Mighty Networks site where we’ve been putting the course material and other writing prompts and inspirations. I’m learning as much as I’m tutoring!
The next online course kicks off on 5th October 2021 and enrolment is now open. If you want to find to more, email us via the contact form and we’ll send out the details.
