In The War for Middle-Earth, historian Joseph Loconte has provided an exhaustively researched and insightful examination of the lives and works of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien in the context of World War II and the decade preceding it. He discussed the ideological water in which Lewis and Tolkien swam and worked, the interbellum and World War II history of Great Britain, the friendship and writerly encouragement between Lewis and Tolkien (and the other Inklings, but these two centrally), and the way the world events from the First World War through the rise of totalitarianism and the Second World War shaped their imaginations and work. To borrow Barbara Tuchman’s phrase, gazing in the “distant mirror” of history through this book felt both emotionally moving and ideologically important. It helped me see my own time more clearly and charted a course for thoughtful, creative Christians living in another tumultuous age. I would shelve it between the works of the Inklings and the works of Francis Schaeffer. It built on the foundation Loconte laid in New York Times best-seller A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and the Great War.

The best-known fictional works of Lewis and Tolkien bore the mark of the wars on the authors. Lord of the Rings was substantially written during World War II, and the fellowship—like the British, especially from Dunkirk on—fought valiantly against an evil existential threat with no certainty of victory. The British fought on against Italian and German fascism, even with a very real risk of obliteration from the air, of invasion by sea, and of mass starvation on an island suddenly cut off from the resources of her allies and Commonwealth. Like the fellowship, they fought on because they believed they fought a wickedness so great that it must be resisted, even if they died in the attempt. It is easy today, especially from North America, to underestimate that mortal peril to civilians and British civilization when looking back, already knowing the outcome.

The literary epics Lewis and Tolkien loved, the tales like Beowulf which forged their own moral imaginations, convinced them that modern Christian myth-making (“mythopoeia”) could kindle courage in a disillusioned and hopeless generation. From their own experiences of transformation through beloved stories, from Norse legend to the Aeneid to Beowulf to Paradise Lost to George Macdonald, they knew that great stories could be levers with which to shift imaginations and affections. After all, conversations with Tolkien and Hugo Dyson about the supreme Myth to which all lesser stories point proved crucial in C. S. Lewis’s conversion to faith in Christ. This is not to say that they made stories intended primarily for moral instruction; rather, the underlying values the stories embodied portrayed the good and true as beautiful and desirable and unmasked the bad and false as ugly and repellent.

Into the prevailing climate of materialism, they unflinchingly insisted on an unseen reality greater and more important than what can be seen, felt, and measured.

Into the climate of religious doubt, they pointed to the Creator as the source of hope, goodness, and rescue for our bent and broken humanity.

Into a climate of eugenics, they portrayed a world where survival depended on the least and littlest of the peoples of Middle Earth and even the brutal and treacherous Gollum deserved life and compassion, whereas genetic optimization produced the monstrous super-orcs of Saruman, and only the worst villains of the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments (NICE) gave support to eugenic experiments. In That Hideous Strength, the corrupt Lord Feverstone, one of the architects of NICE’s planned society, echoed real-world eugenicists when he advocated for “‘sterilisation of the unfit, liquidation of backward races (we don’t want any dead weights), selective breeding. Then real education, including pre-natal education. By real education I mean one that has no ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ nonsense. A real education makes the patient what it wants infallibly: whatever he or his parents try to do about it’” (C.S. Lewis, The Space Trilogy, 473). Bucking the trend, even among public-facing Christians, Lewis critiqued this more directly in The Abolition of Man.

Into a climate of racism, they offered the beauty of reconciliation and deep friendship between a dwarf and an elf in The Lord of the Rings, and the harmonious cooperation between the three primary sentient life forms on Malacandra in Out of the Silent Planet.

Into a climate of totalitarianism, they presented the wonder of humble, sacrificial leadership in Aragorn and Ransom and the need of diverse gifts, united in one purpose, if good were to triumph. Sauron, Weston the Un-Man, the White Witch of Narnia, and NICE, on the other hand, showed the will to power in all its ugly, soul-destroying evil.

Into a climate of atheistic evolution, they painted pictures of a radiant, flourishing, personal creation filled with song and color.

Into a climate of peace-at-any-price isolationism and appeasement, they upheld the old beliefs in a true moral good worth defending, even at the cost of life itself, and true moral evil so grave that it must be opposed, though one should die in the attempt.

Into a climate of disillusion and dissolution, they held out hope like starlight captured in a glass and displayed the beauty of lives lived in honor, humility, courage, and sacrificial service. They pointed us toward faith that eucatastrophe is possible, even when hope seems lost, even if death itself must work backward to bring about that sudden, joyful turn of events.

Lewis’s space trilogy was produced in this furnace of war and the dual totalitarian ideologies of fascism and communism, both based on “the will to power.” Lewis wrote it as a counter-narrative to the atheistic and nihilist science fiction of H. G. Wells. Lewis also mentored and encouraged the evacuees lodging at his home, the same evacuees who provided the germ of the idea of the first Narnian story. Quotes from one evacuee whose career course he redirected and from both dons’ former students brought their teaching work to life in Loconte’s book.

In addition to the imaginative works, Lewis began his Christian apologetic work and honed his ability to communicate to lay persons of varied educational backgrounds as a direct result of World War II. For example, listening to a radio broadcast of a spell-binding speech by Hitler sparked Lewis’s idea for The Screwtape Letters. The essay “Learning in Wartime” began as a sermon to an Oxford congregation and made it clear that war was not the greatest danger they all faced; rather, fear, sinful neglect of duty, and unfaithfulness to God were. The talks which became Mere Christianity were requested by the head of the BBC to fortify the British with the moral courage and eternal hope they needed to resist at great cost instead of surrender. Revisiting that book now surprised me with the frequent use of wartime imagery and mentions. (How had I not noticed that?) The Abolition of Man began as wartime talks for the University of Durham. Lewis also traveled the length of Britain sharing Christian hope with the very young airmen of the Royal Air Force, men whom Lewis knew may not have another opportunity to hear the gospel message before flying into death for King and country. If that were not enough, he also agreed to a student’s request that he preside over the new Oxford Socratic Club.

On the other hand, only Lewis’s enthusiasm and “indefatigable” collegial criticism spurred perfectionist Tolkien to stop revising/rewriting and finish The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien acknowledged to Walter Hooper, “‘You know, C. S. Lewis was such a boy, he had to have a story. And that story, The Lord of the Rings, was written to keep him quiet!’” (Kindle location 3623). While neither work was an allegory—Tolkien made no bones about that—the latter chapters of The Hobbit and the whole of Lord of the Rings were haunted by the darkness threatening the real world of the author during the writing and the terror he had already lived through in the Great War.

The aerial attacks of the Nazgul…

the treachery of Saruman…

the will to power embodied by Saruman, Sauron, and, in incipient form, in Boromir…

the demand for courage against an unbeatable foe because ceasing to fight would be worse than ceasing to live…

the darkness and lean rations of besieged Gondor and of Sam and Frodo on their trek to Mordor…

the constant second-guessing: whom to trust, which path to take, which priority to address first…

the temptation to trust the strength of the mighty more than the virtue of the cause…

the feeling that the survival of all Middle Earth came down to quite ordinary hobbits from a little homely place called the Shire…

the need for real, deep, sometimes unlikely friendship in order to carry on fighting…

the unlikely rewards of showing compassion, by the hobbits to Gollum, for instance, and by Faramir to Sam and Frodo…

And exchanges like this:

“Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again.”

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. And already, Frodo, our time is beginning to look black. The Enemy is fast becoming very strong. His plans are far from ripe, I think, but they are ripening. We shall be hard put to it.” (J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, 54).

When else in the twentieth century would these themes have been more resonant with the popular imagination or more at the forefront of an author’s mind? Lewis went so far as to say of the finished work, “‘So much of your whole life, so much of our joint life, so much of the war, so much that seemed to be slipping away spurlos [without a trace] into the past, is now, in a sort, made permanent’” (Kindle location 3623).

Loconte added,

It is an extraordinary thing to say: Through the use of his imagination, Tolkien captured something of the quality of their common life and the moral and spiritual truths that gave it meaning. He accomplished this only after years of struggle, battling doubts and discouragement, amid the ravages of the most horrifying war in history. Here is what friendship can achieve when it reaches for a high purpose and is watered by the streams of loyalty, sacrifice, and love (Kindle location 3623).

Consequently, even though The Lord of the Rings was not an allegory of World War II, life in England during the war provided the terroir in which the seeds of the story sprouted and bore fruit. So much of the power of the trilogy lay in the steadily growing sense of doom, juxtaposed against the sweetness of friendship and surprising interludes of grace, all the way to the sudden, joyous eucatastrophe when hope seemed extinguished. The courage, heartbreak, hunger, exhaustion, grief, and determination pervading the trilogy came from the pen of someone who tasted those things himself. The unfolding chapters sustained the Inklings as they were being written and discussed, and I expect they also sustained Tolkien’s sons on the front lines as they received the chapters in progress in their father’s letters.

It astonished me how committed the Inklings were to bi-weekly meetings throughout World War II and how prolific Lewis and Tolkien were during this harrowing time, in addition to their full-time teaching responsibilities, family demands, illnesses, and assorted war work on the home front. From 1939 to 1945, in addition to the works already mentioned, Lewis completed The Problem of Pain, The Great Divorce, the essay “The Inner Ring,” and the talks which became Preface to Paradise Lost. Tolkien completed the first draft of Lord of the Rings, delivered the address which became the long essay “On Fairy-Stories,” and wrote Leaf by Niggle and more Letters from Father Christmas.

The image of these middle-aged literary men, all veterans of the Great War, wending their ways through Oxford, manuscripts-in-progress in hand, to a Tuesday morning at the pub was beautiful. Envisioning them navigating cobbled streets in blacked-out nights, carrying gas masks as well as manuscripts, ears alert to air raid sirens, so that they could sit together in Lewis’s rooms to read, encourage, and critique each others’ words—this was exquisite. “Learning in Wartime” applied to Oxford dons too.

Due to paper rationing, Tolkien had to resort to writing his books on blank pages left at the end of students’ exam papers or as a palimpsest on the graded pages themselves. Tolkien and Lewis both adapted and taught condensed curricula for young men soon to ship out, in addition to their usual teaching duties. Tolkien served as an air raid warden, watching through the nights for German planes and fires and making night patrols to enforce blackouts, curfews, taking shelter during air raids, and carrying of gas masks. In addition to public speaking, Lewis served in the Home Guard. They also both engaged in wide-reaching correspondence with friends, religious leaders, colleagues, and family members. (This included two of Tolkien’s sons and Lewis’s brother Warnie, all serving in the British armed forces.)

What a remarkable look at a remarkable pair during a remarkable time in history. The survey of prevailing philosophies in the west between the world wars was exceptional in clarity and breadth. Loconte’s arguments against blaming the rise of totalitarianism on the Treaty of Versailles would merit further consideration. The skillful use of primary sources and interviews with the professors’ students added welcome color and charm. The War for Middle Earth would enrich the reading lives of those interested in the two writers discussed, of course, but also those interested in the history of ideas, the history of Great Britain in the 1930s and 1940s, and literary criticism (i.e., books about books).

Today’s Christian creators can learn much from Lewis and Tolkien about the consciously countercultural leverage of imagination to effect ideological change. Disillusion and dissolution need not have the final word in our day any more than in theirs. There are still (and will always be, until the Lord returns) evils worthy of resistance, even with no apparent chance of victory. Let us press on in fighting for the good, true, and beautiful, for Frodo and the Shire, for Narnia and the North. Professors Lewis and Tolkien (and this book about them) have shown us the way.

My thanks to NetGalley and Thomas Nelson for an ARC of this book. (I have since purchased my own copy.)

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