Lord of the Rings: Time, Action and Choices

In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, among the many fascinating areas for further thoughts and exploration is that of time, and the details of the action and the overall timeline. As noted in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, this was something that Tolkien, ever the perfectionist, spent some amount of time on: going back and re-checking the dates and making corrections as needed, to correctly synchronize the action, especially in The Two Towers and Return of the King, with the multiple different storylines covered in alternating chapters as well as alternating books between Frodo and Sam and everyone else.

The official timeline of the action is found in the last part of Appendix B of Return of the King .  This website has a “Lord of the Rings Timeline,” similar to the Appendix B data but with a few date errors.  This page in a Reddit forum gives a suggested “chronological reading” of the chapters in The Two Towers and Return of the King, though it differs somewhat from the actual sequence in Appendix B.

One thing is very obvious, though, regarding the overall pace and action. So much is happening, and happening very quickly, in book 3 of The Two Towers. Yet, the first two chapters of book 4, with Frodo and Sam following Gollum through the marshes to the arrival of the Black Gate (the beginning of chapter 3) span the same amount of time as all 11 chapters of book 3. The entry for March 5, 3019 gives a crucial sync point:

Gandalf sets out with Peregrin for Minas Tirith. Frodo hides in sight of the Morannon, and leaves at dusk.

The winged Nazgul that Frodo, Sam and Gollum see and feel, heading to the west at the end of chapter 2 (The Passage of the Marshes), is heading west in response to Pippin looking into the Palantir.  Gandalf and Pippin are riding off at high speed on Shadowfax in the early morning hours just as the travelers are slowly approaching the Morannon.   The rest of the events in book 4 occur during the interim travel time of Gandalf and Pippin and then into the early chapters of Return of the King book 5.

Tolkien has given us illustrations of both kinds of life experience and how we perceive the time we live through: the fast-paced days when a lot is happening, and events of only a few days ago seem long past; and the slower days of plodding along, getting tasks done each day, and time for thought about what is happening, as Sam considers various facts regarding Gollum, his master, and their difficult physical circumstances. Life often happens thus, with these alternating patterns of busy activity and slowness. The Israelites had a few momentous, dramatic days in their flight from Egypt and crossing the Red Sea — followed by 40 years of wandering in the desert, punctuated by a few dramatic events but otherwise a lot of travel from place to place. The apostle Paul, in Acts 24:11, relates that “You can easily verify that no more than twelve days ago I went up to Jerusalem to worship,” regarding a series of events that started three chapters earlier.

Yet regardless of how we perceive the time, each day is given as it comes, and it is for us to be good stewards of our time. “Now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation,” (2 Cor. 6:2). We are to redeem the time, to make the most of the time, for the days are evil. (Ephesians 5:16)

Tolkien gives us such a picture of these important truths, in the choices and fate of Gollum. Gollum has lived hundreds of years, long beyond the normal lifespan of his kindred, and lived most of those years doing and thinking evil, and in possession of the One Ring and its destructiveness; most of that time literally cut off in the dark caves, shunning sunlight and air, all the while continuing with acts of murder to serve his immediate needs. Since the time of The Hobbit, almost 80 more years have elapsed. Yet Gollum actually shows up in the Lord of the Rings story for a mere matter of days.

The actual time that Gollum is with Frodo and under his charge, until the time that Gollum betrays Frodo in the tunnel of Shelob’s Lair, is a mere 14 days (Feb. 29-30 and March 1- 12) — days in which Gollum was sometimes separated from Frodo for many hours at a time, but still with Frodo at least some of each day. From that point, Gollum’s destruction is just 13 days away — March 25 at the fires of Mount Doom. On the one hand, given such a short time, it seems incredible that anything could happen in the life of Gollum during these two weeks. That one so hardened, and for so long, could actually begin to respond to Frodo’s kindness, is a marvel of its own; no doubt, it could be said, due to the unusual characteristics of hobbits, who again and again show their resistance to things that affect the big people more easily. Yet these 14 days were Gollum’s limited opportunity for salvation, the time of the treatment of “his cure” as Gandalf had referred to it: a time when kindness and mercy was shown to him in a way he had never experienced before. And during that short time, Frodo actually achieved a level of trust with Gollum, demonstrated when Gollum obediently came to Frodo at the forbidden pool. Yet the end result should not be considered all that surprising: 14 days of kindness and mercy, after several hundred years of meanness and cruelty, was not enough to really get through to Gollum. Throughout the 14 days, Gollum never really comes to the point of recognizing or appreciating the mercy shown to him, of acknowledging his own sins; everything is still cast in terms of himself and how people treat him; Gollum is incapable of any gratitude for the mercy shown to him by Faramir and his men for not killing him at the Forbidden Pool.

In the end, though, we are all accountable for the time and the opportunities given to us: opportunities to perceive God’s kindness, opportunities to repent (Romans 2:4) — or not to repent. “Whether short time or long,” the apostle Paul urged King Agrippa regarding salvation in Acts 26:29. So that everyone will be held accountable to God, and that man is without excuse before God. And God is pleased in many instances to grant salvation to people in their old age, after years of hardening. But many, like Gollum, have become too hardened, and waste the opportunities given them.

Yet there is hope, while life lasts, as we do not know the outcome for each person.  C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia provides us a positive example, an opposite of Gollum:  Eustace, for all the brattiness and meanness acquired in his short life (and in that respect a great advantage over the aged, wicked sinner Gollum), finally reached the place where he  recognized and appreciated the kindness that the others had shown him, and wanted to be restored to humanity.  His brokenness led to godly repentance, and Aslan finally came and un-dragoned Eustace.

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Evil Counsellors (Wormtongue, and the Queen of Underland in Narnia) and Restoration

Continuing in the Lenten Lord of the Rings journey, some thoughts from The Two Towers, chapter “The King of the Golden Hall.”  As I was reading the parts concerning Grima Wormtongue, I was reminded of another evil counsellor, who was likewise depicted as a serpent (in a literal form): in The Silver Chair, the serpent that killed Prince Rilian’s mother, and later ensnares the Prince himself, in bondage to the “Queen of Underland,” to finally reappear in its true form of a serpent.

Though Grima does not literally change into a snake, the reference comes out in several places in the dialogue:

“See, Theoden, here is a snake! With safety you cannot take it with you, nor can you leave it behind. To slay it would be just. But it was not always as it now is. Once it was a man, and did you service. …

‘Nay, Éomer, you do not fully understand the mind of Master Wormtongue,’ said Gandalf, turning his piercing glance upon him. ‘He is bold and cunning. Even now he plays a game with peril and wins a throw. Hours of my precious time he has wasted already. Down, snake!’ he said suddenly in a terrible voice. ‘Down on your belly!

The situations are somewhat different, but show some clear similarities.  King Theoden has been shut in his dark castle, the Golden Hall which is dark by contrast with the daylight outside, and shut up with fears — that he is an old man, that he should take extreme caution and not do anything that might endanger his health in his dying days, that he should stay in that dark place.  Rilian is still a prince, heir to the throne, and yet quite literally in a dark place, under the ground; and he too, similar to Theoden, only goes outside (to the world above) seldom, when the Queen of Underland allows it and takes him with her.

Of course, the depiction of the evil character is more developed in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.  Grima Wormtongue is servant to a greater demonic power, that of Saruman (who in turn has been in the service of the greater Dark Lord Sauron), whereas the Queen of Underland is understood to be representative of the devil or Satan himself, without any hierarchy of evil.  (C.S. Lewis, though, certainly understood and elsewhere taught such a concept of demonic hierarchy, as for instance in his classic work Screwtape Letters.  The simpler form is presented in the Narnia series, intended for children readers.)

The evil characters in both places seek domination over other wills, and do so in accordance with the measure of their demonic abilities.  While the Queen of Underland hoped to conquer and rule over all of Narnia, apparently Grima hoped for his reward from Saruman — the treasure, and Eowyn, as Gandalf described it:  you were to pick your share of the treasure, and take the woman you desire.

Yet in both cases their victim was under a spell:  not knowing their true, real self; in darkness, bondage, delusion and fear, trapped by the poison of a “toxic person” as described by the psychologists of our day.  Both Rilian and Theoden needed help from someone outside, as they were powerless to change their situation.  Rilian had his Silver Chair, that must be destroyed for the spell to be broken; he had tried once to break free, but the evil queen had been there and prevented his escape.  Theoden had friends who saw his situation and loved him, yet could do nothing for Theoden, whose will was in Wormtongue’s care.  “A man may love you and yet not love Wormtongue or his counsels,” said Gandalf.  For both of them, a healing was needed, and help must come from outside — messengers sent to them from God.

So in Aslan’s purpose, messengers from our world (rather like departed saints, or angels, from the Narnian perspective — people not living among them in Narnia) were sent — Eustace and Jill — to free the prisoner.  In Iluvatar’s will, Gandalf had been “sent back” — as Gandalf described it in the previous chapter to Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli: sent back from death, after the fall into the pit with the Balrog in Moria, to continue the work for Gandalf to do.  And that work included coming to Theoden’s hall, and breaking the spell that had been put on King Theoden.

The healing is completed, the spell broken, and the characters can take action and move forward with their lives.  In the words of Prince Rilian, upon destroying the silver chair:

“Lie there, vile engine of sorcery,” he said, “lest your mistress should ever use you for another victim.”  Then he turned and surveyed his rescuers; and the something wrong, whatever it was, had vanished from his face. …. “Had I forgotten it [Narnia] when I was under the spell?” asked the Knight. “Well, that and all other bedevilments are now over.”

The wise counsel that Gandalf brings to Theoden, is so applicable for us all. When Theoden asks about the counsel that Gandalf had mentioned, first comes encouragement: “You have yourself already taken it,” answered Gandalf.  The counsel: “To put your trust in Eomer, rather than in a man of crooked mind. To cast away fear and regret.  To do the deed at hand.” And herein lies an answer to difficulties for all of us. Listen to the right people, cease listening to the voice of the enemy (and negative thoughts contrary to goodness, beauty, and truth), to put the past behind, and move forward. As the apostle Paul said (Phil. 3:13-14): Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus.

Theoden is roused to go to the battle. He still has strength in his body, his people have strength, and there is still hope. Prince Rilian joins the travellers to escape from the Underworld, to meet his dying father and then to take on his responsibilities as the next King of Narnia.

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George Sayer’s Friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien

I read George Sayer’s biography of C.S. Lewis, Jack: C.S. Lewis and His Times, many years ago.  I’m now reading Joseph Pearce’s Tolkien: A Celebration, a collection of 15 essays that begins with Sayer’s “Recollections of J.R.R. Tolkien.”  While reading, I was reminded of George Sayer’s great writing style, straightforward and conversational, with lots of anecdotes and character descriptions.  This essay provides a portrait and life sketch of J.R.R. Tolkien, from one of his friends –and thus a much more engaging and positive view than that of Humphrey Carpenter’s biography from the 1970s.

I have come across online references saying that Humphrey Carpenter really did not like J.R.R. Tolkien.  That distance comes out in the overall tone and the lack of friendliness regarding his subject, in J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography – a very objective read with lots of biographical information, but not as heartwarming as what Sayer shared.  It’s also interesting to see that in the collection of The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Tolkien himself mentioned his friend George Sayer, on three separate occasions — whereas Carpenter was a brief acquaintance near the end of his life, and never mentioned in Tolkien’s letters.  Yet it happened that the family asked Carpenter, soon after Tolkien’s death, to do a biography; Carpenter had his own biases, against Tolkien’s religion for one thing, but the family wanted someone who could write an official biography.  Sayer apparently did not then have the writer-publisher experience that was desired; his biography of C.S. Lewis, the only book he is really known for, was published years later, in 1988.  Yet I think a Sayer biography of Tolkien would have been much better than Carpenter’s.  What George Sayer shares in his essay is in agreement with much of what I already knew about Tolkien, but comes across in a way that endears the man to us, as someone that Sayer really cared about as his friend.

Describing a time he went on a hike with the Lewis brothers and Tolkien with wit and humor, we hear about C.S. Lewis’ opinion of Tolkien:

“He’s a great man, but not our sort of walker. He doesn’t seem able to talk and walk at the same time. He dawdles and then stops completely when he has something interesting to say. Warnie finds this particularly irritating.”

I soon found that the brothers liked to walk hard and fast for half an hour, a period which Warnie would time, for Jack never worse or, as far as I know, owned a watch. Then they would have what they called a ‘soak’. This meant sitting or lying down for the time it took to have a cigarette. Then the other man would shoulder the pack, which was their name for the rucksack, and they would go on walking hard for another half-hour.

[The arrangement for Sayer to walk with Tolkien] It worked really well. Tolkien seemed glad to be left behind by the Lewis brothers, whom he described to me as ‘ruthless walkers, very ruthless indeed’. … He also liked to stop to look at the trees, flowers, birds and insects that we passed. He would not have suited anyone who, like the Lewis brothers, walked partly for health, in order to get vigorous exercise. But it delighted me. He talked so well that I was happy to do nothing but listen. …. He talked faster than anyone of his age that I have known, and in a curious fluttering way. …. He knew more natural history than I did, certainly far more than the Lewises, and kept coming out with pieces of curious information about the plants that we came across.

Sayer even remembered a couple examples of the plant information Tolkien gave him.  Later recollections from Sayer fit well with what comes out in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien from the early 1950s, when Tolkien was trying to get Lord of the Rings along with The Silmarilion published.  Tolkien was focused only on that, his own troubles, and for a while become quite depressed.  Sayer and his wife spent some time with Tolkien, and found that introducing Tolkien to an early-technology tape recorder helped Tolkien snap out of his depression.  Sayer noted the risk he took in his friendship, since he knew how Tolkien hated technology, but Tolkien was so depressed that he took the chance.  Tolkien first recorded The Lord’s Prayer in Gothic–“to cast out the devil that was sure to be in it since it was a machine.”  This was not just whimsy.  All of life for him was part of a cosmic conflict between the forces of good and evil, God and the devil.  I played it back to him.  He was surprised and very pleased.  He sounded much better than he had expected.  He went on to record some of the poems in The Lord of the Rings.  Some he sang to the tunes that were in his head when writing them.  …. The more he recorded, and the more often he played back the recordings, the more his confidence grew.

It was after this visit that Tolkien apparently considered George Sayer as a close friend.  Tolkien’s letter 134 (August 29, 1952) notes the tape recording event:

I have recently made some tape-recordings of parts of the Hobbit and The Lord (notably the Gollum-passages and some pieces of ‘Elvish’) and was much surprised to discover their effectiveness as recitations, and (if I may say so) my own effectiveness as a narrator, I do a very pretty Gollum and Treebeard. Could not the BBC be interested? The tape-reel is in the possession of George Sayer (English Master at Malvern) and I am sure he would forward it for your or anyone else’s trial. It was unrehearsed and impromptu and could be improved.

Sayer also shared delightful anecdotes of Tolkien in his Catholic worship, showing him as a devout Catholic during these years:  the pre-Vatican type of Catholic that did not see the need for the 1965 Vatican II changes, and always went to confession before Mass.  Tolkien attended church with the Sayers at this time, and George Sayer shared Tolkien as one who was very friendly with young children.  I noted this similar quality while reading Tolkien’s Letters from Father Christmas, that magical quality of story telling and kindness to his own children.

I went back and found him kneeling in front of the Lady Altar with the young children and their mother, talking happily and I think telling stories about Our Lady.  … he loved children and had the gift of getting on well with them. ‘Mummy, can we always go to church with that nice man?’

and

The last time I met him was after his return to Oxford. He was with children (perhaps great-grandchildren), playing trains: ‘I’m Thomas the Tank Engine. Puff. Puff. Puff.’  That sort of thing.  I was conscripted as a signal.  This love for children and delight in childlike play and simple pleasures was yet another thing that contributed to his wholeness and the success of his books.

Sayer’s essay is delightful, and an excellent start to this book of essays, great reading for the many of us who love Tolkien’s Middle Earth and care about Tolkien the writer and the man.

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Christmas with J.R.R. Tolkien: The Wonder of Christmas

As my thoughts are now on the annual holiday, considering Christmas and the great story of the nativity of our Lord, I have discovered another real gem from J.R.R. Tolkien:  Letters from Father Christmas.  The third of Tolkien’s books published posthumously (in 1976), it is an enjoyable little book; the audio recording comes in at slightly under 2 hours.  (From a library, I read an audio edition that provides different voices for the different characters of Father Christmas and the Polar Bear; the print versions include illustrations.)  These were Tolkien’s letters as “Father Christmas” to his children, starting in 1920 when his oldest son John was three years old, through 1943 (a short, last letter to Priscilla, then age 14).  These letters show the wonder and joy of Christmas for children, and a father’s great love for his children, as well as Tolkien’s creative genius.  As I read these I was reminded of Tolkien’s more “business” letters written during these years — the publishing of The Hobbit and then his start on the Hobbit sequel.  That book (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien) often indicates how busy Tolkien was with his family and work responsibilities, but here in Letters from Father Christmas we see where he spent some of that time that the publishers wanted 🙂.

It is fun to get caught up in the enjoyment of Christmas, “looking along the beam” as C.S. Lewis described the actual experience of an event: the presence of God, feelings of joy and wonder, and other emotions and feelings.  From my previous post, that series on C.S. Lewis described the difference between looking along a ray of sunlight (the enjoyment and actual experience) versus “looking at the beam,” which is the contemplative, analytical approach, the thinking about the thing.

So here I am writing about the experience of reading Letters from Father Christmas, after a recent experience of the actual enjoyment.  These letters tell various stories about Father Christmas’ adventures at the north pole, with the elves and other characters who work with him, and especially tales about “North Polar Bear,” sometimes referred to “P.B.” — various accidents and mishaps of a hilarious nature.  Along the way, Tolkien mentions the back story of Father Christmas, in Saint Nicholas who is remembered every year on December 6, and includes several stories about goblins, characters with other languages and even some runes, hobbits, and a character named “Ilbereth” (similar to Middle Earth’s Elbereth).  Tolkien interacts with his children’s gift requests, sometimes sending two or even three letters per year (evidently some years the children started writing to Father Christmas in November or even September, Lol!), expressing (as Father Christmas) his love for them, while also telling about all the children throughout Europe and America that he visits, and the “timetable” of how fast he is able to deliver presents, such as being able to deliver presents to 1000 homes per minute with his sleigh and reindeer.  Father Christmas also reminds them of other children throughout the world who are suffering and in need, including the hard economic times of the early 1930s and then especially during the war years of Christmas, the letters from 1939 through 1943, the World War II years in England.

Reading Tolkien’s Christmas letters is refreshing and delightful, something to get the focus back on the annual Christmas holiday, to be a child at heart.  This focus is so needful in our modernist/post-modernist world when some people advocate to not celebrate Christmas at all.  “It’s a pagan holiday!”  — actually it is not, as clearly explained in this online article: December 25 was selected by the early church for specific reasons, including that it is nine months after March 25 (which is also a very significant date in Tolkien’s works, as the date that the One Ring was destroyed with Gollum on Mount Doom), and had nothing to do with incorporating pagan holidays.  Or as another example of this modernist tendency, a local Baptist church has selected for its Christmas sermon texts this year, three New Testament theological texts that speak about the Incarnation (Hebrews 1:1-3, Colossians 1:15, and John 1:14-18) and only these three texts — and is exegeting these texts verse by verse, talking “about” the Incarnation (the “looking AT the beam”) as described in these texts, with no mention of the actual story of Christmas.  (Nothing wrong with these texts in and of themselves, but the Incarnation and Christmas story is so much more than the intellectual only, doctrinal aspect.)

The Incarnation (Christmas as we remember it each year) actually happened in our space and time world, and involved real characters, and a story with multiple events – a great wonder and a story to be remembered at this time of year, as we meditate on and appreciate the fact of Christ’s coming to Earth and becoming one of us, a real flesh and blood man.  A story that we will never exhaust the meaning of, as we annually remember the birth of our Lord, remembering also the real people involved: Mary, Joseph, Herod and the wise men, the shepherds and the angels, and Zechariah and Elizabeth, and Simeon and Anna and the others who witnessed the events at the time of Christ’s birth.

Have a very blessed Merry Christmas, everyone!

 

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Further Up and Further In: Narnia, C.S. Lewis, and the V-Shaped Christian Conversion Experience

I’ve seen Hillsdale College advertisements on Facebook over the years (along with mention of it by a few online friends), but since it seemed that mostly their offerings were about American history and political related issues of American government, I had not tried it out.  A new offering from them, though, caught my eye: C.S. Lewis on Christianity.  The format is simple and straightforward — listen to several video lectures (this course has seven), and answer some multiple choice questions after each lecture.  Since I’m already familiar with C.S. Lewis, though it’s been many years since I last read his non-fiction, the lectures are a good overview of the major ideas in his non-fiction, such as Lewis’ Abolition of Man and Mere Christianity, and include some things that I had either forgotten or not come across before.

The third lecture talks about C.S. Lewis’ conversion to Christianity, and Lewis’ view of conversion as V-shaped: we must first go down, then further down, hit bottom and experience initial conversion, then gradually come back up, in the new life.  We can observe this pattern in much of Lewis’ fiction writing.  The lecturer mentions the number of steps into and out of the wardrobe, though I’m not sure if that is a really clear example; nothing in the text says that Lucy or the others stepped down and then stepped up, just that there were a certain number of steps.

However, other examples certainly do make the point.  The Silver Chair‘s overall structure is certainly that of a V: starting at the school Eustace and Jill attended, then to a very high cliff place above Narnia, then down to Narnia itself.  Then falling down into the giant-made letters of “Under Me” then down to Underland.  Puddleglum, Eustace and Jill finally accomplish the mission from Aslan while in Underland.  Then the return trip, back to Narnia, then back to Aslan, and then returning to the where it all started, at Jill and Eustace’s school.  The other Narnia travels from our world — The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian and following — certainly have the beginning and end same, since that was in the nature of the travel itself — a point really noted in the first two stories, not so much in Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  Yet The Silver Chair especially makes the V-shaped story in a very literal, geographical way.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader especially gives a picture of Christian conversion.  Eustace started out a real twit, then quickly worsened as he was put into difficult situations that revealed his bad character.  The downhill slide continued, until he ended up down in a valley, then became a dragon.  Upon finally becoming a dragon, the rock-bottom point of the V, in a great narrative account Eustace finally came to his senses:

his first feeling was one of relief.  There was nothing to be afraid of any more.  He was a terror himself now and nothing in the world but a knight (and not all of those) would dare to attack him. …

But the moment he thought this he realised that he didn’t want to.  He wanted to be friends.  He wanted to get back among humans and talk and laugh and share things.  He realised that he was a monster cut off from the human race.  An appalling loneliness came over him.  He began to see the others had not really been fiends at all.  He began to wonder if he himself had been such a nice person as he had always supposed.  He longed for their voices.  He would have been grateful for a kind word even from Reepicheep.

But then it was still a long way back up the “V”: he first became nicer and more helpful as a dragon.  After some time, then he met Aslan, and even then he first tried removing his own dragon skin, which still revealed more dragon skin under; then Aslan removed all the dragon and restored him back to a human boy.  Afterwards, as Lewis notes, Eustace began to be a different boy.  He had relapses.  There were still many days when he could be very tiresome.  But most of those I shall not notice.  The cure had begun.  The upward climb of that V had begun and would continue for the rest of his life — the “further up and further in.”  What a great picture of salvation is provided here: not merely a one-time event back in the past.  That was the cure that began.  Salvation then continues in the present life, and to the future glorification and perfection.

Then of course comes the glorious ending to the Chronicles of Narnia, with the idea of “further up and further in” in its fullness with the ushering in of the New Narnia, leading to the real, new England and New Earth.

The Hillsdale College lecture mentions a few other examples of a V-shaped experience, such as in  Lewis’ last novel, Till We Have Faces:  the heroine goes down into a green valley, a picture of the conversion experience — descent and loss, but such descent into greenness and fertility — which signifies gain and new life.  The bottom of the V is the “turn” — the “cure begun” in Eustace, also what J.R.R. Tolkien referred to as the eucatastrophe (see previous post link:   ).  Other examples of this bitter-sweet conversion, where the turn occurs, can be found in The Great Divorce (a character with a lizard on the shoulder), and also in the third volume of the Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength, with the conversion of Jane:  It was a person (not the person she had thought), yet also a thing, a made thing, made to please Another and in Him to please all others, a thing made at this very moment… And the making went on amidst a kind of splendour or sorrow or both.

I’ll continue through this set of C.S. Lewis lectures, and then on to more lecture series from Hillsdale, for further insights into particulars of Lewis’ writing and then other topics such as classic literature.  Hillsdale also offers an introductory course on C.S. Lewis with another nine lectures.

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The Books That Eustace Had Not Read (Chronicles of Narnia)

In Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis makes quite a point in describing Eustace, that he had read all the wrong books.  From the first page of the story we learn that Eustace liked books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools.  Then, after Eustace ran off by himself and then ran into the dragon’s cave, this special note:  Most of us know what we should expect to find in a dragon’s lair, but as I said before, Eustace had read only the wrong books.  They had a lot to say about exports and imports and governments and drains, but they were weak on dragons.

A similar plot scenario comes up in the sequel, The Silver Chair, though implied rather than directly stated.  Since that adventure only happened within 2-3 months of Eustace’s return from Narnia, and he still lived with his parents and still had to attend that progressive school, it could not be reasonably expected that Eustace would have had the time to acquire and read enough of the right books to prepare him for his second visit to Narnia.  Jill, likewise, by the fact of attending the Experiment House, no doubt had parents similar to Harold and Alberta, who had not allowed her to read the right type of books.  Thus we find that both Eustace and Jill think it would be a great idea to visit the “gentle giants” and apparently had no clue of the possible danger of being eaten by giants.

All of this raises an interesting point: what books should Eustace have been reading, to have been prepared for entering a dragon’s lair?  Voyage of the Dawn Treader was published in 1952 (and The Silver Chair a year later), but the England side of the story is set during World War II, the summer and fall of 1942.  On an Amon Sul podcast that I listened to recently  (episode #022), the guest Richard Rohlin mentioned Eustace not having read about dragons.  He then said that a few people he knew had looked at this question and concluded that the only book of that type that was around, that the children in Lewis’ day could have been reading that would have told them about dragons, was The Hobbit.  Thus, Rohlin saw this mention in Lewis’ book as a coded reference to his friend Tolkien’s writing; and then to follow the chain, Tolkien himself of course, in The Hobbit, had allusions to Beowulf.  (In this previous post I mentioned one interesting allusion to Beowulf, from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.)

That is an interesting idea, and could be true to a point.  Certainly elsewhere C.S. Lewis included references to Tolkien’s works, and much more direct ones.  The main character in his Space Trilogy, Ransom, after all, was a philologist.  And C.S. Lewis mentioned “Numinor” in his Space Trilogy — a reference which Tolkien said (in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien) came from the audible sound of the word as Lewis had heard Tolkien’s writings, when Tolkien would read aloud to the Inklings — and thus a misspelled version of Numenor.  But in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis mentions Eustace reading “the wrong books” and that is “books” (plural), which would indicate that Lewis knew of many other books that Eustace could (and should) have been reading.

Certainly the general books of pagan mythology have been around, though school children in mid-20th century England may not have been reading those.  A look at Goodreads and its lists of popular children’s fantasy books, by decade, gives us additional possibilities from the 1930s list.    Yes, The Hobbit is on that list, along with familiar titles including Mary Poppins, and a King Arthur collection, T.H. White’s Sword in the Stone; this Arthurian legends book includes one reference to dragons, the legend of “St. George and the Dragon.”  Earlier that decade, though, another book was published, The Book of Dragons: Tales and Legends from Many Lands.  Since this book was an anthology of existing tales, it may not have become as popular over the years, but no doubt it served its purpose for that generation of children: retelling the existing dragon lore, to the next generation of English-speaking children.

So, while it’s nice to think that C.S. Lewis intended a reference to The Hobbit in his description of Eustace not reading the “right” books, it seems that in this case C.S. Lewis was thinking in more general category terms.  Certainly The Hobbit would be included, as a book published just 5 years before Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace had their adventure.  But a school boy in that era would have had at least a few other choices of books, so that he could have learned something about dragons.  Sadly, though, Eustace’s parents had kept such books away from him, and also thoroughly brainwashed the kid so that he did not even have the desire to read them.

Readers, are there any other fantasy books that you are familiar with, published in the 20th century, to add to the list of books that Eustace should have been reading?  Any further comments about the books that Eustace and Jill ought to have read?

 

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