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Tolkien has said that he setout to write a myth, and his concept of myth was a vehicle to let the truth shine through. Have any of you experienced that, and to what degree?
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I suppose my last post didn't make a whole lot of sense. For me, Helen, your question has to do with what I believe about God. My religious tradition (of which I still am a member, hard to believe!) teaches Predestination and a God whose Wrath is Just and who has all power and controls our lives. At least he sent his son to save us from eternal damnation. But we can't do anything at all, and have to wait for God to even make us believe. I think it would have to be Germanic people who are in love with despair to come up with such a bitter faith. It was cold and despairing for me. Tolkien's Middle Earth opened up reality for me, made it possible for me to hope that there was more to life than my parents' cold faith (they weren't very good at holding to the coldness of it either). I knew in my heart that what was in these books was Real. So Bilbo and Tom Bombadil and the Old Forest and the Shire and Rivendell and Galadriel and Lorien brought warmth - and more importantly,
hope - to an otherwise very cold and despairing world view.
[ January 28, 2003: Message edited by: littlemanpoet ]