<font face="Verdana"><table><TR><TD><FONT SIZE="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Pile o' Bones
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<img src="http://www.barrowdowns.com/images/posticons/nenya.jpg" align=absmiddle> Re: LOTR and your Weltanschauung
LOTR definitely played a key role in shaping my world view. I read it first as an early teen. Not only was I trying to define my own identity, I was reading it against the backdrop of society in crisis. In the books, I saw both contrasts and parallels to the world around me during the torturous final years of Vietnam and the menace of the constitutional crisis that was Watergate.
The books taught me much about the value of life, the nature of friendship, and the obligation that each of us has to resist evil (within ourselves and the world) and do what we were meant to do.
Although there are several portions of the book that were especially important to me, the exchange between Gandalf and Frodo in Chapter 2 affected me the most. Gandalf confronts Frodo with the words: "Deserves death. Indeed he does. And many who die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Do not be so quick to take what you can not give." Tolkien's phrases have the power to haunt your soul and that exchange was critical in shaping many of my beliefs and attitudes, such as mercy and tolerance that those beliefs require.
Gandalf's words "many that die deserve life" was even more poignant for me because my last birthday gift from my dad was a hardcover set of LOTR. Six weeks after my 20th birthday, he died. Then I really understood how life hangs in the balance and how as mortals we can not judge truly who should did and who should leave.
Frodo's spiritual journey from quickly judging and condemning Gollum to judge and condemn Gandalf to acting with pity, compassion and wisdom toward Saruman also had a profound impact on me. His transformation rivals any of the stories of the saints (of any religion) and is touched with the same spirituality found in the truest of these. It pointed me towards the necessity growth in wisdom and compassion.
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