[Child of the 7th Age]

I am feeling a little schmaltzy today so please bear with me.... (This, by the way, is a second go round on this thread.)

I've recently been thinking a lot about this. As life trundles forward, I've become more aware of the preciousness of time. There is a finite measure in my basket. I only have so many hours in the day and so many days in my life to do what needs to be done. So if I re-read this book year after year, sometimes more frequently and sometimes less so but with it always being nearby, I want to understand why this is so.

I could list a dozen quick answers why I find Middle-earth so compelling. There's the undoubted charm of hobbits; the pull of characters like Faramir and Frodo; my personal sympathy with Tolkien's rejection of irony that permeates so much of modern literature; or merely a desire to step beyond what I know and explore another world and history, one that is drawn with such depth and care. But I think the real answer goes beyond that.

Stepping back, I'd have to say that I return to Tolkien because his view of existence and my own strangely coincide, only he expresses his ideas with far more grace and art than I ever could. This isn't what first drew me to the book, but it is what keeps pulling me back. I must say it's very odd that this should be so, since on the face of things I have little in common with JRRT in terms of either background or formal beliefs.

Let me try and explain. There is a core of sadness in Middle-earth that surely must reflect what Tolkien saw in the "real" world about him. It is a core that I have felt many times. It's that sense we have little choice but to fight the "long defeat".....that whether we are Frodo Baggins, Gollum, Lúthien or even Child of the 7th Age, we all face things inside and outside ourselves that make it impossible to succeed in a moral sense. At the heart of both Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion, and even of the Hobbit, there lies a recognition of an essential tragedy. No matter what we do, no matter how many good intentions we have, the bad things don't go away.

Like the people of Middle-earth, we are in the position of trusting and hoping for a rescue with no firm guarantees that it will ever come. Yet whether we define that rescue in terms of providence or the caring of others, Tolkien's message is clear: if we hold back from despair, if we summon up our courage and keep putting one foot in front of the other, there is at least the possibility of help coming, usually at the most unexpected of times. I feel that when I read about the Rohirrim gallopping onto the field of Pelennor with their horns wildly blowing, or when I see Frodo and Sam snatched up by an Eagle as the great mountain explodes, or when Lúthien's request for Beren's life is inexplicably granted. Just as in real life, nothing comes without a price. There is no eucatastrophe in our world that is granted free and clear. Frodo must leave the Shire, and both Beren and Lúthien will eventually die. And that too is how I've come to understand that things must be.

There is so much truth in this portrayal that I have to laugh when someone says going back to reread Tolkien is nothing more than an escape or an obsession. The truth is when I read the book, I often come face to face with myself, and the mingling of the sweet and the bitter seems to encapsulate that truth. I may not be Frodo Baggins, but which of us hasn't sometimes felt we are holding back a personal night with a single sliver of light? Tolkien isn't the only place where I find this truth. I have seen it in a friend's eyes or in other expressions of creativity or in my own formal religious beliefs. But, more than with any other author, I feel this truth in Tolkien's world and it mirrors what I understand about myself.