Tolkien did suffer from bouts of depression through his adult life, but I've not read anything to suggest that he had a major disorder as a result of being at war. He may not have experienced any trauma himself, we don't know...but he did experience extreme grief with the loss of his best friends Gilson and Smith.
I think that having been through the horror of that war Tolkien couldn't really write of suffering in anything other than an horrific way. His heroes don't come all home holding the head of their mortal enemy, rippling with muscles and with a girl in their arms like so many cliched fantasies of the later twentieth century. They come home quietened and chastened and even totally broken. Just like those who came home from the trenches. And they called WWI The War To End All Wars, but it wasn't, as the sons (and daughters) of these veterans were caught up in another 21 years later. The Long Defeat.
Anyway. You can see a similar writing of suffering and horror in work by others who had been to war. Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast has the ghosts of his experience entering the concentration camps during the liberation. I wonder what there might be in Narnia or Winnie The Pooh (Lewis and AA Milne were also caught up in war).
The other point to remember is that Tolkien was
extremely proud of his war service, as was Lewis. He may have shown how heroes came home broken, but he does not denigrate them or exploit their suffering in the name of Art. Note how his fallen are given all due honour and respect, his bad guys given a chance to be forgiven. Nobody who dies seems to be there to be a cipher towards plot building.
Here's a quote from The Hobbit:
Quote:
|
It was a terrible battle. The most dreadful of all Bilbo's experiences, and the one which at the tune he hated most which is to say it was the one he was most proud of, and most fond of recalling long afterwards, although he was quite unimportant in it.
|