Fantasy

[William Cloud Hicklin]

The duality was present in Tolkien's mind, certainly. Here is a passage he wrote shortly after his war service:

'Aye, often enough,' said Eriol, 'yet not to the great wars of the earthly kings, which are cruel and bitter, whelming all in their ruin all the beauty of the earth and of those fair things that men fashion with their hands in times of peace -- nay, they spare not sweet women and tender maids, such as thou, Veanne Melinir, for then are men drunk with wrath and the lust of blood, and Melko fares abroad. But gallant affrays have I seen wherein brave men did sometimes meet, and swift blows were dealt, and strength of body and of heart was proven.'

Again, the 'great wars' are of Melko, as the ghastly moonscape of the Western Front was transferred to Sauron: it was almost as if Tolkien envisioned war as he knew it being the enemy, and wrote of its defeat by 'gallant affrays.'

Still, it's a bit much to expect a man like Tolkien to write with mud-and-dung realism. He never describes Aragorn relieving himself behind a bush, nor does he detail the process by which Sam and Rosie produced all those children. They are to be assumed, in the same way blood and gore are to be assumed.

There is probasbly something to be mined comparing the hopelessness of the War of the Jewels, written in its essentials in the shadow of the pointless First World War, with the triumphalism of the War of the Rings, written during the Second- even bloodier than its predecessor, but a war nonetheless with a point and a purpose.