Tolkien Tuesday: Reading Tolkien in the Time of Trump
Reading the works of one of history's great fantasists can provide inspiration, guidance, solace, and shelter in these dark and troubled times.
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Welcome to Tolkien Tuesdays, where I talk about various things that I love about the lore and writings of Tolkien, whether in a chapter reading or a character study or an essay. I hope you enjoy reading these ruminations as much as I enjoy writing them and, if you have a moment, I’d love it if you’d subscribe to this newsletter. It’s free, but there are paid options, as well, if you’re of a mind to support a struggling writer. Either way, thank you for joining me!
Like many of the rest of you, I was more than a little devastated by the results of the election a week ago. It’s not just that I’m opposed to Trump and everything that he and the GOP stand for; it’s that I have grave concerns about the kind of people that he tends to enable. Some are just social media edgelords and trolls, who say the most vile things they can in order to drive engagement and own the libs but others increasingly want to actually have a say in the way the country and the world are run. Not to put too fine a point on it, but they want to bring their toxicity into the real world, and that troubles me greatly. In some ways Trump himself is a creature of the internet, and it seems likely that his second term, like his first, will be driven by his catering to the worst in his online base.
It’s for this reason that I find myself spending more and more time reading Tolkien and other works of high/epic fantasy. Sometimes, you just need to immerse yourself in a secondary world, one that is in some ways completely removed from our own. I’ve long thought that there’s something exciting and even a little empowering about the escapist impulse, in that one can set the terms by which one does, or does not, engage with the world outside. As I’ve made a point of saying for the past week, I already know that the real world is going to be an increasingly miserable place to live. Rather than engage with all of that horror, I’ve decided that the best thing for my emotional and mental well-being is just to withdraw into the world of escapist fiction: sci-fi, fantasy, romance, and the like.
Tolkien has always been a refuge for me. No matter how many times I read it, I always feel like I’m coming home, that here, at least, is a world in which those who have empathy and compassion and a desire to make the world better are the ones who end up winning in the end. Here, at last, are notable and valuable models of masculinity that aren’t predicated on being cruel and horrible to everyone who doesn’t look like or agree with you (we see you, Aragorn!) Here is a moral universe that, if not always bending toward justice, at least rewards those who do the right thing and are willing to offer their lives to bring about a better world.
If you’re a regular subscriber or reader of this newsletter, you’ll know that I’ve been spending the last year working my way through The Lord of the Rings, offering my reflections on each chapter as I encounter them. One of the things that has stood out to me again and again is how skillfully Tolkien threads the needle between optimism and pessimism, between the desire to have his characters take definitive action to save the world in which they live and the awareness that they may fail (and that even if they succeed that victory is never without its consequences, some of which may be devastating in their own right).
This is particularly the case in the Scouring of the Shire and its aftermath, which shows the extent to which Frodo can never be healed and how there really is nothing left for him in Middle-earth. Like the Elves he must depart, hopefully to find healing elsewhere. Yet even here Tolkien shows some remarkable optimism, for the caretaking of the Shire is taken up by the likes of Sam, Merry, and Pippin, all of whom play a key role in bringing it back to some measure of what it was before Saruman’s depredations. The Fourth Age might be one of the decline of the beauty and magic of the Elves, but there is still reason to have hope for the future. The hobbits, at the very least, remain determined to forge their own form of happiness in this brave and uncertain new world.
This embrace of hope against seemingly impossible odds also shows up in other places in the legendarium. While The Silmarillion is, by and large, a compendium of tragic tales in which the Elves–and later Men–are doomed to forever fight against the inevitability of the Long Defeat, this doesn’t mean that they should stop doing so. Whether it’s Galadriel never ceasing in her efforts to foil Sauron and his evil designs or the Men of Númenor fleeing the ruin of their homeland only to take the fight to Sauron again once they reach Middle-earth, there is hardly a moment in Tolkien when those who fight the good fight simply give up.
That, I think, is both the power of Tolkien and of high/epic fantasy in general. Such works remind us that yes, there will be defeats and yes, it may even be the case that we never fully vanquish evil and cruelty and malice, that those who would embrace those values will emerge once again more powerful and intent on domination than ever. It can be exhausting, to be sure, but that doesn’t make it any less good and necessary. To draw on Jackson’s film and Sam’s moving monologue to Frodo in the ruins of Osgiliath, there is good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for (though this isn’t a line from the books, it certainly feels like one).
Thus, no matter how bleak the world is, we cannot give in to despair. Some of us–myself included, for the moment at least–may do as the Elves of the Third Age did, committing their energies to preserving what peace and beauty they could in the places like Rivendell and Lothlórien. That is precisely how I think of this newsletter: as a little bit of shelter in the howling chaos of the internet, where we can all just sit and enjoy the things that we love, careless of what others may say. Others may take the road tread by Frodo and the other members of the Fellowship and do what we can to fight back against the rising tide of fascism and darkness in the world.
Whatever path we choose–whether that of defense and the saving of beauty or offense and battle–we can always return to Tolkien to show us the perils and the rewards of both approaches. At the end of the day, all that we can do is decide what we can do with the time that has been given to us. I’m grateful for each and every one of you reading this. Somehow, we’ll get through this together, and a brighter day will dawn.