Tolkien - Recovery

Towards the end of his essay "On Fairy Stories" Tolkien considered three ways in which a successful fantasy story benefits its readers - those who come to it and are enchanted by it - they were recovery, escape and consolation. I was reminded of this as I read through LOTR agin just recently. I was amazed at just how moving the story is on so many levels and I was particularly reminded of what Tolkien wrote about recovery.

What does he mean by recovery? Well, very simply, we get used to the wonder of the world in which we live - it becomes trite - and he believed that fantasy helps us to recover that sense of wonder. There is a sense in which we all need to recover the wonder of this world. For example, I live in a beautiful part of the world and when I walk around our home I am surrounded by beauty which I hardly notice. Thanks to my wife's efforts there are truly beautiful flowers everywhere and all sorts of other wonders. Even in my room I am surrounded by marvels. And yet, I am used to these things and most of the time I hardly see them! The phrase "used to them" seems quite telling. It's almost as though I had in some way seen them, used them and then forgotten them. Tolkien has a great way of putting it - he says

"This triteness is really the penalty of “appropriation”. The things that are trite, or (in a bad sense) familiar, are the things that we have appropriated, legally or mentally. We say we know them. They have become like the things which once attracted us by their glitter, or their colour, or their shape, and we laid hands on them, and then locked them in our hoard, acquired them, and acquiring ceased to look at them."

"Recovery (which includes return and renewal of health) is a re-gaining—regaining of a clear view. I do not say “seeing things as they are” and involve myself with the philosophers, though I might venture to say “seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them”—as things apart from ouselves. We need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity—from possessiveness."

 "Creative fantasy, because it is mainly trying to do something else (make something new), may open your hoard and let all the locked things fly away like cage-birds. The gems all turn into flowers or flames, and you will be warned that all you had (or knew) was dangerous and potent, not really effectively chained, free and wild; no more yours than they were you."

He tells how "It was in fairy-stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of the things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine."

Now while I have great admiration for the films, ultimately Peter Jackson took on an impossible task for while they contain much that is good, they cannot convey the brilliant poetic writing of Tolkien. LOTR is primarily a book, and a film, though it quotes dialogue directly, cannot express the the full content of the background and the world which Tolkien creates when he writes - not even the wonders of cgi can do that!! It is his words which express his stated aim.

Coming to LOTR I guess that the description of trees and forest whether of Mirkwood, the Old Forest, Ents, Treebeard, people like Fatty Bolger, Farmer Maggot, Barley Butterbur, Nob, Tom Bombadill, Aragorn, Gwahir etc places like The Black Gate, Mordor, Gondor, Helm's Deep, Lothlorien, Rivendell, - all of these aspects of his story give us a fresh perspective on places and people in this world. Just the description of Farmer Maggot's mushrooms does it for me (you'll have to read the book). The enchantment of stars, stone, rock, Shadowfax - you name it - all leave their mark in some way or another. Tolkien is a master at embuing common things (particularly natural things) with rich enchantment. But care is required - we soon appropriate things and add them to our hoard. It is a good exercise in any case to attempt each day to spend a little time taking out a little piece of our hoard and letting one or two locked things fly away.

Another verse of the poem Mythopoea always hits me

He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers beneath an ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued. There is no firmament,
only a void, unless a jewelled tent
myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth,
unless the mother's womb whence all have birth.


We all need to recover something of the wonder of the world in which we live and the life which we have been given. Fantasy can help us recover that wonder but ultimately (as Tolkien also admits) it is a sense of true humility and simplicity which is the key to living with our eyes wide open.