I’ve received some questions from a high school student doing an assignment on Tolkien. I thought my replies to his questions, might be of interest. Here they are:

 

I don’t believe that World War II greatly impacted Tolkien’s views on people and it certainly did not make him cynical. He had fought in what he called the “animal horror” of World War I, which in many respects was even more horrific than WWII. He was horrified by the use of technology in WWII to kill masses of people, especially civilians. His view of humanity was always informed by his Catholic faith, which teaches that people are made in God’s image, though they are broken by sin.

The Ring is a symbol of sin, as is signified allegorically by the fact that it is destroyed on March 25th, the most significant date in history and on the Christian calendar. This was the date on which God becomes Man (the Annunciation) and also the date on which God dies for Man’s sins (the Crucifixion). This is, therefore, the date on which sin is destroyed. The fact that Tolkien chooses this significantly-charged date for the Ring’s destruction shows his intention in connecting the Ring with sin. Original Sin is the One Sin to Rule them all and in the Darkness bind them. The One Ring and the One Sin are synonymous and their respective power is destroyed on the same date.

The hobbits remind us, in some ways, of children because Christ teaches that we must remain child-like if we are to gain the wisdom and sanctity necessary to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The paradox is that we must cease to be childish, i.e. lacking wisdom because of a lack of experience, by remaining childlike, i.e. by maintaining our sense of wonder and the desire for innocence (purity) and by not losing this sense of wonder and innocence through a fall into sin and cynicism.

The Shire has multifarious points of applicability to our world. It can be seen as an idealized vision of England, an England in which the Catholic social vision of subsidiarity is realized. It can be seen as a symbol of childhood, which is why the necessity of leaving the Shire on the quest can be seen as the necessary rite of passage from childhood to adulthood.

Mordor signifies the power of evil which is always an (anti-)culture of death, destroying and poisoning everything it touches.