Lost: Tolkien and Hemingway

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”~ J.R.R. Tolkien 

Tolkien, 1916

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was a veteran of the Great War, a man fully contemporary with Hemingway and his band of lost generation wanderers. Although the two never met, they lived through many of the same experiences. In his preface to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings he states: "By fall of 1918, all but one of my close friends were dead".  Although he saw little actual combat he was spared few horrors of war, was under constant threat of bombardment, and suffered chronic trench foot, lice, fever,and other ailments related to being deployed in the foremost parts of the conflict, in addition to the loss of many of his close friends.  Yet somehow he seems to have escaped the fate of Hemingway's group of restless souls. 

Although he vehemently denied any direct correlation of his experiences in the War to his later works as an author, Tolkien's integrity and faith come through nonetheless. And with them his way of dealing with his life experiences. I ask readers to question what made this gentle, scholarly soul so much different from his cohort of the lost generation. What kept him from the dissolution and depression of those other young men who marched home through mud and tribulation? I think a hint would be that Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic.  He seems to have kept one foot firmly entrenched in a better world, while he weathered the storms of this one. To him 'fantasy' was not to be taken lightly, and a better, higher world was always in his mind's eye. 

In sharp contrast of the stark almost nihilistic realism of Hemingway, Tolkien wrote fantasy.  As a therapist I would suggest that these two very different methods of expressing their experiences are a window into their souls. This is borne out in their fates. Tolkien wrote fantasy and lived a long life with his family, befriending such personalities as C.S. Lewis, and creating the world of Middle Earth- largely for his own enjoyment. Hemingway won the Pulitzer Prize in 1954, virtually created modern prose, but sadly suffered terrible depression, alcoholism, and fatally shot himself with a shotgun on July, 26, 1961.  

Whose world was more real? And whose was the better? More importantly, whose do you want to live in? The choice is ours, and I believe as Gandalf says, it has a lot to do with what we do with the time given to us. 

A final quote of Tolkien's, when criticized for writing 'escapist literature'.

“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”