Like many who smoke pipes in the modern world, I was drawn to them by the works of Tolkien. Neither of my parents were smokers of any sort, and while my stepfather smoked cigarettes during the first year or two that I knew him, he quit and has remained tobacco free ever since, almost thirty... Continue Reading →
After taking a little break, I have begun reading The Lord of the Rings aloud to my wife and daughter again. We picked up in Fangorn forest, and just this weekend I read to them of the healing of Theoden. It is one of those passages that I am surprised by time and again because... Continue Reading →
In three recent posts, I have been discussing Gandalf's words at the end of The Hobbit: 'You don’t really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit?" As I was copying the passage out into my Tolkien Commonplace Book, I thought to myself that... Continue Reading →
One of my absolute favourite passages in Lord of the Rings comes at the end of the chapter “The Siege of Gondor” in Return of the King. It is overwhelming in its darkness until, at the end, light and hope break in. It is a fantastic moment of eucatastrophe within the larger narrative, when all... Continue Reading →
In my last two posts, I have been discussing Gandalf's words at the end of The Hobbit: 'You don’t really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit?" I have focused so far on the words managed by mere luck and suggested that luck... Continue Reading →
In my previous post, I discussed a possible interpretation of Gandalf's words to Bilbo at the end of The Hobbit: "You don’t really suppose, do you, that all your adventure and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit?" In that post, I argued that Gandalf was here referring the higher idea... Continue Reading →
It is easy to forget that the Wizards, or Istari, of Tolkien's works are a kind of lower-order angel. Then again, Christians love to point this out, so perhaps it's not so easy to forget. In a passage that Christopher Tolkien dates to 1972, Tolkien writes, "We must assume that they [the Istari] were all... Continue Reading →
Something Tookish 