Joseph Loconte. A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and a Great War. Nelson, 2015.

For a condensed review of this see A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-18 by Joseph Loconte
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Readers might be able to guess what A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and a Great War is about from the title. Yes, fantasy writers J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis both survived the First World War. This book not only recounts their war record, but it shows how their war experiences affected and colored their storytelling. Because both authors wrote powerful stories, this book itself is one powerful book.

The author cites many reputable historians in describing the general experiences and effects of the war. At the same time it focuses on the two men. Lewis, a few years younger than Tolkien, did not reach draft age until 1916, but that was the same year Tolkien joined up. Both men became junior officers, and both men served on the lines for about a year each when they were sent home: Tolkien suffered a severe illness while Lewis was badly injured. The Armistice was signed before either man had fully recovered. But both men lost many or most of their friends. Lewis was very thankful that his older brother Warren (“Warnie”) survived.

The main thrust of A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and a Great War, however, is literary. Loconte observes that most war veterans such as Remarque, Hemingway, Graves, or the early Dos Passos had all become disillusioned. They saw such horrors of war that any Victorian optimism or scientific evolution could no longer be seriously believed. This reviewer cannot help think of the fractured Lord’s Prayer in Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”: “Our nada who art in nada…” etc.

Tolkien and Lewis were different. Just yesterday I was listening to a podcast from a fantasy writer. He said that the main difference between fantasy and science fiction is that science fiction often is amoral while fantasy notes that good and evil exist. The few fantasies such as the Game of Thrones series which are exceptions to this prove the rule because Martin will never be able to bring the tales to a close.

Loconte notes two key differences in Lewis and Tolkien from most of their contemporaries. The first is that they wrote from a Christian worldview. Lewis’s conversion came later as an adult. He had already written some things that were more typical of his generation. The author quotes Virginia Woolf when she heard that T. S. Eliot had converted and been baptized. She wrote:

I was shocked. A corpse would seem to me more credible than he is. I mean, there is something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God. (125)

Whew! Talk about strong language! Loconte says that “such was the tide of elite opinion in much of postwar Europe.” How countercultural were such things among the elite, the literati. Both Lewis and Tolkien were Oxford professors; Eliot, a celebrated poet. All three found something in the “waste land” of the postwar West.

The second is that they believed in the noble potential of people. No, neither Frodo nor Ransom were flawless. Frodo, after all, did not voluntarily toss the ring into the pit of Mt. Doom. Ransom thought there was little he could do about the N.I.C.E. The stories may have been fantasy or science fiction, but the motivations of the characters were things we could all relate to.

Middle-earth is not, Tolkien insisted, an imaginary world, but rather our world—with its ancient truths and sorrows—set in a remote past. Indeed, any legends cast in the form of a supposed primitive history of this world, he said, must reckon with the tragic reality of human frailty. (122, emphasis in original)

Christianity explains that frailty more honestly and accurately than any modern utopian scheme. I recall a friend once asked me if I believed in Adam and Eve. At the time I was still searching, but even then I could tell him, I don’t know if it is true, but it is real. It explains why things are the way they are. It makes more sense than Rousseau or Nietzsche.

One of the last subheadings in A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and a Great War reads “The Realism of Fantasy.” That perhaps in a nutshell is the crux of this book. There is a lot more. It is very quotable and highly recommended to anyone who is even a casual fan of either author.