SOURCE: Ready, William. “Man for Tolkien.” In The Tolkien Relation: A Personal Inquiry, pp. 115-31. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1968.

In the following essay, Ready examines Tolkien's thoughts on human nature as they appear in The Lord of the Rings.

Man is hard to handle. A free agent, often he rejects what he thinks of as the Good, let alone good wizards like Gandalf—good men. For as long as Man lives Nature and all beyond relate to him. But there is something in Man, divine and diabolic, that rejects this. When his malign desire embraces Nature, it is to subdue it and harness it to his will. When his good desire woos it, it is often to escape his manhood and be subject within it, to pull Nature over him like a blanket. The body's chemistry, land, sea, sun and sky are all related this way or that...