Tolkien, J. R. R.

Born in Bloemfontein, South Africa on January 3, fantasist, philologist, and critic John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) served in France during World War I and saw action at the Battle of the Somme. He completed his undergraduate studies at Exeter College, Oxford, in 1915, and from 1920 until 1924 was Reader and Professor of English Language at Leeds University. In 1925 Tolkien was elected Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University and Fellow of Pembroke College. In 1945 he was elected Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford. He published The Lord of the Rings in three volumes from 1954 to 1955 and retired from his professorship in 1959.

In a 1951 letter to an editor, Tolkien commented that The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion (1977) were primarily concerned with "the Fall, Mortality, and the Machine." He explained that the Machine (or magia, magic) were plans or devices that dominated, either bydestroying the environment or by controlling the wills of people (Carpenter 2000, pp. 145, 146). His Middle-earth writings (The Hobbit [1937], The Silmarillion, The Lord of the Rings, the posthumously published Unfinished Tales [1980], and the twelve-volume History of Middle Earth [1982–1996]), can be understood as at least a partial response to a modern world that was embracing industry and technology. Tolkien believed the Machine (technology) was destroying his beautiful, rural, Edwardian countryside (represented in The Hobbit by the peaceful Shire) with wars, factories, cars, railroads, and pollution, and he saw no end in sight. He passed on his distaste for mechanization to his hobbits in the prologue of The Lord of the Rings: "They [hobbits] do not and did not understand or like machines more complicated than a forge-bellows, a water-mill, or a hand-loom ..." (Tolkien 1994, p. 1). His two major villains in the story, Saruman and Sauron, are dependent on machines and use them to dominate and destroy the countryside. His descriptions of the realm of Mordor, with its desolate, scarred plains and history of being a stronghold of evil, were taken from his experiences on the battlefield.

J. R. R. Tolkien, 1892–1973. Tolkien gained a reputation during the 1960s and 1970s as a cult figure among youths disillusioned with war and the technological age; his continuing popularity evidences his ability to evoke the oppressive realities of modern life while drawing audiences into a fantasy world. (AP/Wide World Photos.)

Tolkien was not opposed to technology in itself, but he despaired of the motives behind it, which he saw as primarily concerned with speed, immediacy, and the desire for power and control. He compared the Machine with art, which created new worlds of the mind and imagination, and complained that labor-saving machines only added more and less effective work. He lamented that the infernal combustion engine had ever been invented, and expressed doubts that it could ever be put to rational use. He also disliked the fact that the Machine was increasingly associated with English daily life. He once owned a car, but found it difficult to drive in Oxford's traffic congestion, and commented that the spirit of Isengard (the evil Saruman's fortress) had led planners to destroy the city in order to accommodate more cars and traffic. Near the end of World War II he sarcastically suggested the war had been conducted by bureaucrats (the big Folk) who viewed most of it in large motor-cars.

Some critics suggested that The Lord of the Rings was an allegory and protest of atomic power and the dangers inherent in nuclear warfare. Tolkien emphatically denied this, saying that the story (which predated the nuclear age) was not about atomic power, but power exerted for domination. In his view nuclear physics could be used for domination, but it should not be used at all, and he further emphasized that the story was really about Death and Immortality. But he was stunned and outraged when he learned of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. He called the scientists who developed the bomb lunatic physicists and raged that it was idiocy to "consent to do such work for war-purposes, calmly plotting the destruction of the world!" (Carpenter 2000b, p. 116).

Tolkien's conservative Christian (Roman Catholic) beliefs contributed substantially to his attitudes about technology. In his seminal essay "On Fairy Stories" (1939, originally a lecture at the University of St. Andrews), he stated that human beings were subcreators who were created by God in his image to use their gifts wisely and in accordance with his wishes. The inclination of modern society toward domineering technology was, for Tolkien, a denial of God as creator. He called The Lord of the Rings a "fundamentally Christian and Catholic work" (Carpenter 2000b, p. 172), and his view of Christianity saw the universe as a place of conflict between good and evil.

In late 1957 Tolkien was approached by a group of American businessmen who gave him drawings and a story-line for a proposed animated film version of The Lord of the Rings. He wrote a member of the group a scathing letter of denunciation, explaining that the proposal and script, in whole and detail, was totally unacceptable, and that he did not want his story garbled. The early twenty-first century film versions of The Lord of the Rings have received generally favorable notices, particularly on the Internet and from young people. But several Tolkien scholars have written of their displeasure at the crass commercialization of the films, and the many liberties taken with characters and events. The films have been marketed by deploying the latest technology to sell to younger fans, and Tolkien's complex fantasy has been simplified into a visually stunning, character-driven action story with emphasis on spectacle rather than content.

Tolkien's son Christopher, the literary executor of his father's estate, did not disapprove of the film, but voiced doubts about the transformation of The Lord of the Rings into dramatic form. Tolkien, no doubt, would voice his displeasure over the films, and contend that technology has been used to reproduce and garble his narrative. He was resigned to the use of the Machine as a self-destructive tool of the modern world, which desired, in his view, to eliminate tradition and the past. He expressed his resignation in 1956, just a year or so after the publication of the final volume of The Lord of the Rings: "If there is any contemporary reference in my story at all it is to what seems to me the most widespread assumption of our time: that if a thing can be done, it must be done" (Carpenter 2000b, p. 246).

Anglo-Catholic Cultural Criticism;; Christian Perspectives;; Science Fiction;; Science, Technology, and Literature.

Carpenter, Humphrey. (2000a). J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. The standard biography of Tolkien. The author was given unrestricted access to all Tolkien's papers and interviewed his friends and family.

Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. (2000b). The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Curry, Patrick. (1998). Defending Middle-Earth—Tolkien: Myth & Modernity. London: HarperCollins. Defends Tolkien's work from escapist and reactionary charges and maintains that The Lord of the Rings addresses the global realities and problems associated with the misuse of technology and destruction of the environment.

Purtill, Richard L. (1984). J. R. R. Tolkien: Myth, Morality and Religion. San Francisco: Harper & Row. Examines the religious and ethical ideas in Tolkien's work, with particularly trenchant chapters on the nature and role of myth and the art of storytelling.

Schick, Theodore. (2003). "The Cracks of Doom: The Threat of Emerging Technologies and Tolkien's Rings of Power." In The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy, ed. Gregory Bassham and Eric Bronson. Peru, IL: Open Court Publishing.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1994). The Lord of the Rings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

J. R. R. T.—A Film Portrait of J. R. R. Tolkien. (1992). Produced by Helen Dickinson. Directed by Derek Bailey. 110 minutes. Visual Corporation Limited. Videocassette. This is a video, the first made on Tolkien, with valuable contributions from Tolkien himself, his son Christopher, and noted Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey.