The Lord of the Rings on the Experience of Trauma
How lived experience inspires fiction
The Lord of the Rings, having leapt back into our cultural consciousness lately, has always been subject of discussion for its complex, lofty, but touching themes. And while no shortage of “Tolkien’s philosophy” videos and articles seek to achieve an overview of his clearest and most major themes — I know, I wrote one too — the truth is that Tolkien was not a fan of writing to preach his thinking. He said, famously and directly, that he hated allegory, and while the breadth of his works and the Catholic faith that so obviously shines through them make it tempting to try to dissect his entire philosophical system, it may be both better and more accurate of us to just highlight those few times in his books where he makes his thought on some more specific subject clear. Here, we see him relaying through Frodo the gravity of the events that have just gone down and the inevitability of trauma succeeding them.
Near the end of The Return of the King — 3rd to last chapter, “Homeward Bound” — the hobbits are traveling with Gandalf and a company of men back toward the Shire after having destroyed the Ring and defeated Sauron. The journey is easy, following many celebrations, but Frodo stays weary and depressed. He laments:
“There is no real going back…
