Of Hope and Habbits

What The Lord of the Rings taught me about facing crises

- THOMAS HOMER-DIXON

BEING A PARENT of young children, I’ve happily discovered, means getting a second chance to do things I missed in my own childhood — at least the things that won’t leave my body in splints and braces. I’ve had particular fun spending hours reading children’s classics aloud to my kids, stories I’d skipped when I was young or that hadn’t been written yet — L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, Kenneth Oppel’s Airborn series, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, and, of course, all seven volumes of the original Harry Potter series — twice.

One tome that I’d never mastered was J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings — science fiction interested me far more than epic fantasy and myth. So, when I opened volume one, The Fellowship of the Ring, on an icy December evening in 2013, cuddled with then eight-year-old Ben in an armchair, I wasn’t exactly a study in enthusiasm.

Tolkien isn’t for everyone, that’s for sure. The Lord of the Rings is in many ways a prototypical hero’s journey, full of daring adventures, bloody battles, and much valour to protect honour, friends, tribe, and the truth. With only a couple of notable exceptions, powerful, courageous, or clever women don’t cross the pages. And, even taking into consideration the genre’s prevailing style, Tolkien’s prose is — how to be polite? —  a tad laboured.