“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” -- so begins a story that seems to have sprung to life of its own accord. As Tolkien himself stated, he picked up a pen and scrawled those ten little words on the blank page of a student examination book. Tolkien made clear throughout his life that didn’t set out to write a covert allegory of the Gospel, and yet his story is rich in spiritual significance and “filled with images of transcendent truth.” Finding God in the Hobbit pXX As Jim Ware points out in his work, “Finding God in the Hobbit,” “At a certain level an artist’s character and worldview are more important than his stated goals and intentions…and this inevitably comes through in his work…And the writer’s most deeply held beliefs
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He experienced the oppression and savagery of war firsthand. “On July, 14th, two weeks after the commencement of the Battle of the Somme, Tolkien’s battalion went into action. He survived a number of engagements; but while as a signaling officer it is unclear how much hand-to-hand combat he might have seen up close, there was no avoiding what Tolkien called the ‘animal horror’ of the trenches” Great War. Those experiences clearly affected his worldview about the reality of good and evil and are clearly expressed in the numerous battle scenes both in “The Hobbit” and in “The Lord of the Rings.”
Part of what makes “The Hobbit” so engaging is that the key elements of Tolkien’s worldview, the basic premises of Middle Earth, resonate so clearly with the majority of readers. He stated at one point that “one object of his sub-creative endeavors was the elucidation of truth, and the encouragement of good morals in this real world, by the ancient device of exemplifying them in unfamiliar embodiments, that may tend to bring them home” Finding God in the Hobbit
He experienced the oppression and savagery of war firsthand. “On July, 14th, two weeks after the commencement of the Battle of the Somme, Tolkien’s battalion went into action. He survived a number of engagements; but while as a signaling officer it is unclear how much hand-to-hand combat he might have seen up close, there was no avoiding what Tolkien called the ‘animal horror’ of the trenches” Great War. Those experiences clearly affected his worldview about the reality of good and evil and are clearly expressed in the numerous battle scenes both in “The Hobbit” and in “The Lord of the Rings.”
Part of what makes “The Hobbit” so engaging is that the key elements of Tolkien’s worldview, the basic premises of Middle Earth, resonate so clearly with the majority of readers. He stated at one point that “one object of his sub-creative endeavors was the elucidation of truth, and the encouragement of good morals in this real world, by the ancient device of exemplifying them in unfamiliar embodiments, that may tend to bring them home” Finding God in the Hobbit