John Ronald Reul - Tolkien

John Ronald Reul (J.R.R.) Tolkien has been called various things by various critics. Some have called him "the father of modern fantasy," "creator of England's mythology," and great post-modern expressionist. Others see his work as childish, sexist, and silly. However, there is more to his work than both his fans and detractors see in it.

The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion are works of modern fantasy; but within them are roots which trace back to classical and Germanic cultures of Europe. Tolkien did base his Middle Earth on the ideal of England; however, his myth has gone far beyond his homeland and encompasses all of humanity. One could classify his environmentalism and disdain for modern industry and technology as post-modern; yet, his feelings come more from a yearning for an unreachable past than from any hope for the present.

Childish is not so much the barb his worst critics hoped it would be, but an accurate depiction; a childlike sense of wonder and adventure constituted half of his creative process. He may be called sexist, and it would not be hard to imagine as he enjoyed male company more so than female throughout his life, and many of his characters develop without the presence of strong women in their lives. But some of the most heroic deeds of his tales are accomplished by women, and he in no way downplays their accomplishments in light of the men in their lives. As for silly, Tolkien's creativity sprung not only from childlike wonder but also a serious love of language and mythology. Linguistics and myth were driving forces behind why he wanted to write the lore of Middle Earth in the first place, and the scholarly nature of his study in these areas appear in his writing.

In order to fully understand such an individual as J.R.R. Tolkien, we must first ask, who was he? Where did his influence come from? Why did he create what he did? These are necessary if anyone is to look at his body of work.

Tolkien the Child

John Ronald Reul Tolkien was born in 1892 to Arthur and Mabel Tolkien, in the city of Bloemfontein, South Africa. Arthur's father was a banker for the British Bank of Africa; his mother had met Arthur in Birmingham, England, where they had grown up. Mabel came from the Suffield family, who prided themselves on their English heritage. The Tolkiens, on the other hand, were English only by a few generations; originally they were a Germanic family.

Ronald, as his parents and family would call him, did not stay in Bloemfontein very long; the climate was not agreeable either to his health or to his mother. Also, Ronald now had a younger brother named Hilary, born in 1894. Mabel, not thinking the frontier of South Africa a fit place to raise her children, returned to Birmingham in 1895 with Ronald and Hilary. Arthur staid behind, but in 1896 he died due to complications from rheumatic fever. The impact on Tolkien was negligible, as he really did not remember his father well.

In the summer of that year, Mabel and the children moved out of her parents' home in Birmingham to the small hamlet of Sarehole. For the next four years, Ronald and Hilary would grow up here, and Tolkien would later say that his attachment to this place had a great impact on both himself and his writing. Sarehole was traditional English countryside; there was a red brick mill with a working waterwheel on the River Cole, open meadows and farmland, and the nearby village of Hall Green. This would become the idyllic landscape that Tolkien wanted to return to in his writing; it would also bitterly remind him of the home he could never return to.

Ronald and Hilary had a number of adventures here. They would travel to see the working mill and its operator, whom they named "The White Ogre." They cautiously picked mushrooms from the farm of "The Black Ogre," until he chased them off his property. They would walk to Hall Green, where the boys there said words like "chawl," for "pork," and "pikelet," for "crumpets". "Gamgee," was another word; it stood for cotton surgical dressing, invented by nearby Birmingham's Dr. Gamgee. For the first time, Tolkien was introduced to a language different from his own, the Warwickshire dialect. This was a subset of the West Midland dialect, which he studied in his scholarly life as a result of his time in Sarehole.

The happiness of Sarehole was not to last, however. Soon, Ronald was old enough to begin attending regular school, and he was accepted to Birmingham's King Edward's School. The commute was too expensive for Mabel, who was on tight expenses despite aid from the Suffields, Tolkiens, and her in-laws the Incledons. Therefore, the family packed up their bags and returned to Birmingham.

Tolkien the Student: Sarehole and King Edward's

Ronald's first instruction came from his mother Mabel, who taught him English grammar and handwriting, Latin, and French. Immediately, Ronald latched on to these languages. The beauty of the sight and sound of Latin intrigued him, and it was the first language after his own that he knew fluently. He was able to learn French, though it did not seem to him as beautiful as Latin; this may have been the root of the francophobia that he felt throughout his life. His handwriting was excellent, as odd in it's own way as his mother's was. He also learned botany at this time; he became very knowledgeable, especially about trees. Like language, he was not so much interested in the technical aspect of plants as he was in their aesthetics, the feel and shape of leaves and the scent of flowers. His first drawings (another area where he was good) were of landscapes and trees, and it would be his joy to draw either existing landscapes or ones from his own inventions.

As Tolkien was reading by age 4, he had an early start on books. Alice in Wonderland he enjoyed, but he did not wish to imitate Alice's travels. Realistic fiction such as R. L. Stevenson and Hans Christian Andersen were not to his liking. He did, though, like stories about American Indians; maybe he felt their fierce warrior nature and connection to the land were traits to be admired and emulated. He also read books by George Macdonald, who wrote of a land plagued by subterranean goblins. His favorite, though, was Andrew Lang's Red Fairy Book; the last story in it is a retelling of the Norse myth of the hero Sigurd questing to slay the dragon Fafnir. Macdonald and Lang were, therefore, some of his early literary influences.

Mabel