(no subject)
I'm reading Lord of the Rings again -- it's interesting to read the book carefully again after having recently been perusing Tolkien's letters. Tolkien was a devout Catholic, and he considered Lord of the Rings to be a work of Christian fiction; in one letter to a reader he said that LotR was not ultimately a story of good and evil, but a story about "God and his sole right to divine honor".
This is not particularly explicit in the book but there are a lot of little hints, so to speak, scattered around the book, some of which are explicitly connected with Christian theology by Tolkien in his letters. For instance, when Frodo accepts his quest after the Council of Elrond, it says that Frodo felt as if "some other will" was using his voice; this is meant to represent the grace of God.
I always find the Christian themes and connections of LotR interesting because typically, fantasy fans are non-Christians, so to have one of the founding works of the genre written by a devout Catholic is kind of interesting.
This is not particularly explicit in the book but there are a lot of little hints, so to speak, scattered around the book, some of which are explicitly connected with Christian theology by Tolkien in his letters. For instance, when Frodo accepts his quest after the Council of Elrond, it says that Frodo felt as if "some other will" was using his voice; this is meant to represent the grace of God.
I always find the Christian themes and connections of LotR interesting because typically, fantasy fans are non-Christians, so to have one of the founding works of the genre written by a devout Catholic is kind of interesting.