The Shell-Shocked Hobbit: The First World War and Tolkien's Trauma of the Ring (Critical Essay)

In a letter to Professor L. W. Forster written on New Year's Eve, 1960, J.R.R. Tolkien reemphasized his insistence that the mythology of Middle-earth was not reliant on the events of the two World Wars that spanned much of the first half of his life: "Personally I do not think that either war (and of course the atomic bomb) had any influence upon either the plot or the manner of its unfolding. Perhaps in landscape. The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme" (Letters 303). (1) There are some critics who have fought Tolkien on this point, insisting that The Lord of the Rings be read as a massive allegory for one or both of the World Wars, and it is certainly tempting to do so. (2) There are, after all, a number of intriguing parallels between Tolkien's Middle-earth and twentieth-century Europe: Saruman's destruction of Fangorn, for example, has much in common with modern industrialization at the expense of nature, and his technological tampering with nature is eerily reminiscent of the arms race of the World Wars that culminated in the Manhattan Project. Even a quick glance at the geography seems strangely familiar, with the island-like Shire representing England, Gondor for France, and Mordor in the place of Germany. (3) And, even though he vociferously denied the accusation that his work was an allegory for the events of the twentieth century, Tolkien admitted: "An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience [...]. One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression" (LotR I: Foreword, xvii). And as a young man Tolkien had, indeed, "come under the shadow of war," for he lost some of his best friends to the First World War, and he personally fought at the Battle of the Somme. (4) No surprise, then, that the psychological realities of the horrors that Tolkien saw at the "carnage of the Somme," as he called it (Letters 53), should have left indelible marks on his writings. Tolkien, as we have already seen, admits that the geography of the Somme might be reflected in his portrayal of parts of Middle-earth, but he denies further specific influence. (5) The purpose of this essay, then, is two-fold: I would like not only to recall some general influences of the Somme on Tolkien's Middle-earth, but also to delve a bit deeper into the strong influence of Tolkien's war experiences on the character of Frodo in The Lord of the Rings and in particular on his odd behavior following the destruction of the One Ring at Mt. Doom. Frodo, as we shall see, bears all the qualities of a veteran soldier returning from combat. To put a modern term to the transformation in Frodo's character at the end of The Return of the King, it appears that Frodo is suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, more commonly known as "shell-shock." (6) That Tolkien was at the Battle of the Somme is without question, yet it is still worth recalling the nature of this five-month slaughter in order to begin to understand its effects on the young writer: