Tumgik
#i think christopher and michael were JRRT's 2 children who served during WWII
ageofgeek · 2 years
Text
I've been thinking about tolkien lately, and i know this must've happened to many fathers and mothers across europe in the 1940s, but
do you ever think about how tolkien was sent to fight in a pointless, brutal, terrible war, from which only he and one of his friends returned? a war that promised young british men that they would find glory, only to find death and trauma and suffering? and when he returned, stricken with trench fever, he told his children stories of the adventures of a humble hobbit - a simple tale, that maybe purposefully didn't reflect just how awful his own "adventure" was.
And then just 20 years later, those children, his children who had heard those stories of a humble hobbit, got sent to fight in another brutal, devastating war, and he had to watch them go without him, knowing what they would go through because it had happened to him.
and this time, after that second war was over, and his sons had returned to him safely, he wrote another tale. This one not as simple. This one not for children, but for the grown men and soldiers his sons had been forced to become. This one centered the brutalities of war but also the hope of friendship and love.
i just. do you ever think about john ronald reuel tolkien???
6K notes · View notes