The Lord of the Rings(together with its prequel, The Hobbit) is said to have been the most widely-read book of the twentieth century after the Bible. Thus begins Stratford Caldecott's Secret Fire which explores some of the reasons, he says, “why Tolkien is one of the great spiritual writers of our time”. Caldecott explains the universal appeal of Tolkien's vision, his testing of his sub-creation for truth, and its coherence with the Catholic faith that was the “secret fire” of Tolkien's life.
He includes an overview of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings which give a fair taste of the epic, and brings out many aspects of the story than can get lost in the sweep of the adventure. Two examples: Frodo's loss of freedom when he is on Mount Doom, that he cannot do the right thing; and Tolkien's identification of the “chief hero” of The Lord of the Rings– not Aragorn, or Frodo, but Sam Gamgee. Quotations from Tolkien's letters give us an insight into how the author viewed his work, for example, from a letter quoted on p. 50:
The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; …That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like “religion”,…For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.
Caldecott succeeds in showing us the breadth and beauty of Tolkien's imagination and the hidden presence, as he calls it, of Tolkien's Catholicism. He also fills in the background that is in the twelve volumes of The History of Middle Earth. This is a great service for those like me, who love The Lord of the Rings and have never managed to get through The Silmarillion.
Caldecott also recognises the crucial contribution Tolkien makes to Christian aesthetics:
Tolkien thus stands with the rest of the Inklings and those who believe that Christianity does not abolish mythopoeia or poetic knowledge, but makes possible a new era of “baptised mythology”, mythology that is no longer religion but “fairy-tale”, an indispensable poetic evocation of a great mystery that is still unfolding within the world (p. 115).
As the mother of three sons and therefore well versed in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Mushing, (Multiple-User Shared Hallucination) and Warhammer, I have seen how necessary stories are, and how compelling Tolkien's are compared to other fantasy writers. Tolkien's world has real heroes, and real evil. His universe is charged with the grandeur of God, though little is explicitly religious, and that evokes a strong response.
This book is a great addition to the library of a Tolkien fan. Even better, it is a book to give someone who has never read The Lord of the Rings. And best of all, it would be a great book to give someone who is a fan of Tolkien but who cannot make the explicit connection with Christianity.
