John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and the Effect of World War I on the Creation of Middle Earth - Research Paper Example

 J. R. R. Tolkien’s epic adventure stories set within the idealistic geography of Middle Earth have been examined by critics and fans alike from a variety of viewpoints, approaches and assumptions. His stories, The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King (these three forming a connected trilogy) and The Simarillion, have captured the minds of generations of readers since their creation and the stories have captured the attention of Hollywood, further distributing the tales. It has been argued that in creating this mythical place, Tolkien was writing a religious adventure, with parallels drawn between Tolkien’s Catholic faith and the biblical analogies made throughout the text. It has also been argued, as convincingly, that his goal was to bring attention to environmental concerns, illustrating the dichotomy between the nature-nurturing elves that remained a force of good and the nature-destroying and nature-altering evil of Sauron’s armies. Still others have pointed to Tolkien’s wonderfully descriptive term ‘eucatastrophe’ as a means of both describing the ending of the tale as well as to highlight a theme that runs throughout the novel. Political concepts related to the novel have abounded, including everything from an examination of the relationship of steward/king to kingdom and an analogy drawn between the events of the trilogy and the personalities of Joseph Stalin and the West. Perhaps one element of the stories that has not been so carefully analyzed is the effect that World War I and Tolkien’s involvement in it might have affected the way in which he told his story. To gain a greater appreciation for the unique effect the war had on Tolkien’s writing, it is necessary to understand more about the author himself and the war as it is generally understood before applying these concepts to his writing, particularly of his first book The Hobbit. Biography Born in British Africa in 1892, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, often called just Ronald, was the first son of English parents Mabel Suffield and Arthur Tolkien. His only brother, Hilary Arthur Reuel Tolkien, was born two years later and the family, except for Arthur, returned to England only one year after this as a result of the three year old J.R.R.’s poor health at that time (Maduram, 2004). When his father died in Africa in 1896, the family moved in with Tolkien’s maternal grandparents in the English countryside at a place called Sarehole. The boys were educated by their mother who, as their only surviving and remembered parent, became their central light. According to Maduram, Tolkien excelled at languages from a very young age. “Early in his Sarehole days, his mother introduced him to the rudiments of Latin, and this delighted him. He was just as interested in the sounds of the words as their meanings, and she began to realize that he had a special aptitude for language” (Carpenter, 1977: 22). Living in the country as they did, Tolkien’s mother also taught him a great deal of botany, but again, Tolkien demonstrated a preference for the experience of the plant, particularly trees, than with the scientific knowledge of it. By 1900, Tolkien was enrolled in a formal school in Birmingham, learning more about languages and being exposed to such ideas as a marching forest in the works of Shakespeare. He was introduced to Catholicism by his mother, who converted when he was 8 years old but then died only four short years later (de Koster, 2000: 15). “Certainly the loss of his mother had a profound effect on his personality. It made him into a pessimist . . . Nothing was safe. Nothing would last. No battle would be won for ever” (Carpenter, 1977: 31). His new guardian was Father Francis Morgan, further associating him with the church. He remained close to the church throughout his life and this Catholic influence is perhaps one reason for his emphasis on the concept of original sin and the fall of man within his novels. His views remained very conservative through much of his life just as he also remained close to the earth. “His feelings towards the rural landscape, already sharp from the earlier severance that had taken him from Sarehole, now become emotionally charged with personal bereavement. This love for the memory of the countryside of his youth was later to become a central part of his writing, and it was intimately bound up with his love for the memory of his mother” (Carpenter, 1977: 32-3). From this point forward, he dedicated himself to his studies, particularly languages, as he continued his education through high school and into Oxford. As a graduate student, he was already working on developing the language of the high elves used in The Hobbit, and experiencing through reading some of the places that he would later adopt for his epic stories (Maduram, 2004). Even before he left school, however, Tolkien was already caught up in the intricacies of war. He started a special program at Oxford in 1914, just after England had declared war on Germany, which would enable him to finish his BA while also enrolled in officers’ training. As a result, when he finished his BA in 1915, he was assigned to the Lancashire Fusiliers as a second lieutenant specializing in signaling. This posting sent him to France in 1916 and three weeks later to the front lines at the Somme (Croft, 2002). Although he spent a good deal of his free time working on his languages and histories, including working on them while sitting in the trenches themselves (Tolkien, 1981: 78), he nevertheless received a full dose of the horrors of war. According to Croft (2002), Tolkien did see a good deal of action within the first months he spent at the front. As a signaling officer, whose duty it was to stand back behind the lines and coordinate the various messages that must be sent within the lines and from the army’s main command posts, it remains unclear whether Tolkien ever actually participated in hand to hand combat as many of his fellows must have, but it is clear that he was witness to the ‘animal horror’ that characterized the trenches. Fortunately for Tolkien’s future fans, the author became ill with trench fever near the end of October, making his stay on the front less than five months and he was shipped back to England to recover. Although many individuals suffering this particular illness were back on their feet within a week, Tolkien was shipped from one hospital to another as he continued to relapse back into illness. He was finally declared fit for duty again just before the war ended, but by that time he later wrote, all of his friends but one were dead. It was during his convalescence that he wrote “The Fall of Gondolin” which would become a part of Middle Earth (Carpenter, 1977). He had married Edith Bratt just before leaving for war and spent much of his convalescence under her care. As the war ended, he settled into his married life with a wife who was less than happy about her forced conversion to Catholicism and intimidated by her husband’s intellectual friends. Tolkien gained employment as a researcher for the Oxford English Dictionary followed by a position as a tutor in English at Leeds University (Wood, 2002). His final professional position, professor of English Language and Literature at Merton College in Oxford, was acquired when Tolkien was 32 and was a position he held for the next 35 years. During these years, Tolkien built much of the life he is remembered for. His first son, John Francis Reuel had been born while Tolkien was still overcoming his illness in 1917 and the little family soon grew to include Michael Hilary Reuel in 1920 and Christopher Reuel in 1924. The only daughter of the family, Priscilla, was born in 1929 (Doughan, 2002). As a father and a professor of undergrads at Oxford, Tolkien would seem to have been extremely mundane and unremarkable. However, he also helped found a group of friends and writers calling themselves the ‘Inklings’ which included C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield and Charles Williams among others. This group provided the link between the bedtime stories Tolkien made up to tell his children and the published stories, namely The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, that have so fascinated the world in the years following their appearance. The immediate success of The Hobbit in 1937 created the legend of Tolkien and kept him in relative popularity from that time forward. After 35 years at Oxford and a successful, if contentious publishing career, Tolkien took early retirement from Oxford in 1959, having recognized Edith’s unhappiness and wishing to give her something more in life. The couple moved to an small resort on the coast near Bournemouth, where they lived in relative obscurity, finally giving Edith the opportunity to enjoy her life and her husband without the pressures of competing with the intelligentsia of Oxford or the pressures of social appearances. “She felt terribly inadequate, often even speechless, among other professional wives with considerably greater education and cultural achievement than hers. She became known as the ‘wife who did not call’ and who was thus excluded from the ‘at homes’ which other Oxford wives hosted” (Wood, 2002). The couple resumed their old fondness for each other in their isolation for the next 12 years until Edith’s death in 1971. After this, Tolkien often struggled with loneliness in his remote retreat, but he remained active, still working on his massive encyclopedic Silmarillion. In 1972, Oxford University awarded him with an honorary doctorate in philology and, later that same year, Tolkien finally admitted defeat on the Silmarillion and handed it over to his son Christopher to finish for him. Tolkien died on September 2, 1973 at the age of 81. World War I While a strong background is necessary on the author to understand how his life and experiences might have affected the course of The Hobbit, it is also necessary to have a basic understanding of some of the more important elements of World War I that might have worked on the author’s imagination. World War I officially began on July 28, 1914. Although it is generally attributed to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, there were a number of factors that had been put in place well before this death. Britain and France had established treaties that provided for a more efficient use of the navies and other treaties between England and Belgium and France and Russia had also been established by 1911, but it was events occurring from 1911 forward that brought the world to war (Smitha, 1998). In 1911, an internal issue in Morocco sent that government appealing to France for help. This resulted in a stand-off between France and Germany, who felt that France, by sending an army to Morocco (and giving a portion to Spain), had violated earlier agreements. Germany’s aggressive military response publicly embarrassed France’s more diplomatic government causing it to be replaced with a more hostile and aggressive government where Germany was concerned (Smitha, 1998). The way this standoff was settled, with France maintaining a protectorate over Morocco in exchange for providing German colonies with land access to the Congo in Africa, served to anger Germans in return and exacerbating an anti-French attitude. Stirred by the events in Morocco, other small wars broke out between nations in and around the Mediterranean, particularly between the Ottoman Empire and Serbia. In this war, Germany supported the Turks and France supported Serbia, which would have significance in establishing the importance of the Archduke’s assassination as the start of World War I. When the Turks lost their war, Serbia was able to move up the Albanian coast which angered Austria-Hungary. Major war was averted when the Russian-backed Serbia moved off of the Albanian coast and Germany defined its treaty with Austria-Hungary as purely defensive, causing Austria-Hungary to back down (Smitha, 1998). Meanwhile, Russia was also growing more hostile toward Germany as a result of German economic activities. Into this atmosphere, in 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand decided to make a tour of Sarajevo with only limited security despite the known frictions between the resident Bosnian Serbs and their dissatisfaction with Habsburg rule. “A devoutly religious man, the Archduke responded to the danger of his visit with the remark that all was in the hands of God” (Smitha, 1998). This presented the opportunity needed for an organization called the ‘Black Hand’, comprised of Serbian youth but without the sanction of the Serbian government, to execute the Archduke. Because the assassins were Serbian and the Archduke Austrian, the incident was used as an excuse to renew hostilities between Austria and Serbia, with many Serbs in Bosnia and Sarajevo being injured or killed by Austrian supporters (Smitha, 1998). Germany agreed with Austria that the Serbs needed to be punished, assuming Russia would support this decision. When Austria issued an ultimatum to Serbia to relinquish sovereignty or go to war, though, it took everyone, including Germany, by surprise. Russia was bound by treaty to support Serbia and France was bound by treaty to support Russia. Britain attempted to remain neutral and Germany was caught in indecision. July 28, 1914 is the date that Austria officially declared war on Serbia, beginning the inevitable slide into full-scale global war. With Austria’s declaration, Russia was forced to declare war on Austria and Germany, its political ally. To support Russia, France also began mobilizing. This forced Germany to declare war on two fronts – Russia and France – while attempting to negotiate neutral but occupational relations with Belgium. Their failure to do so and subsequent invasion of Belgium as the quickest means of attacking France forced England into the war by August 4, 1914. “In London, crowds sang ‘God Save the King’ and ‘Rule Britannia.’ They cheered the sight of any man in military uniform” (Smitha, 1998). This idealistic and exaggeratedly optimistic view of war infected young men throughout the various countries and would contribute to widespread disillusionment and horror as the war unfolded. This war was fought around the world in various locations throughout Europe, Africa, the Middle East, China and the Pacific Islands. Much of the war in the west, which is most relevant to understanding Tolkien’s understanding of it, took place in France and Belgium with the most deadly battles fought at the Somme and Verdun. One of the more notorious battles of the war, the Battle of the Somme, took place shortly after Tolkien arrived at the front. On July 1, 1916, approximately one month after Tolkien arrived in France, the four and a half month battle was launched. On this single day, the British, occupying the region along the Somme River from Gommecourt south to Maricourt, lost approximately 58,000 fighting men wounded or killed (Duffy, 2007). The conditions of the soldiers were nothing to be envied. Because of the large number of troops in the area, the different armies were forced to entrench in their lines and attempt to bomb each other out of their holes on either side. Reverend Selwyn Sharp described the miserable environment as autumn began to set in. “I seem to have been on horseback ever since I got back here – it is the only means of progress as the mud is unspeakable; up by the guns it is simply terrific – and not infrequently a man has to be pulled out – it is feet deep. The rain and wind are incessant. One gets wet through and tired out every day, and yet somehow one does not catch cold” (letter dated October 30, 1916 cited in Curme, 2001). While soldiers may not have caught the common cold, a common illness they did catch was quickly dubbed ‘trench fever’. The symptoms of trench fever are described as a sudden high fever, loss of energy, skin rashes, inflamed eyes and swelling leg, however the cause of the illness remained unknown for most of the war (Duffy, 2007). It wasn’t until 1918 that the cause of the fever, infected lice, was finally identified (Duffy, 2007). By this time, the war was nearly over. With their economic base crumbling and supporting nations such as Turkey and Austria folding, Germany finally fell, signing an armistice agreement on the morning of November 11, 1918 and ending the war. The outcome of the war was decided in the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed on June 28, 1919. According to the terms of the treaty, the Germans were forced to relinquish the Alsace-Lorraine region to France and consented to a military occupation by the allies (American, British, French and Belgian) in the majority of western Germany including the Rhineland and many cities. Belgium, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Denmark gained sections of former German territories. The German military machine that terrorized Western and Eastern Europe was all but dismantled. “Germany had to disarm almost completely and was only allowed an army of 100,000 men, was forbidden to own military airplanes, submarines, tanks, heavy artillery, and poison gas and had to demilitarize a 50-kilometer zone on the right bank of the Rhine” (Ryder, 1976: 204). Additionally, the German Navy was reduced significantly to only a handful of small vessels. Financial reparations outlined in the treaty were substantial and ambiguous. Germany was forced to effectively sign over a blank check to the countries of Western Europe, an enormous amount that was to be paid-out for several decades highlighting the punitive nature of the agreement (“The Treaty of Versailles” 2007). Many of these elements of the war can be discovered in Tolkien’s story. The Hobbit and the War With an understanding both of the major concepts of World War I and Tolkien’s part in that war, it is possible to begin to trace the impact of this war on his writing. Although Tolkien did not write The Hobbit as an allegory for the war, nor did he intentionally include elements of it within this story, it is often difficult for writers to exclude their experiences entirely from the text of their fiction. As Tolkien himself admitted, “the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex” (Croft, 2002). The story reportedly started as a sort of afterthought that occurred to Tolkien one day after having spent several boring hours grading papers. “According to his own account, one day, when Tolkien was engaged in the soul-destroying task of marking examination papers, he discovered that one candidate had left one page of an answer-book blank. On this page, moved by who knows what anarchic daemon, he wrote ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit’” (Doughan, 2002). From this spontaneous-seeming sentence, Tolkien reportedly wrote his novel The Hobbit and subsequent adventures as a means of discovering just what a ‘hobbit’ might be. “For Tolkien the philologist, this meant something different from the ordinary course. Instead of giving imagination a free rein, Tolkien turned to research. He would subject such names to a ‘severe philological scrutiny’” (McDaniel, 2000). Although he did part of this exploration by telling bedtime stories to his children and the novel is written to a large extent as if being spoken to children, Tolkien asserted that the finished novel was not intended to be a children’s story while linguistic examination uncovers a wealth of much deeper word associations that helped determine the course of the plot. Several studies have been conducted regarding the origins of The Hobbit. In one interview in 1967, Tolkien strongly stated that the book was never intended to be merely a children’s tale. “That’s all sob stuff. No, of course, I didn’t. If you’re a youngish man and you don’t want to be made fun of, you say you’re writing for children. At any rate, children are your immediate audience and you write or tell them stories, for which they are mildly grateful: long rambling stories at bedtime” (Tolkien cited in Norman, 1967). In his analysis of the origins of The Hobbit, Stan McDaniel illustrates how the words involved in that first sentence would have suggested the basic characteristics of his main character through its etymological associations with ancient words and languages. These linkages, which Tolkien would have been familiar with and, as a lover of languages, would have had the interest and determination to pursue, suggest the concepts of ‘head’, ‘hole’, roundness (both as in body and in ring) and protection. These concepts, along with the associated words they were linked with, further suggested many of the other events of the story such as the 15 members of the company clinging to the tops of five fir trees while surrounded by goblins suggested by a twist on the concept of roundness and protection as a form of rebirth. “The five ‘trees’ of the Cauldron of Rebirth stood for the five vowels of the tree-alphabet, the first of which was the birth-vowel ‘A’ and was named ailm, after the silver fir [that the company climbed to escape the wargs]. In this alphabet, the number of consonants was fifteen. Tolkien must have been considerably amused by his image of fifteen bedraggled ‘consonants’ clinging desperately to five fiery vowels” (McDaniel, 2000). It is unsurprising, given this depth of thought and intricate connection, to discover many of the major themes of post-war writing within The Hobbit as well. Perhaps one of the most striking elements of World War I that had widespread effect was a change in tone regarding war. Within the various countries involved, there was a widespread misconception of what war in the new century would look like as compared to wars of the past as the world began rushing toward World War I. “In addition to being seen as a great event in their nation’s history, it was seen also as a great sporting event. People were expecting the new war to be like those of the nineteenth century: largely the work of heroic soldiers bringing glory to the nation” (Smitha, 1998). This overall tone of celebration and great adventure marks the beginning of Bilbo’s quest for the dragon’s treasure. The story begins with the gathering of the dwarves and Gandalf at Bilbo’s house, a great feast and an evening of music inspiring enough that even the reticent Bilbo “wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking stick” (Hobbit 15). The dwarves are mounting their campaign against the dragon Smaug in order to reclaim their treasure, but this isn’t that far different from the factors that drew Britain into the war, the treaties and the need to protect their own investments described above. However, Tolkien builds into the hobbit the underlying sense of foreboding that must have dogged most of the soldiers on their way to the front. With the consideration that he may never again return to his comfortable little home, the hobbit becomes overwhelmed, shrieking in the dark and reduced to incoherency. His participation in the adventure is reluctant at best despite his eventual dedication to the party. As the book carries forward, this tone continues to get darker and darker with only periodic bursts of light that don’t go far enough to eliminate the overall oppressed or hunted impression. Even before the party has entered the more dangerous lands, they come upon their first dangerous adventure being caught by creatures of the night, the trolls, who by necessity cannot operate in the light of day. Once they meet with the goblins, they remain hunted throughout the rest of the story, the noble leader of the party turns greedy and dark upon finally attaining his objective and Bilbo is finally able to return home a wiser, richer but much saddened hobbit after thousands of lives on all sides of the war between goblins, wolves, dwarves, men and elves are lost. In addition to the overall tone of the book, there are several elements within The Hobbit that have their counterparts in Tolkien’s experiences during the Great War. The first obvious element is the idea of a creature living within a safe hole in the ground, like Bilbo’s house or like the relative safety of the trenches as compared to the killing fields of France. Within The Hobbit, the only creatures that live in relative security are those who live underground. Bilbo’s home is the most secure within the relatively peaceful and remote region of The Shire, which has been compared with the West Midlands that Tolkien remembered fondly. “It provides a fairly good living with moderately good husbandry and is tucked away from all the centers of disturbance; it comes to be regarded as divinely protected, though people there didn’t realize it at the time. That’s rather how England used to be” (Norman, 1967). However, the trolls, the goblins and the dwarves all also prefer living underground and enjoy relative safety and comfort. This also conforms with Tolkien’s war experience. As he told his interviewer in 1967, “we found German trenches which were often very habitable indeed except that, when we reached them, they faced the wrong way about” (Norman, 1967). Those who lived above ground were a few of the elves (even the wood elves of Mirkwood lived in a cave) and men, most of whom are only seen in the stilted community of Lake-town, which is destroyed by the falling Smaug. The elves escape harm thanks to their highly secluded location and the fact that there is only one home to protect, as indicated by the home’s name, the Last Homely House. The progression of Bilbo and his friends is also somewhat reminiscent of the journey undertaken by Tolkien and his fellow soldiers as they made their way to the front. As Bilbo and company travel toward the Misty Mountains and away from Bilbo’s homeland, “they came to lands where people spoke strangely, and sang songs Bilbo had never heard before” (Hobbit 31). However, the trip becomes steadily worse as the land becomes depopulated and the weather turned wet and muddy, much like the trip Tolkien made through France to the wet and muddy battlefields at the Somme where the civilians had already fled for safety elsewhere. As the trip continues, Bilbo and his friends are plunged into deep darkness, face peril at nearly every minute and are seen to make quick yet deep friendships along the way. One portion of their journey, as they were attempting to cross the high pass in the Misty Mountains, even brings to mind the sound of the artillery firing back and forth over the front lines in France. “The lightening splinters on the peaks, and rocks shiver, and great crashes split the air and go rolling and tumbling into every cave and hollow; and the darkness is filled with overwhelming noise and sudden light” (Hobbit 57). The War of the Five Armies between elves, men, dwarves, goblins and wolves – not to mention a hobbit and various species of birds thrown in – cannot be too far off from the war of the world comprising soldiers of France, Britain, Russia, Germany and Austria – not to mention a few Turks and Serbs and a late assist from the United States. Finally, the end of the book provides closure without celebration, just as the end of World War I provided closure but celebration for those who had participated. When the dust finally cleared and the cease fire was called, the field of battle was littered with the bodies of friends and foe, in both the real world and Tolkien’s fiction. While Tolkiend remembers that all of his friends but one were dead, Bilbo finishes the war with a tearful farewell to his ostensible leader Thorin before learning that Fili and Kili, the youngest of the dwarves and those who had cared for him in hard times, had also lost their lives in defense of their uncle. The goblins are killed in the thousands. While his second series, The Lord of the Ring, acknowledges that “even the goblins weren’t evil to begin with,” Tolkien explains in his interview, “they were corrupted. I’ve never had those sort of feelings about the Germans” (Norman, 1967). When Bilbo finally sees his home again, it is in the process of being dismantled with the assumption that he’s died. Even once everything has been put back to rights again, Bilbo finds his relationship with his friends and neighbors has changed, proving, as Tolkien himself learned, there is no true returning home again. Understanding the detailed elements of Tolkien’s biography, particularly his involvement with a relatively complicated war, helps to bring many of these influences forward while reading through his fictional account of a hobbit. The details of the war itself, particularly the politics involved in it, similarly brings forward some of these elements within The Hobbit. Moving into his more mature work, The Lord of the Rings, brings clarity to many of these elements as his war nearly mimics that of the war he witnessed himself. The concepts found in The Hobbit become further developed, examined and extended in his later work, all tempered by his earlier mythology and his love for the connections and complications of language. Although Tolkien often asserted he had not deliberately included World War I into his own story, instead claiming the story was merely a setting for the languages he’d been playing with, it remains true that Tolkien’s stories are heavily laced with the major themes that became associated with WWI. Works Cited Burdge, Anthony S. “Biblical Allusions within the Lord of the Rings.” The Northeast Tolkien Society. (January 11, 2006). September 5, 2008 Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton, 1977. Croft, Janet Brennan. “The Great War and Tolkien’s Memory: An Examination of World War I Themes in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.” Mythlore. Fall-Winter 2002. Curme, Phil. “Swavesey and the Great War Part V – George Norman.” Special Feature. Trenches on the Web, 2001. September 5, 2008 De Koster, Katie. Readings on J.R.R. Tolkien (The Greenhaven Press Literary Companion to British Authors. Greenhaven, 2000. Doughan, David. “Who Was Tolkien?” J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biographical Sketch. England: The Tolkien Society, 2002. Duffy, Michael. “Battles: The Battle of the Somme, 1916.” First World War. (2007). September 5, 2008 < http://www.firstworldwar.com/battles/somme.htm> Maduram, David. “Tolkien’s Biography.” Tolkien. (June 8, 2004). September 5, 2008 < http://www.davidslife.com/funstuff/tolkien/biodata.htm> McDaniel, Stan. “The Philosophical Etymology of Hobbit.” (2000). September 14, 2008 < http://www.stanmcdaniel.com/hobbit/hobbit.htm> Norman, Philip. “The Prevalence of Hobbits.” New York Times. January 15, 1967. Purtill, Richard. “Christian Morality in The Lord of the Rings.” Excerpted from Purtill, Richard, Lord of the Elves and Eldils: Fantasy and Philosophy in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1974, reprinted in de Koster, Katie, Readings on J.R.R. Tolkien. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 2000. Ryder, A.J. Twentieth Century Germany. Columbia University Press, November 1976. Smitha, Frank E. “Slide to War in Europe, 1911 to 1914.” Macrohistory and World Report. (1998). September 5, 2008 Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit. New York: Ballentine Books, 1980. Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991. “The Treaty of Versailles.” Waterville, Maine: Colby College, (2007). September 5, 2008 Wood, Ralph C. “Biography of J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973).” Leadership U, (July 13, 2002). September 5, 2008 < http://www.leaderu.com/humanities/wood-biography.html> Read More