The day was filled with history,
remembrance, and the garish and fascinating reenactment of a tragedy long since
passed. For many in my generation the reality of war is a foreign thing. Even
though my country is currently at war in the Middle East, I and many others
have not been affected by it. I often wonder what the reality of war is like,
though a very large part of me never wants to find out.
At the reenactment I watched a
staged battle take place. And as always I am shocked by it. The idea that men
die so brutally at the hands of one another is jarring. The use of guns and
canons leaves a sour taste in my mouth. The images both live and captured as
photographs 150 years prior, inspire awe and sorrow. But I continue to come to
view this reenactment year after year because events like this can’t be
forgotten.
Tolkien himself knew the realities
of war all too well. He as many of you know, was involved in the First World
War. In fact, he began writing of Middle Earth from his hospital bed after he
was laid low with trench fever. Tolkien was a witness to what would later be
known as the first modern war. He would see a war where guns and gas attacks claimed
countless lives in awful and grotesque fashions, a world in which days upon
days in foul trenches spread horrible disease, where men’s bodies decomposed in
no man’s land. When all was said and done, Tolkien would be one of the few out of
his friends to return home. During the time Tolkien was writing The Lord of the Rings, his son was
fighting in the Second World War. Two generations exposed to a world of war and
its aftermath, exposed to countless deaths that many would never understand.
In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien would write much about war. It is
important to note that the wars Tolkien wrote of remained in the fashion of
old, fought with swords and arrows. Here people met each other face-to-face on
the battlefield instead of in trenches. Here the armies of Middle Earth
contended with mostly straightforward weapons and tactics (if we exclude the
army of the undead) rather than disease and neurotoxins released from leagues
away. In the midst of a book centered on war, Tolkien grips his readers with
deep contemplation of what war means and with the question of humanity. Even Sam
and Frodo, after witnessing the death of a Haradrim warrior, would be forced to
consider why men fight, what they were like before they left for war, if they
had family or loved ones behind. They were forced to ask: was this man not
unlike myself once upon a time? Tolkien
summed it up best when he said, “War must be, while we defend our lives against
a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its
sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I
love only that which they defend.” (Faramir, The Two Towers)
On a side note I walked 6.46 miles (10.4 km) today.
Between walking the expansive reenactment site and hiking in the Gettysburg
Battlefield park, I walked longer than I thought I would. At this point in
their journey the hobbits had ended their first day and found shelter behind a
hill and some tree roots to curl up for the night in. The hobbits would began
day two at a leisurely pace and continue to hike the rolling hills of the Shire.
The road goes ever on and on,
~Daisy Buttons
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