Fantastic Reality

It may have been Lewis (or my memory could serve me wrong) who noted that anything Tolkien had to say he took his time about saying, making him much of an ent himself. Such was my impression of him based on my first reading of the entirety of his essay On Faerie Stories. And yet, the truths contained within this essay (and others of the same nature) are arguably worth the time it takes to digest them. Tolkien's main points may even deserve the repetition they receive.

The concept that resonates with me most is the idea that we love faerie stories (and fantasy in general) because the deepest parts of us hope that the deepest parts of them are true. Author Anthony Lang is quoted in On Faerie Stories, as saying that children represent “the young age of man true to his early loves, and have this unblunted edge of belief, a fresh appetite for marvels.” Though Tolkien goes on to later pull this statement apart, I want to hold on to the truth in what Lang says. In most ways, life is easier as a child. It is the nature of childlike faith to believe without empirical evidence or systematic arguments. Fantasy, I believe, is often written for children because children will more readily suspend their belief and accept alternate worlds. Yet the older I get, the more I learn and the more skeptical I am tempted to become, the more I really do want to suspend my own beliefs and revert to childlike faith that believes without questioning. I want the myth, the story, the fantasy to be true. And I want them to be true, because there is something in the fantasy that is very much like I wish reality to be.

Tolkien says that "probably every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator...hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it." I would take that a step further and apply it to the reader as well. The reader too, hopes that the truths found in the secondary world can in some way be translated into the reality in which they live. We were created to live in a world quite different from the one in which we find ourselves. Even as Jewel did not find his "real home" until he was in Aslan's country, so we will not be satisfied until we reach reality as it ought to be. Lewis touches on the relationship between myth and reality in his review of The Lord of the Rings when he says that "the value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by 'the veil of familiarity'." We may not be sure of what reality ought to be, but we are rather certain it is other than the reality we experience. Fantasy, in my experience, shines a light on what that reality might be. The myths, the stories, the fantasies help me to understand what I hope to be true.