Guest Post by
Janalyn Voigt
I discovered J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit as an adult, a handicap I soon overcame. By the time the
hobbits made a daring escape on the back of giant eagles, my childhood love of
flying elephants and Neverland had kicked in. I never looked back, going on to
read The Lord of the Rings trilogy to find out what happened next.
I loved the beautiful, dangerous, and mysterious
world Tolkien created in Middle Earth, but the most important reason I read to
the very last sentence of his epic trilogy is that his characters transcended
the page and came alive for me. As a fantasy author myself, you could suppose
that snagging my over-active imagination wouldn’t be too difficult. Except that
since then I’ve read (or more accurately tried to read) any number of fantasy
novels that couldn’t hold a candle to Tolkien’s works.
Tolkien created larger-than-life characters partly
by assigning them quirks common to man. Bilbo’s fondness for the comforts of
homemade his perilous quest particularly difficult. His grumbling seems at
first comical, then pathetic, and finally endearing. Later in the story, when
he relinquishes his desire for hearth and home in favor of the greater good,
his decision is nothing short of heroic. Frodo, hero of The Lord of the Rings, has to overcome the power of an addictive
force. Strider (Aragorn) must summon courage in the face of defeat to heal his
kingdom. Even Gollum is a villain to be despised but pities because of his sin
of greed. Tolkien designed his characters to speak to our human weaknesses and
to make us better for having vicariously experienced their character arcs.
Adventure is the greatest element present in
Tolkien's books. Due to the author’s skillful foreshadowing, the sense of doom
grows as the series progresses until it reaches fever-pitch during the final
excruciating conflict. This is storytelling at its finest. Reading The Lord of The Rings trilogy with an
analytical mindset can help a writer understand how to increase tension in a
story.
Unlike C.S. Lewis, who gave us a Christ-figure in
Aslan, Tolkien doesn’t employ one symbol of Christ but many. Frodo becomes the
sin-bearer, Aragorn the savior, and Gandalf the mysterious visitor who calls on
us to leave the comforts of home and defeat the wiles of a dark enemy.
I count Tolkien among the influences on my Tales of Faeraven trilogy, which is
written in the medieval epic fantasy genre he helped establish. The series
begins with DawnSinger and now continues with the release of Wayfarer.
About
Janalyn Voigt
As children, my older brother and I would beg my
father for bedtime stories, and he would give them. His deep voice
rumbled against my ear at his chest as he unfolded stories of exotic places
like Oz and Neverland. My imagination carried on with the tales even after he
closed the book for the night. When eventually he stopped reading stories, I
began creating my own.
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Within a few years, I’d become the storyteller of my
neighborhood. The other children would gather in a circle on our lawn while I
invented stories to entertain them. No one, including myself, thought of this
as anything unusual. It wasn’t until my sixth-grade teacher pointed out my
ability to spin a tale that I and my parents took note. This is how at the
age of twelve I decided to become a novelist. At it turns out, the
fulfillment of that dream took a few more years than planned.
Find
out more about Janalyn, her closet writing office, and her books go to: Janalyn Voigt.
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