The Tales That Really Matter

A personal essay by James Dosdall

The story of how The Lord of the Rings touched my heart and gave me hope. 

“Far above the Ephel Duath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings.

When I first read these words, I couldn’t understand why they struck me so hard. I didn’t know why they seemed to resonate with my soul. I was young, barely entering the turmoil of adolescence. I knew nothing of the epic conflict between good and evil, light and darkness. Yet I knew that these words meant something.

As I grew up, I began to wonder. I wondered why this novel written by some stuffy British man who died decades before my birth would not leave my mind. I wondered why my conscious was so obsessed with it that it changed every aspect of my life. I wondered why The Lord of the Rings had the power to drag me by the nose into the world of fantasy, where I waste my life away reading, writing, and pondering made-up, nonsensical fairy tales of magic and dragons.


As a young student aspiring to be an English major, I acquired an arsenal of vocabulary that would allow me to academically defend my love of the book. I learned about imagery, and I could explain how Tolkien’s masterful command of language and his long, elaborate descriptions set the scene and tone of his story. I learned about symbolism, and I became aware of the rich Christian typology that underlaid the book, striking a chord with my own religious beliefs. I became aware of the artful way that Tolkien handled the arcs of his characters, forcing the every-man to rise up and become the hero.

And it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to explain why the book made my soul sing. All of the formal vocabulary in the world couldn’t explain why this book struck my heart like lightning while a hundred other—equally literary—books passed my heart by like a gentle breeze.

It wasn’t until I became older and began to see darkness that I understood. It wasn’t until I experienced darkness that I comprehended light. I went through a dark time in my life. The specifics of my metaphorical Mount Doom are irrelevant. You have been on those slopes. Everyone has. It was then that I began to understand why the story meant so much to me. It was because I was in that story.

We were all traveling through a land of darkness, driven on by the fool’s hope that there would be light. That the Shadow would pass. Both Frodo and I had lots of chances of turning back, only we didn’t. We both knew that the Shadow seemed endless, yet we both knew that it would end.

Only then did I begin to understand the value of fantasy. Of literature, really. It is universal. It strips away all of the specifics—all of the menial, boring details—and reduces things down to its core. It plucks people out of their individual lives, cultures, nations, religions, and sticks them down into something that doesn’t exist. By shaving off the extraneous, it allows the fundamental to shine through. It is a lens that shows us a view of what connects all of us together and what matters to us all. It is, at risk of sounding cliché, a chance to lay bare what is universally human.

To put it simply, watching others struggle through despair—and overcome it—gave me the power to struggle through my own despair. It gave me hope. I can now say that I, like Sam, understand “the tales that really matter.” I have read tales where people like me “had lots of chances . . . of turning back, only they didn’t.” Frodo didn’t turn back, and neither will I.

I now know that the Shadow is only a passing thing. Though it may seem impenetrable, it will end as all things do. And a great Light will meet us all when the Shadow has passed. It’s a lesson everyone has to learn at some point, I suppose. It’s simply part of growing up. Everyone learns it in a different way. But for me, I learned it from the words of a fairy-tale.

“‘A great Shadow has departed,’ said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known. But he himself burst into tears. Then, as a sweet rain will pass down a wind of spring and the sun will shine out the clearer, his tears ceased, and his laughter welled up, and laughing he sprang from his bed.
“‘How do I feel?’ he cried. ‘Well, I don’t know how to say it. I feel, I feel’—he waved his arms in the air—‘I feel like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves; and like trumpets and harps and all the songs I have ever heard!’” 

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings.

Acknowledgements for photos: 

"2048" by §Leng§ is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

"Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. Illustrated by Alan Lee (t5)" by Gwydion M. Williams is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

"Lord of the Rings, the one ring" by goodfreephotos.com is under the CC0 / Public Domain License.