John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

J. R. R. T.

I love magic, fantasy, and all the things that are considerate unreal, it just fascinates me! Well I will tell you about one of the “creators” of magic worlds (well, he is in my opinion), John Ronald Reuel Tolkien most known as J.R.R. Tolkien. For me he was a great man, he was creative, curious and obviously he inspire an entire generation and the followings, in all the stories he invented there is just one thing that don’t really like, “The Silmarillion” is kind of a slow book, but it explains a lot about Middle Earth religion, culture, etc., the other thing is that know it is hard to write an fantasy stories (books) without having similar stories or moments with “The Lord of the Rings” or “The Hobbit” because he used almost all kind of magic things, he created a hall new language, a hall new world.

John Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, on January third of 1892. On February 15 of 1896, when he was for, his father died, because of that his mother and younger brother, Hilary, needed to move to other country. They went to live in West Midland, England; when he went to England he was just 4 years old, so he remember just a little about Africa, and one of this memories were encounter with a huge spider, which, later, made part of his stories. Tolkien had a mixed and complex childhood between the England city and rural areas because of his school: King Edward’s School. After some years they moved to Kings Heat and there he developed his linguistic imagination.

After a time they moved again, this time to Edgbaston; there, in 1900, his mother were received in the Roman Catholic Church, for that Tolkien and his brother Hilary were raised by the father Pio Nono and started to have a completely catholic life. In 1940 diabetes were diagnosed in his mother, who died on February 14 of the same year. Since his mother death father Francisco took care of him and Hilary till one of his uncles could take care of them. Ronald started to show an incredible linguistic talent, he was one of the best students of Latin and Greek, because of that he learned several other languages. When he was 16 a girl called Edith, who was 19 year old, was living in his uncle house, he start liking her, for father Francisco forbidden him of seeing her for 3 year, what it hardly obeyed.

With 21 year old, on 1911, Tolkien went to Oxford University to study, he started having classes about classics, ancient English, German languages (specially Gothic), Gales and Finnish till 1913 when he meet Edith again. In the same year he started working as a tutor, he accompanies two Mexicans, but it didn’t end well because they had no charisma for France, French language or French people.

Edith moved in to a castle in Warwick and the relationship between both got stronger each day that passed, and equally the rage between countries, so in 1914 the war begun. Instead of the majority, he didn’t join immediately to the war, instead he went to back to Oxford in July of the same year. There he started working with poetry, practicing literature and creating his language, which later he called Qenya. He stayed several years in England working with that, till he finally went back to France and married Edith on March 22 of 1916 in Warwick.

Eventually he were sent to war in Western Front, where he didn’t had time to see Edith. He had an terrible fever that almost killed him for what he went to a hospital in November, and in Christmas he finally got back to Warwick with Edith. After a few months he started writing his stories, making one or another tale which created his book “The Unfinished Tales”, which wasn’t published in his life. From 1917 to 1918 his illness kept disturbing him for a long time preventing him for doing many activities, not long time after he was promoted to lieutenant and his first son, John Francis Reuel Tolkien, born on November 16 of 1917.

Tolkien started teaching in Leeds University and kept writing more tales for his book “The Unfinished Tales”, and then he made a group with his friends that they called it The Vikings. On October of 1930 his second son, Michael Hilary Reuel Tolkien and then Christopher Reuel Tolkien on 1924; on the next year the Anglo-Saxon teacher of Oxford University stopped working in there and Tolkien gratefully accepted to substitute him because Oxford was like his home. On 1929 his first and last daughter called Priscilla Tolkien; after her birth he started with the habit of writing letters for his kids as Santa Claus. They grew up, Francis decided to work in the church as a father, Michael and Christopher participated in the area war, Michael was an genius in the school and Christopher in college, and Priscilla were social worker.

While that Tolkien kept checking essays and tests, one day a student didn’t answer a whole page and the only thing he wrote on it was “the hobbits live in holes” and he started asking his self “what are hobbits?”, Tolkien started searching about hobbits everywhere and with that he started his novel, in 1973 he published the famous book “The Hobbit”. The editor Stanley Unwin was impressed with the popularity the book had in all ages and asked Tolkien if he had other books like “The Hobbit” and he gave here “The Silmarillion”, but the test readers didn’t approved it because it wasn’t in the same path as “The Hobbit”, still Unwin insisted asking him if he had more stories or if he could write more and Tolkien got interested about the challenge of writing “The new Hobbit”.

No much later he wrote the enormous trilogy “The Lord of the Rings”, which is divided in three parts: “Lord of the Rings: The Ring Fellowship”, “Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” and “Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King”, that were published between the year 1954 and 1955, the publicity was so enormously huge that both, author and editor, sub estimated it and got tremendously impress with the results. By 1968 the trilogy had become the “alternative society” Bible.

Of course, with all that fame, an epidemic started; people, in USA, called him at pm what was 3 am in England, to ask him why Frodo did this or that. He needed to move to other house immediately because it was almost impossible to live in his house. After Tolkien move to the other house he didn’t get his address of telephone number to anyone that seems a crazy fanatic fan that would call him at 3 am. Thanks to that he finally published “The Silmarillion” because it explains everything about Middle Earth, the creatures, culture and how it was created.

The rest of his life he spent with Edith, writing tale (for the “Unfinished Tales” of course) and publishing small books for children. Edith died on 1959, Tolkien was really depress and decided to go back to Oxford again and work as a university tutor to distract himself till he had got over Edith death; he (unfortunally) died on September 2 of 1973, Edith and Tolkien were buried together.

Looking at everything he did, invented, created I just think about one thing: he created an whole new world, a whole new language, he is a creator, and with that he is consider almost a god because that is what gods do, they create, they give life, and Tolkien gave life to our imagination and this new/ancient world called Middle Earth.