I re-read books, and have several patterns which provoke the thought, “hey! I should check that one out again!” It might be seeing The Film, be it a good or bad rendition. It might be chatting with a friend about a mutual favorite. It might be just being reminded of an image, a theme, a character.

Or it might be that I need to “go home” again. Of course, it’s not really my home, but I get some comfort out of revisiting certain worlds, certain places that authors have permitted me to enter, fantasy or sci-fi environs which hold a special draw for me. Though I read many books at least two or three times, there are special ones which I return to again and again, seeking an environment which teaches me, takes me back to a good place, comforts me. I sort of find my center again, returning to Middle Earth, or the Duniverse, or the thousands of islands of Earthsea, or the Na Valley.*

This time, it’s been Middle Earth. I want first to talk about why Middle Earth this time, and then what the world I listed above have in common, besides being my most repeated re-reads.

Sometimes it’s a personal crisis or difficult time which sends me in search of the security I get from my re-reads, my visits back to familiar ground. The event which precipitated picking up Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring was the death of my stepfather after a long illness. He was not a fan of the book, or fantasy, or even much fiction (though he loved John Updike and John Irving). What he had in common with the story, or rather the characters in the story, was a sense of ethics and honor, good humor and an understanding that sometimes the Good Fight means hanging in for the long haul.

Now, in terms of my connections to favorite books, my stepfather actually read Dune after hearing Frank Herbert lecture about land-use and ecological change up in the Puget Sound about a billion years ago. He was fascinated enough by Herbert’s presentation to read a rare bit of fiction. He never made in onto the other books in the series, but liked the ideas in the novel, the thinking about land and climate and politics, about people’s influence on landscape over time.

But I didn’t go to those books, though upon reflection it seems more logical. I had just read the Dune series a few months ago, so I wasn’t ready to return. Of course, I’d read the Tolkien books a little over a year ago, so it isn’t like they were “fresh.” But I also think it was the homey quality brought to the Lord of the Rings through the characters of the hobbits: you might say they’re “plucky.” I think I needed a little old fashioned pluckiness in my life, and Tolkien’s stories bring that to me.

This was probably something like the fifteenth time into the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I’ve been reading it since I was a teenager, and the books have carried me through all kinds of phases in my life. Different things catch my attention each time I revisit the story. This time I was taken by the sheer amount of walking in the story. The previous time through the trilogy, and after years of struggling with the distances, read the book with Karen Wynn Fonstad’s The Atlas of Middle-Earth alongside.This time, having absorbed the meaning of those often-mentioned distances in the book the time before, thinking about the days and months of the journey, I was taken with the incredible faith it takes to shoulder a long journey.

The other thing which captured my attention was the story of Eowyn. In the middle of that vast, long story, there are few women, and though Galadriel and Arwen are strong characters, theirs is not the central story; they only appear briefly, and are granted quite a bit of power simply because they are Elven.

But Eowyn is a ordinary human woman, a frustrated warrior who fulfils a destiny by breaking the rules. She suggests a different kind of story, one more like actual human women in Tolkien’s world, or mine: to interact with the world at large, she must break out of the role handed to her. She is intelligent, faithful, skilled, and just enough of a renegade to defy the King and take down a work of evil. I would like to have read more about her.

For the time the books were written, and even published, I think it amazing to read:

“What do you fear, lady” [Aragorn] asked.

“A cage,” [Eowyn] said. “To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chances of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.”

(in The Return of the King, chapter “The Passing of the Grey Company”)

Okay. Middle Earth, Dune, Earthsea, The Valley.*

Now, the first three are complete worlds captured in multi-volume novels; Always Coming Home is more of a collection contained all in one novel. Of course, Tolkien conceived of his work as one big story, not three volumes. But whatever the arrangement, the authors have a lot of “time” to immerse reader in all of the Worlds. And all four are Worlds: with not just the events of the moment, but whole histories, and historical documents and songs, and legends and heroic figures from the past. Each story creates a Place to Go, for me as the reader, tagging along with the characters through their very “real” worlds. And all are stories about people who are, like my stepfather, committed to trying to behave ethically and responsibly – not that they always achieve it, but that most of the time they are able to try.

And of course, Frodo destroys the Ring, Paul falls prey to unstoppable destiny and depravity, Ged sets right what he loosed upon the world but at great cost, and after a long life journey Stone Telling finds balance in the Valley of the Na. The outcomes vary, but so do the outcomes in life. It is like the hero’s journey which Joseph Campbell speaks of: it takes many forms, and the one common theme is that the hero willingly or unwittingly follows their quest to the end.

It’s not that I have a quest – more that the perseverance exhibited reassures me that the human spirit can get through a lot, make use of the hardships and obstacles, notice (unlike Frodo) the beauty along the way.

* * *

* The references are to the following stories:

Middle Earth = J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King; also The Hobbit

Duniverse= Frank Herbert’s Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse:Dune

Earthsea
= Ursula K. LeGuin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu, Tales from Earthsea, and The Other Wind

Na Valley = LeGuin’s Always Coming Home