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Tolkien as Sub-Creator

Imagine the following scene: You’re strolling through a park when you come across two young men sitting on a bench. Spread around them, on the bench and on the ground at their feet, are many, many comic books.

The books are open; a breeze is ruffling the pages. You notice the comics are of the superhero variety. You get several glimpses of a muscular man in a blue outfit—there’s a large S on his chest, and he appears to be wearing red underpants. You also see several drawings of a more slender man in a red jumpsuit. Is that a yellow lightning bolt zigzagging across his chest?

As you pass the bench, you catch a few snippets of conversation:

First man: “If you think The Flash is faster than Superman, you’re crazy. Superman can fly!”

Second man: “So what? Birds can fly—are you saying birds would be faster than The Flash?”

First man: “No. I’m saying The Flash has to put his feet on the ground to run. He builds up a lot of resistance that way. Superman just zooms through the air—he’s more aerodynamical.”

Second man: “That’s not even a word. Besides, if it’s true that The Flash can violate the laws of physics, then I think . . .”

Maybe you’ve witnessed a debate like that. Maybe you’ve even participated. We’re a culture that loves stories, after all—movies, TV, books, video games, and more. We love extraordinary characters who perform extraordinary feats in extraordinary situations.

And because these characters usually inhabit different worlds, many of which are built with different rules than those of our own, it’s natural for us to compare. Could The Flash be faster than Superman? Who’s more romantic, Mr. Darcy or Jack Dawson? Who’d win if James Bond fought the A-Team?

When we engage in such comparisons, we’re validating one of J. R. R. Tolkien’s core beliefs about storytelling: the practice of “sub-creation.”

Primary and Secondary

Once more, Tolkien maintained that the main goal of a fairy story is to help its author and reader experience something magical and, potentially, transformational—an outside reality he identified as Faërie or the Perilous Realm. In order for us to be moved toward reaching that realm, fairy stories should include elements of fantasy—people and places and situations marked by an “arresting strangeness.” At the same time, those people and places and situations cannot be presented in a cheesy or unbelievable way; they must be introduced and developed as if they were genuine and real.

Right away, that should spark some questions for anyone who dreams of one day writing like Tolkien. In fact, it should spark some questions for anyone who wants to understand the man’s own writing.

For one: How does an author go about writing a story that’s both fantastical and rational? How is it possible to craft something containing the mystery of Faërie and also the ring of veracity?

The answer, according to Tolkien, is to operate as a sub-creator in order to build a Secondary World.

PRIMARY WORLD

Take a minute to look at your environment—everything that’s around you, wherever you might be. If you’re indoors, look at the walls on either side; thump your feet down on the floorboards or tiles. If you’re outdoors, try to find the sun and feel its light; listen for a breeze rustling over grass.

In Tolkien’s terms, the elements and forces you just observed represent the Primary World. It’s the world currently motoring through the twenty-first century. It’s the world of stock markets and savings accounts; Republicans and Democrats; gravity and thermodynamics.

Don’t let yourself label it as the “real” world, though. Tolkien certainly would not have done so. It may be the physical world, yes, but that doesn’t necessarily make it more “real” than other dimensions.

The most important thing to know about the Primary World isn’t who lives there or what may be found within it; rather, it’s Who made it.

The Primary World is the reality that was built (and is still maintained) by God, the Creator.

SECONDARY WORLD

Obviously, human beings lack the capacity to form their own Primary Worlds. We are created beings, and so we cannot serve as creators.

But we can function as sub-creators.

Tolkien held that by combining imagination and art, we are able to build Secondary Worlds in which the elements of our fairy stories can operate. When they succeed, these Secondary Worlds both reflect and transcend what we sense and perceive within the Primary World—they should have a similar foundation yet also contain elements of fantasy (the “fantastic”).

While it’s true that a Secondary World exists only as thought and creative energy, it would be a mistake to label it as “fake” and the Primary World as “real.” For Tolkien’s part, I don’t think even he would have been comfortable talking about the Primary World as “physical” (or “tangible”) and our Secondary Worlds as simply “mental” or “imaginative.”

Rather, again, what separates the two types of worlds is who does the building. The Primary World, built from nothing by the Creator, is an example of creation. Secondary Worlds, crafted by sub-creators from what the Creator has given us, are examples of sub-creation.

Believe it or not, Tolkien felt that adding fantasy to a Secondary World—incorporating those elements of “arresting strangeness”—is the easy part. He viewed it in terms of “playing” with what already exists in the Primary World, as a child manipulates Play-Doh to fashion different forms.

For example, we might see a horse and think, What would happen if such an animal had wings and could fly? Or we might consider an “already existing” fantastical notion, such as a magic wand, and ask, What if there was a network of schools that taught children the ins and outs of magic?

In Tolkien’s view, the truly difficult task is creating a Secondary World that rings true enough for fairy stories to operate successfully. Thinking of a training ground for wizards is one thing; it’s quite another to come up with locations, students, teachers, magical laws, villains, heroes, and all the rest.

Remember that a fairy story must be presented as actual in order for the elements of fantasy to be accepted by the reader and without breaking the story’s magic. For that reason, the Secondary World through which that story is told needs to have a realistic feel—it needs to make sense, otherwise the magic dissolves.

Here’s how Tolkien explained this concept:

Anyone inheriting the fantastic device of human language can say the green sun. Many can then imagine or picture it. But that is not enough. . . .

To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding Secondary Belief, will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft. Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art.[1]

That term Secondary Belief is important as well. It refers to what happens when readers get pulled into a story—when they become immersed with the characters and landscape to where they think and act as if the story were real.

Remember the two guys arguing about the relative “speeds” of Superman and The Flash? That illustrates Secondary Belief brought about by an effectively crafted Secondary World.

Of course, people who read about superheroes know they’re not “real”—they’re not a part of the Primary World, anyway. We recognize that human beings can’t actually vault towers or run a hundred miles per hour, just as we’re aware that dragons and hobbits don’t exist in “real” life.

Yet when an author convinces us—wittingly or unwittingly—to forget what we know and instead accept what he or she is telling us to be true, then we have embraced the reality of that Secondary World. We have opened ourselves to the possibility of fantasy, of “arresting strangeness,” which means we also have opened ourselves to the transformative potential of Faërie and the Perilous Realm.

That is the power of sub-creation.

Reflections

As you consider J. R. R. Tolkien’s views on storytelling and sub-creation, it’s important to know he wasn’t a fan of allegories, and he never set out to make allegorical connections within his stories.

An allegory is “a poem, play, picture, etc., in which the apparent meaning of the characters and events is used to symbolize a deeper moral or spiritual meaning.”[2] In other words, a story that uses allegory is primarily driven by symbols that point away from the story in order to connect it with a more abstract or conceptual design.

C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is an excellent example. Aslan was an intentional symbol of Jesus, for instance, and his death on the Stone Table (which itself represents the stone tablets of the law Moses brought down from Sinai) is directly connected to Christ’s death on the cross.

Tolkien preferred to avoid such explicit associations because he felt they limited the realism of a story’s Secondary World. By conspicuously pointing away from the story, he felt that allegories broke the enchantment he sought to create through it.

Therefore, as I explore the spiritual themes within The Hobbit, I will not claim that a moment in Bilbo’s experience “symbolizes” an aspect of the Christian life. I will not argue that a wise word from Gandalf represents a scriptural doctrine. I will not try to demonstrate direct links between Tolkien’s imagery and specific ideas or people in the Bible.

Instead, I’ll point out the ways that Tolkien’s Secondary World—in this case, the story of Bilbo’s adventure—reflects the values and truths God built into the Primary World. I’ll highlight the biblical and spiritual foundations Tolkien emulated and adapted during the process of writing his stories.

Sub-Creation as Worship

If you’ve followed me this far, you probably agree that sub-creation seems like a pretty good way to tell a story—when it’s done suitably. And the success of Tolkien’s works would certainly lend credence to that thought.

But for Tolkien, performing as a sub-creator was about more than good writing. It was about good worship too.

God is our Creator, and yet He is more than that—He is creative. The divine Craftsman shaped our Primary World with more than merely functional appeal. God is the source of all beauty and loveliness; He is the cause of riotous colors and diverse textures and inspiring forms.

The Scriptures point to these creative qualities in several places, and these attributes are referred to or implied in several more. Here are a few examples:

The Lord said to Moses, “See, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills—to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of crafts.”

Exodus 31:1–5

The Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:

“Who is this that obscures my plans

with words without knowledge?

Brace yourself like a man;

I will question you,

and you shall answer me.

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?

Tell me, if you understand.

Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!

Who stretched a measuring line across it?

On what were its footings set,

or who laid its cornerstone—

while the morning stars sang together

and all the angels shouted for joy?”

Job 38:1–7

You, Lord, are our Father.

We are the clay, you are the potter;

we are all the work of your hand.

Isaiah 64:8

This is the God whom Tolkien, a devout Christian, worshiped. He certainly appreciated our world’s magnificent craftsmanship, and we can assume he expressed that appreciation through prayer and song.

But for Tolkien, his truest moments of worship came when he went beyond admiration and endeavored upon something more concrete: imitation. He knew that not only do human beings serve a creative God, we also are created in the very image of that creative God:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. . . .

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in his own image,

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:1, 26–27

When we engage in creativity, we do more than embellish or exaggerate what God has created in this world. To engage in creativity is to imitate our creative Father. In so doing we emulate one of His key characteristics and thus offer a vital form of worship.

Tolkien explored this concept in his essay “On Fairy-Stories,” although he approached the topic in two distinct ways.

First, he mentioned a letter he received from a reader who believed his sub-creative journeys into fantasy and mythology were nothing more than “lies.” Fittingly, Tolkien responded (and in doing so defended the high art of fantasy) by writing a poem. Later in the essay, Tolkien used more conventional prose to explain:

Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.[3]

Intriguingly, these descriptions may not have been his most convincing method of clarifying the complicated connection between sub-creation and worship. In my opinion, this distinction belongs to a fascinating dialogue between two characters in one of his sub-creations: The Silmarillion.

Near the beginning of that book, Aulë, an angel-like being, attempts to create a race of beings he can love and teach within the confines of Middle-earth. He was meant to wait for the coming of the elves into the world, but in his joy and overzealousness, Aulë instead created the dwarves as a race apart.

When confronted by the divine Creator, Aulë is humble and repentant. While he understands he was wrong, his explanation for his deeds plainly and deeply connects with Tolkien’s ideas about sub-creation. He says that although he was impatient and has “fallen into folly,” he was created to make things. In this he was imitating his father, the Creator, rather than mocking him. That’s sub-creation. And that’s a powerful form of worship.