In this podcast, Nick Fabbri and Dr. Paul Monk discuss J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, reflecting on its profound personal and societal impact, and its depth as a work of fantasy.
Key Discussion Points include:
- A Profound Personal Impact: The book had a deeper impression on Paul's education and life than any other work from his youth, helping instil within him a love of learning, knowledge, language, meaning, and poetry.
- The Teacher's Voice: Paul still recalls passages read by his fifth-grade teacher, Kathleen Gill, in 1967 as if he were hearing them yesterday, noting how the oral transmission of the story impacted his mind.
- A Guide for the Perplexed: Monk views the novel as an "indirect guide for the perplexed," offering insights close to the work of philosopher Martin Heidegger and serving as a release from the "strictures of various realisms".
- The Call to Adventure: The dramatic intrusion of the outside world, where Frodo learns he holds the One Ring, is analysed as the moment history and conflict are "thrust onto your doorstep".
- The Role of the Hobbit: Highlighting the Christian message that the meek and simple (like Sam Gamgee) can make a crucial difference in the world's large affairs, reinforcing the dignity of the common person.
- Storytelling and Agency: The poignant conversation between Frodo and Sam on the stairs of Cirith Ungol, realizing they are "in the same tale still," which affirms human agency within predetermined historical dynamics.
- Nature and Rootedness: Evoking the character of Treebeard (Enta, Latin for beings) to reflect Tolkien's appreciation for nature, rootedness, and slow change, contrasting it with the materialist, mechanizing impulse of modernity.
- Love and Mortality: Reflecting on the inscription on Tolkien's tomb—Beren and Lúthien—as a symbol of transcendent love that crosses racial and immortal barriers.
Dr Paul Monk is a poet, polymath and highly regarded Australian public intellectual. He has written an extraordinary range of books, from Sonnets to a Promiscuous Beauty (which resides in former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s library), to reflective essays on the riches of Western civilization in The West in a Nutshell, to a prescient 2005 treatise on the rise of China in Thunder from the Silent Zone: Rethinking China.
