[Child of the 7th Age]

I think you have hit the nail on the head. You can spend hours, weeks, years searching Arda for images and symbols of Christian hope and veiled references to providence. It is definitely there. You can also view Arda in terms of its pagan themes and allusions, studying the profound pessimism and fatalism that embodied the dreams of the North. Both of these exercises are fulfilling and will get you a little closer to Tolkien's head.

But it's only when you realize that both these strains were somehow tangled up in the soul of a single man, that you get to the heart of what is going on. When you think about this dichotomy, how these different world views somehow blend into one and form the core of Tolkien's Legendarium, it's rather astounding. Ah, if only we could ask him! Truthfully, this recognition makes me feel a bit humble. I know I wouldn't have the brain or the heart to keep two different world views in balance while carrying through with the mundane things in life but he apparently managed it. Yes, this whole balancing act is certainly beyond my ken, and I suspect that it is one reason the Legendarium so appeals to me. I have always been suspicious of "packaged answers", whether secular or religious in origin. My head leans at least vaguely in the direction of hope and the Judeao-Christian heritage, but my experiences in life stubbornly whisper to my heart that fate and doom and pessimism seem all too commonplace.

As an historian, the next thing I want to do is bang on the table and demand to know where this dichotomy comes from in Tolkien. The Somme is certainly a factor, but I personally suspect it goes back much earlier than that. Tolkien has talked about some of the problems he and his brother encountered when their mother died. Yet on another level we know absolutely nothing about what this young man was actually feeling when the two of them were left on their own. Tolkien's commitment to Catholicism as well as his personal view of the world as a very frightening place, a place where every man and woman faced an implacable Doom, surely stemmed from this youthful period. His later experience in war would only confirm what he'd already learned as a child about the nature of life and fate.

I would love to hear from Squatter or someone else who is more knowledgable about ancient Nordic ways and thinking as well as to hear from those for whom the Christian element in the Legendarium remains especially important.