OK, here’s a question: has reading (and/or re-reading, and re-reading…)
The Lord of the Rings made you a “better person”? The question is often raised about the ‘good’ of reading, but I wonder if we can raise it more specifically in connection with Tolkien’s created world.
I know that for myself, reading these works has certainly given me a lot of pleasure and valuable insight over the years. I feel better when I read them, or think about them, or discuss them (and sometimes even when I teach them!
) but am I actually
better? Am I improved, or ‘more’ than I was before I read them? And if so, is the effect cumulative – do I get “better” the more attention I pay to this story?
To be entirely honest, I don’t really have the answers to these questions. I’d like to think that I have gained something valuable from the experience of Middle-earth: valuable to myself and to others. I have certainly thought about the ideas raised in the story, and have come to value its view of the world, even though I do not fully share that view. So I suppose I am “more” than I was in the sense that I have a new point of view – one that was not my own, but which I gained through experiencing the story. I suspect that this is part of what the Professor meant when he wrote about “recovery” and the ‘usefulness’ of fantasy.
At any rate, what about everyone else? Are you better for having read the story? If so, in what ways?