A Fascinating Blend: The Familiar and the Fantastic in The Hobbit and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Part 3

As these two themes of home and meals have shown, Tolkien and Lewis both have a talent for combining the familiar and the fantastic in their secondary worlds, but they are not exactly alike in their storytelling choices, and therein lie some points of contrast between the two authors. First, the framework of their tales is different. Lewis begins The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in the primary world. The Pevansie children are non-magical human beings who happen, seemingly by accident, to enter a magical, secondary world.

Tolkien, on the other hand, sets The Hobbit firmly in the secondary world from the beginning. The fantastic, therefore, is part of Bilbo's normal world in a way that it could never be for the Pevansie children. Bilbo, although he may not like to think about it too often, lives in a world of Dwarves, Elves, and wizards. The Pevansies do not, so their encounters with the fantastic stand out in even sharper relief than Bilbo's, and readers share their astonishment.

Further, Lewis, significantly more than Tolkien, focuses on his characters' responses to the fantastic elements of the new world in which they find themselves. Although Bilbo is often surprised, frightened, horrified, and/or perplexed by the strangeness he encounters, he is never really skeptical or unbelieving. The Pevansies, on the other hand, exhibit a larger range of responses. Peter and Susan, for instance, do not believe Lucy's account of Narnia. They think she is merely joking or making up a story for play (121). When Lucy refuses to recant her tale and insists that she has visited Narnia a second time, Peter and Susan become more concerned, wondering if their younger sister is turning into a liar or even going crazy (130).

Edmund's reaction is different. He sneers at Lucy's story and spitefully taunts her (121). Even after he has actually visited Narnia himself, he selfishly denies the truth and claims that Lucy made up the whole thing, hurting his sister deeply in the process (129). When all the children finally enter Narnia, Peter and Susan are quick to apologize to Lucy, but Edmund remains sulky, distrustful, and untruthful (134-135). While readers can certainly identify with Bilbo's responses to his adventures, they are likely to relate even better to those of the Pevansie children as they examine their own ideas about the fantastic as well as the reactions of the people around them.

The question remains, then, as to why Tolkien and Lewis blend the familiar and the fantastic. The familiar, of course, draws readers into a story and gives them a sense of belonging and ease. They begin to feel at home in the secondary world, like they, too, might enjoy a satisfying supper with the characters. A fantasy story, however, is designed to do much more than make readers comfortable. As Lewis indicates in “On Stories,” the best tales present an “idea of otherness,” an “abiding strangeness,” a particular atmosphere or essence that draws readers out of themselves and into the secondary world (13, 12). Fantastic elements contribute to and develop that sense of strange wonder.

Tolkien agrees. Fantasy, he explains in “On Fairy-stories,” offers an “arresting strangeness” that, when raised to the heights of Art with its “inner consistency of reality,” becomes Sub-creation, the purest and most powerful form of story (60). Sub-creation with all its fantastic elements, Tolkien continues, allows readers to experience recovery, escape, and consolation. By entering into the fantastic, readers recover a renewed vision of the wonder and beauty of the primary world, escape their doldrums and fears, and discover the consolation, the joy, of a truly happy ending (67, 73, 75).

Indeed, in The Hobbit and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Tolkien and Lewis invite readers to do just that. By blending the familiar with the fantastic, even with contrasting storytelling choices, the two authors draw their readers into their secondary worlds but also draw them out of themselves and their commonplace attitudes that they may engage with the primary world in new and meaningful ways.