Another fascinating episode from Extra Credits, this one focusing on the themes of generational passing and the diminishing of ages that is present in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. I have a lot of thoughts on this episode, but they all basically boil down to one thing:
Every generation reinvents the world.
It’s a theme that’s also present in my favorite novel of all time, The Neverending Story. The Childlike Empress of Fantastica is dying, and the only way to save her is for someone from the human realm to give her a new name. Fantastica, of course, is the realm of all fictional stories, and the Childlike Empress receives a new name when the next generation makes the old stories their own. There is nothing new under the sun.
This is also a theme present in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. I’m not a huge fan of the movie, but the best argument I’ve heard in favor of it basically boils down to this theme: that the old generation has to pass away in order for the new one to rise and take its place. I’m still not entirely convinced that The Last Jedi did this well, but I can see how someone who loved the movie would see it that way.
As a writer, this theme weighs especially on me because I feel that I’m personally living it with ever book that I write. All of the greats of the genre, like Tolkien, Herbert, Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, Card, Le Guin—the list goes on and on—loom over me every day. With their passing, the world feels somehow diminished. They left us with a great gift—their books—and yet as time passes and the old world crumbles into dust, these gifts from the previous generation feel increasingly out of place. It is time for a new generation to rise and give the Childlike Empress a new name.
I want my books to be a part of that. I hope that one day, mine will be one of the voices that helps to reshape the world. I hope to one day leave behind a gift as great as the ones that we were given: stories and books that made us feel deeply and taught us meaning and love. Is there anything greater than this? Raising a family, perhaps, but that too is a form of generational passing.
I’m sure this theme of generational passing applies to a lot of fields too, not only in the arts, but in trades, and crafts, and sciences too. Indeed, it is a fundamental part of the human story, because of this singular truth: that every generation reinvents the world. There are curses as well as blessings that are passed down from generation to generation, but it is up to each of us to decide whether those curses and blessings stop with us, or whether we will continue to pass them down.
Lots of interesting stuff to ponder and think about. That’s part of what makes Tolkien so great. He spent an entire lifetime writing Lord of the Rings, and that time was not wasted.
