Lamron Lit Corner: “Smith of Wootton Major” and Tolkien’s farewell to fiction

“To seek for the meaning is to cut open the ball in search of its bounce.”

~JRR Tolkien, “Smith of Wootton Major”

The works of JRR Tolkien that fall outside the realm of Middle-Earth often go unnoticed compared to the likes of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but that doesn’t mean that Tolkien had any less skill when it came to other forms like the novella. “Smith of Wootton Major,” originally published on Nov. 9, 1967, is just that: a brilliant novella that tells the story of Smith Smithson and his Faery power, all falling outside the scope of Middle-Earth. The story also, and perhaps more importantly, was the last known and published piece of Tolkien’s work while he was alive, and the themes and ideas that are contained in the novella act as a sad goodbye to the world of fiction.

The first thing any Tolkien fan will notice about the story is just how much it uses themes and motifs from Tolkien’s major work, whether it be the importance of a star, the protagonist being an excellent craftsman, there being a ‘king in rags,’ etc. However, it’s important to note that Tolkien is playing off of these themes in a new way rather than copying them. Wootton Major is not Middle-Earth, meaning Tolkien is allowed to use these ideas in a much less concrete way to portray his main theme about the world of the Faery, an idea that Tolkien was consistently interested in.

The Faery, to Tolkien, represented more than just tiny angelic women who could fly. Rather, Tolkien saw them as representations of imagination in its most potent form. “Smith of Wootton Major” portrays its titular character harnessing the ability to travel to the world of the Faery when he was a child, but not being able to fully use that power until he becomes an adult. Tolkien shows the reader that part of what makes us human, our imagination and liveliness, is often shown to use only when we are young when we in fact need it as adults. There is an ability to cross certain traits over from our younger days to our older ones.

At the end of the story, Smith must pass this power onto the next generation. He is not able to choose who it will go to, not able to demand it stays within his family, but must simply hope that the one who receives it will use the power for good rather than evil. In this act we can see Tolkien passing down the pen to the children who read his stories, telling the next generation that it is their turn to create worlds and inspire the masses.

And it worked, didn’t it? How many thousands, if not millions of stories did Tolkien’s work inspire either directly or indirectly? How many people were touched enough by the work of one man to attempt to create anything that resembled it? Tolkien didn’t have to know that this creative power would be used for good, because his work alone made it a certainty. The world of fantasy is forever changed for the better by the ideas Tolkien set forward, and we were lucky enough to receive those ideas with respect rather than disdain.