Smith of Wooten Major - JRR Tolkien

⭐ 9.0/10

(Originally written by Joseph)

This is the weirdest story of the collection so far and while I think it'd be tempting to just forget about this one, it has stuck in my brain the most. It's essentially about the main character, Smith, swallowing a star from the Land of Faery, thus allowing him to travel to and from that realm. But it doesn't really have a plot besides that, and I think it is pretty clear that there is more going on.

Someone asked me years ago why I even like Lord of the Rings, and honestly I had a tough time answering. But this book has a passage that has stayed with me and I feel like it's somehow the answer to that question:

Some of his briefer visits he spent looking only at one tree or flower; but later in longer journeys he had seen things of both beauty and terror that he could not clearly remember nor report to his friends, though he knew that they dwelt deep in his heart. But some things he did not forget, and they remained in his mind as wonders and mysteries that he often recalled.

I think this story is about Tolkien's own journey into Faery, diving into Middle-earth and never being able to fully come back (similar to Frodo). This was the last story he ever published, and I think it's a reflection more than anything. In the end, he doesn't see everything he wants to see, but passes the star on anyways (as he did with his son). Many of the townspeople scorn him, thinking it's all nonsense, and I can see why an Oxford Scholar who wrote fantasy stories would feel that way.

Anyways, I don't know if my thoughts are right, but this story really made me think about the nature of fantasy stories and in the end I thought it was incredibly beautiful.