Teaching Students to Hope with J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Leaf by Niggle”
This article was originally presented at the Faith and Research Conference, Missouri Baptist University, St. Louis, MO on 14 Apr 2023
Introduction
Today I want to talk to you about some of my experiences teaching J.R.R. Tolkien’s short story, “Leaf by Niggle.” It is an odd little story, but I think it finds a happy place in the classroom. Currently I most often teach it in my Composition II class, a class that uses literature to teach writing. But I have also nestled it in literature surveys as an interesting contrast to what we typically think of as twentieth-century literature. It is a contrast because while Tolkien was a modern writer—and he was, and must be considered in this context no matter how much he may have been inspired by medieval works—while Tolkien was indeed amongst the moderns, he was never what we would call a modernist. He represents a separate literary tradition than that which is generally placed in our Norton anthologies (I’ve certainly never seen any Tolkien in there). In many real ways, Tolkien represents a counter-culture for the twentieth century, a voice that announces hope when everyone else prizes despair, nihilism, and absurdity.
One of my favorite quotes from The Lord of the Rings occurs when Frodo and Sam are making their way through the heart of Mordor, this land of absolute evil and hardship, and it really is one of those “all-is-lost” moments. And then comes the following passage:
There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.” (Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings 6.2)
The beauty that Sam saw gave him hope. Amidst all the darkness around him, he saw the one tiny bit of beauty. Good is eternal, and evil is only temporary. That sounds like such an old-fashioned thing to say nowadays, with our all-too-sophisticated nihilism and despair. Everywhere we turn, we are surrounded by despair. And I find it such a terrible thing to look into the faces of young students and see a lack of hope, to see people just going through the motions as though they were characters in an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett. I think our young people have had quite enough of despair. Whether it be Covid, environmental issues, geopolitics, or whatever else is apparently bringing the apocalypse, my students at least are all-too-full of despair. And I think they quite often look to us to be that twinkling star and to show them that darkness indeed is only a small and passing thing.
When a literature professor is building a course and selecting which readings to give to students, it is always a very difficult choice. For myself, if I am building a new literature-based course from scratch, I always begin by listing all the things I think I should teach. And then, of course, I always find that I actually have time to assign a fourth of that material. There are many criteria for how we might choose what works to include: we might need to survey options from a variety of time periods; we might need to highlight various literary movements; we may wish to consider the gender of the author; we might want to balance prose, poetry, and drama…I could go on, but this scenario is one familiar to all who teach literature.
But one quality of our selections that I don’t think most of us consider is the emotional effect that the readings have on our students. I think, at times, we underestimate how much literature affects our students both emotionally and psychologically. I once taught a class where I was teaching Death of a Salesman and I had a student who was so struck by the story that she went home and read it to her mother, who happened to be bed-ridden with illness. They both ended up crying as they realized that Willy Loman was just like my student’s uncle, her mother’s brother, who had killed himself out of stress, despair, and a sense of failure. So I really think we need to consider what message we send home with our students. Our responsibilities extend beyond merely giving students a sampler of whatever era we are trying to teach. We need to be aware of the present context, the present world. Because in the traditional triad of literary meaning (author-text-reader), we cannot forget the reader and how he or she will receive the work, and the way the work will shape a young mind.
Tolkien vs Modernism and Popular Stories
I want us to think for a moment about where Tolkien fits, in terms of literature, and in relation to the popular stories that our students are exposed to currently. For a very long time, Tolkien was disregarded as being nonsense, as being unserious, as being unworthy of being taught. At this point, we have a number of serious Tolkien scholars who (we would think) have settled the question of Tolkien’s place by now, but I find it isn’t quite so. About seven years ago, when I was still a graduate instructor at the University of Missouri, I had a professor ridicule my choice of teaching The Hobbit as part of a literature course, telling me that Tolkien was not serious literature. That merely puzzled me at the time, so I ignored it and kept teaching it anyway. Since then, I’ve come to understand that there is a genuine animosity towards Tolkien and his works amongst some academics.
Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey has stated that this “hysterical reaction” comes from the feeling of being threated and that “Tolkien’s success challenges their authority as the definers of literature. It also challenges their belief, central to their self-image, that they represent the wave of the future—that they are the ‘modernists’…People who feel their grip on power/authority slipping are liable to overreact, as in this case” (Shippey, “Talking LOTR”).
The larger thrust of much of twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature is one of despair, nihilism, and absurdity. I absolutely love and teach the poetry of T.S. Eliot, but consider, if you will, the ending of the commonly taught poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”:
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown (lines 122-31).
Beautiful and powerful, yet full of despair. We do need to teach this literature, of course, because it represents an emotional response to the modern world that is important to acknowledge. It gives voice to a worldview that desperately longs for meaning. Prufrock worries about nonsense, about trivialities like whether or not he should eat a peach, and yet, he knows deep down that there are mermaids out there. There is wonder. There is magic. But he has lost the hope that he will hear it. Eliot presents us with a fundamentally different view than Tolkien, who, as I quoted earlier, has Sam look “up out of the forsaken land” at a light “clear and cold” (Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings 6.2). Unlike Prufrock, he is able to see outside of the Waste Land.
It isn’t just highbrow literature that often presents this mood of despair either. I often have assignments for my students that gives them opportunities to write about stories they have read or watched and are interested in. I like knowing my students’ narrative background, what stories are floating around in their heads. And a lot of my students are fans of anime. And so I have looked into these stories to see what they are about. Just recently I had a student who was obsessed with an anime called Attack on Titan. This story presents a town that is surrounded by giants who regularly attack and eat the inhabitants. The overall message of the story, as far as I have seen, is one of mere struggle for survival, endless cyclical violence, and nihilism. The characters are trapped in this city, and they are ultimately powerless to change things.
Hopeless Students
I find myself concerned whether my students will take the response of Prufrock or Samwise, whether they will embrace despair or hope. I teach at an open enrollment state college. Most of my students are first-generation college students. Many of them have to work and take care of family, struggle with transportation, with internet access, with making it to class. A number of my students have been homeless or else lack stable living conditions. For many, college is first and foremost an opportunity to escape poverty. When a new semester begins and I am looking out at a full classroom, a part of me is sad knowing that, statistically, a good chunk of them will probably not pass. In the aftermath of Covid, I had classrooms full of hopeless students, and I had sections where 70% of the students failed. We all did at my institution. And the primary reason was that students just did not have hope, and thus they did not have motivation and ambition. Things have happily improved since then, but not completely. I have learned to try and be on the lookout for those hopeless students and try to give them a bit of light.
Synopsis of Leaf by Niggle
I would love to be able to teach my students The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but for various reasons, that isn’t possible. So what is a professor to do who wishes to gift them a bit of Tolkien’s light? I teach “Leaf by Niggle.” For those unfamiliar with this story, it isn’t one set in Tolkien’s larger fantasy world of Middle Earth and has no direct connection to The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. It is the story of a “little man” named Niggle who is a painter, who lives outside of a town that does not value his art (Tolkien, “Leaf by Niggle” 100). Niggle, we are told, was “Not a very successful” painter, “partly because he had many other things to do,” but also because he was not a very organized or focused man (Tolkien, “Leaf by Niggle” 100). The story tells us that “He used to spend a long time on a single leaf, trying to catch its shape, and its sheen and the glistening of dewdrops on its edges. Yet he wanted to paint a whole tree” (Tolkien, “Leaf by Niggle” 100-1). He keeps trying to work on this huge painting of a tree, but is often pulled away by the needs of others and he wishes that he wasn’t so kind-hearted. He wishes he could refuse those in need and focus only on his art. Over time, his painting grows larger and larger. And then he dies.
Death and Deeds Undone
Being an allegorical fairy-tale sort of story, his death is not always obvious to my students on their first read through. He had gotten sick taking a bicycle ride through the rain, in order to fetch the doctor for his neighbor. And then, in through his door walks a figure, “tall, dressed all in black” (Tolkien, “Leaf by Niggle” 107). He tells Niggle that he is the Driver and it is time to go on his journey. At the same time, there is a Housing Inspector in his house, ready to tear apart his painting in order to use the canvas to patch houses.
“Oh, dear!” said poor Niggle, beginning to weep. “And it’s not, not even finished!”
“Not finished?” said the Driver. “Well, it’s finished with, as far as you’re concerned, at any rate. Come along!” (Tolkien, “Leaf by Niggle” 107).
My students are often rather shocked at this moment, because it seems to have such a different plot arc than they are used to. Niggle was supposed to complete his painting and become famous through the lands, or something like that. While the tone of the story is whimsical and playful, there is a serious message being conveyed even here: life is short and none of us know when the Driver will come to fetch us. We need to order our time. This moment is in keeping with the Christian tradition of memento mori, that all our worldly deeds and glory will eventually fade. I’ve had a number of students who have reflected on this moment in relation to their own lives, on how precious life is and our time here.
I’ve had Christian students who were interested in this moment because part of what occupied much of Niggle’s time was helping others, and Tolkien is setting up a tension between personal aspirations and Christian charity. This indeed can be a tough moral dilemma, one that the story explores later on. Because even though Niggle goes on his journey with the Driver, the story is, in many ways, only getting started.
The Workhouse and Humility
Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic, and so his conception of the afterlife included purgatory. We get this concept in the story as Niggle is taken from his home to a Hospital/Workhouse. There, we are told, “Niggle did not like the treatment at all…He had to work hard, at stated hours: at digging, carpentry, and painting bare boards all one plain colour” (Tolkien 108). In this moral framework, Niggle is being judged for his deeds in the world. He has to dig because in life he always neglected his garden and let it become overgrown with weeds, he must do carpentry because he neglected to help his neighbor, he must paint in only one color because of his obsession with painting. Over time, he begins to change. He forgets about his painting, about his own obsessions, and simply performs his duties. This moment of forgetting about oneself is described by Joseph Campbell in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces: “The individual, through prolonged psychological disciplines, gives up completely all attachments…His personal ambitions being totally dissolved, he no longer tries to live but willingly relaxes into whatever may come to pass in him” (236-37). We encounter this same idea in Scripture: “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward” (Col 3:23). The lesson that Tolkien is giving us here is to set aside our pride and to live as a humble servant.
This is a very important message for our young people today, regardless of what personal beliefs they may espouse, and I have had both Christian and non-Christian students who have reflected on what this may mean for them, as they plan out their studies and make big decisions about their life. Most of our students are over-saturated with social media, with false online personas, with even friends and family who may present an unrealistic view of their lives. This often leaves young people feeling inadequate, and can lead to issues such as negative body-images or general low self-esteem. It is a ruthless cycle of trying to aggrandize ourselves in hopes of getting a few likes from people we hardly know or see, or from complete strangers.
Tolkien shows us that there is nothing to be gained in such a path. As Niggle learns to simply do what is needed, Tolkien gives us an interesting description of his psychological state: “Niggle got no pleasure out of life, not what he had been used to call pleasure. He was certainly not amused. But it could not be denied that he began to have a feeling of—well, satisfaction: bread rather than jam” (Tolkien, “Leaf by Niggle” 109). Tolkien divides these emotional states into pleasure and satisfaction. Pleasure is that which amuses us, gives us some temporary dopamine hit; it is seeing two hundred likes on our latest selfie. By comparison, satisfaction is deeper and fuller. It is “bread rather than jam.” It may not be quite as exhilarating, but it results in a higher level of well-being. And psychological research backs this up. A recent study found that depression and anxiety often increase when we focus on chasing status and approval, but that overall happiness results when we instead focus on serving and helping others and being a positive force in the world (Erickon et al). In the workhouse, Niggle achieves a state of calm he never knew in life: “He was quieter inside now, and at resting-time he could really rest” (Tolkien, “Leaf by Niggle” 109).
Prufrock’s Self Doubt
Earlier I quoted from T.S. Eliot’s “Prufrock” to contrast the despair there with the hope we find in Tolkien. And the despair that Prufrock feels is positively linked to his own self-obsession. Like so many of us in the modern world, he is too much in his own head. Consider the following passage:
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”) (Eliot, lines 37-44).
All of his thoughts circle around what others will think of him, and here particularly he is concerned with his body image, with his clothes, with his thinning hair. He questions his choices and is full of self-doubt in all aspects. All of his thoughts point back to himself, and so, he is full of anxieties and depression. And just let me say, this is one of my most favorite poems and it is beautifully and masterfully written. In terms of aesthetics there are, in my opinion, few twentieth-century poems that can match it. And it is a heart-wrenching expression of Eliot’s own melancholy. But it ends, as many Eliot poems, in a defeat. It does not show our students a way out. It presents them with this brilliant man, a man that we tell them was a genius of language, and when they look to this man he shows them despair and desolation. And we can lecture all we want on how Eliot was a master of tone and form, but some will forget that and remember only the black pit that the poem ends on.
Conclusion
Stories are the most powerful thing humans possess. I mean that literally. There is nothing we have more powerful than our stories. How many have risked everything they had for the story of the American Dream? Every Christian rests his faith and his life on the story of one who was born in a manger. I think that we in literature departments sometimes forget how powerful these stories are that we teach. Because after we get past questions of genre, aesthetics, meter, metaphors and all the rest, what we are left with is a powerful expression of human experience. We have a sacred duty as caretakers of these expressions. These works are bigger than us. They can be dangerous. They can also inspire and give hope. So let us choose wisely.
Bibliography
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1949.
Eliot, T. S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The Waste Land and Other Poems: Authoritative Texts, Contexts, Criticism. Edited by Michael North. Second edition. Norton Critical Edition. New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton & Company, 2022, pp. 5-8.
Erickson, TM, Granillo, MT, Crocker, J, Abelson, JL, Reas, HE, Quach, CM. “Compassionate and Self-Image Goals as Interpersonal Maintenance Factors in Clinical Depression and Anxiety.” Journal of Clinical Psychology. 2018; 74: 608– 625. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.22524.
Shippey, Thomas. “Talking LOTR With Tolkien Expert Professor Thomas Shippey.” The Internet Writing Journal. Accessed March 25, 2023. https://www.writerswrite.com/journal/thomas-shippey-3021.
Tolkien, J.R.R. "Leaf by Niggle." The Tolkien Reader, Del Rey, 1986, pp. 100-20.
---. The Lord Of The Rings. Anniversary edition. William Morrow, 2013.
