The best epic tales of tragedy, hope, and courage

From childhood, hearing and reading stories and folk stories with my parents and grandfather to reading Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, I have always had a passion for the hearing, reading, and telling of tales, which strongly stimulates my love for fantasy as it is rich with symbolism.

Tolkien’s The Silmarillion took that love to new levels as it is the book I find myself always returning to, almost as though in its study. While it is commonly a difficult read for many due to its slow build for establishing its own context, I love how this book is a rich library of stories bespeaking themes of tragedy, despair, courage, hope, and nobility, where we get to see their fruits in the story’s conclusion.

Despite Tolkien’s decision to refrain from allegory as he kept the story purely ambiguous in nature as the fictional world feels both fairy tale and real or alive (believable), symbolism is very much present as we read about the decisions of the many heroes and villains and their fruits along with the lore.

A couple of things to name that are identifiable to me include the value of holding one’s own word in bond while still recognizing that one’s word is void when it harms others. And how, when context matters, history matters as everything has a connection to who we are, as we define ourselves by our actions and what the impact of those actions is. 

The Silmarillion also shows me just how grand an epic story can tell in scale, ranging from civilizations and united fronts in conflict to poetic individuals. The story of a whole world is told through many eyes and generations, as there is an ultimate effect upon the heart at the story’s end, with such a tragic decline in sorrow wherein the beauty of the story chiefly lies.

Thus, the finality of its conclusion is both compelling and satisfying for me. And the grandeur of the wars in battle strikes me as the epitome of the epic scale in fantasy warfare, where one of its many conflicts makes the War of the Ring in The Lord of the Rings seem small, as though it were but a mere reenactment of that which came afore its time. 

For me, in conclusion, the book carries every weight of inspiration for storytelling.

Though Tolkien’s Middle-earth was a centerpiece of fantasy for me, Lewis’ Narnia offset and balanced the more serious grave nature of Middle-earth with its more light-hearted adventures told through the eyes of children, where it feels like a fairy tale as everything in its world is simply extraordinary. 

The Chronicles of Narnia’s symbolism strikes me as being straightforward in its Christian allegory, which I find quite relatable. The aspect of being as children following the will of “our Heavenly Father” (in their case, walking in Aslan’s guidance) in what is truly a beautiful and imperfect world resonates so well with me, as it is a beautiful picture.

Its fairy tale style fantasy as a magical world just brings out the beauty of fantasy when its storytelling is kept simple. A simple beauty from levity, I love in contrast to the sorrowful beauty of Middle-earth that affects me on a deeper level.

This book in collection of fairy tale stories is filled as a treasure trove with lessons, rhymes, and songs to dance about my heart, whether in a light-hearted fantasy fair beat or in a requiem drama of heart strings pulled where my very tears seem to harmonize the general melody in tone the book sings to in its many narratives.

However, there are a few pieces much too dark for my taste, such as “The Juniper Tree” and “The Fitcher’s Bird,” and though those are dead to me, the others that speak their many themes of joy and sorrow more than make up for it.

While yes, this is another work of Tolkien and this story is covered in the already mentioned The Silmarillion, this book expands in greater detail in the much closer look from the eyes of one Turin, son of Hurin.

I love how this book took an already tragic yet beloved story and fed my appetite with all of the particulars involved therein. The Children of Hurin is such a tragic story of poetic justice, curse, and irony. The main character is as equally frustrating as he is pitiable, and I see him as being quite relatable as any common, fallible human being.

And therein, its work of poetry is rich with matters that can be very relatable to the reader. These matters include lessons to learn, lessons of virtue and anti-virtue, lessons of vice, lessons of pride and its fall, what happens when we approach evil directly without having sought grace, and many more such cases that relate. And for me, any story worth its while must bear some relation with the reader.

I would have thought to list another book here, and for sure, there are truly many books to be read that could easily be listed here, and despite that, this is listing Tolkien’s works for a third time; the truth simply stands in my library that his works are simply that great. 

So far be it that the renowned book of The Lord of the Rings be not included. I had been introduced to Tolkien and fantasy’s more serious nature by my dad and grandfather with readings of The Hobbit, and by it, I was already enamored with the world of Middle-earth, as Bilbo was my hero.

I loved the classic animated cartoon adaptations back then by Rankin and Bass, and Bakshi, which at the time was my main exposure to The Lord of the Rings, along with commentaries from my dad, until I finally read it at the time the live-action adaptations came rolling out by Peter Jackson.

And while the movies had tremendous impact on my visuals for this world of Tolkien’s Middle-earth, my imagination really took off with my own visions instead of the adaptations, and to this day, this is the book that stands out as the one that showed me what it means to be immersed in a fantastical world by pure imagination wherein its beauty thrives at the highest.

Every character of the “Fellowship” was my favorite character, for the book taught me early, most importantly, how everyone’s story has value and not just the hero of a story. No matter how glorified one character might have seemed, the victory and impact would have been lost along with many lives if a single one had been absent. Yet they each represented something that any one of us can relate with.