The Ben Shapiro Show
Taking Down Matt Walsh w/ Rev. Malcolm Guite | LOTR Extended Edition
Mon, 14 Apr 2025
Ben sits down with Reverend Malcolm Guite for an in-depth breakdown of "Lord of the Rings" like you’ve never seen before—actual analysis, actual depth...the opposite of Walsh's horrible analysis. Tolkien fans, this one’s for you. - - - Today’s Sponsors: Balance of Nature - Go to https://balanceofnature.com and use promo code SHAPIRO for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer, PLUS get a free bottle of Fiber and Spice. Tax Network USA - For a complimentary consultation, call today at 1 (800) 958-1000 or visit their website at https://TNUSA.com/SHAPIRO
Chapter 1: Who are the speakers and what is the focus of the interview?
Well, folks, since I'm off for Passover today, I thought that you might enjoy the full interview that I did with Malcolm Gite. He's basically a hobbit who's an expert on Lord of the Rings, like a real expert on pretty much everything Lord of the Rings. It's an awesome interview. It's really enjoyable. And it's a nice break. Reverend Dr. Malcolm Gite, welcome to the show.
Really appreciate your time.
Thank you. Pleasure to be with you. I won't talk about talking to anyone. I'm an enthusiast.
I would have been able to tell that even if you had not told me, which I think speaks for itself. So let's talk about the books. So I will be frank with you that I've only read sections of the books, which is rare for me since I've read a lot of books. And the reason for that is probably Tom Bombadil and the first 150 pages of Fellowship.
Oh, really? Oh, I've just been doing a reading of a bit about Tom Bombadil. But all I can say, if you haven't read it all, is lucky you, you have a great pleasure in store whenever that rich and golden time arrives, when you can get really absorbed in it.
Well, I'm definitely going to start reading it with my kids right now. I have one who's 11 and one who's eight.
Oh, yeah. My dad read The Hobbit to me and then began The Lord of the Rings with me, and I carried it on. But, you know, it's not only a glorious adventure, but You think you're escaping or getting away from the world, but actually at a deep level, you're being given just the kind of wisdom and insight and courage you need for when you go back into the world.
So let's talk about the films and the books. Obviously the vast majority of people at this point who are familiar with Lord of the Rings, kind of in general popular culture, are familiar with it because of the films and the spinoffs. So what are people missing if they've only seen the films, which are really terrific? I think the films are great.
The Lord of the Rings films are great. I wouldn't say the same about The Hobbit, but I definitely think the Lord of the Rings films are great. Partly because the images they took, they used Alan Lee and... I've forgotten his name, the other Ted Naismith's illustrations that went right back and use them. So what are they missing? Well, the first thing is Tolkien was a linguist.
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Chapter 2: What unique insights does Malcolm Guite offer about reading The Lord of the Rings?
Obviously, he started in the war and then he was carrying on thinking these things through. The Hobbit came out in the 30s, in the interwar years. And of course, unbelievably for that generation, who'd already been through one world war, Another one started brewing on the horizon.
Now, both Tolkien and Lewis and some of their other friends were not going to be called up into the Second World War in a direct way. Although, in fact, they did their thing. I mean, Lewis famously did these Christian broadcasts. And Lewis was taken out. When we think about the Battle of Britain, the last of the few, the last of the ones that has just died, it was 105.
But Lewis was out there, you know, speaking to them. So I think some of what was going on there went into their thinking. And indeed, since the Lord of the Rings didn't come out until the 50s, you know, the post-war things. But here's a really important thing. They're not writing some kind of one-to-one political allegory.
So a classic example of this is when the Lord of the Rings came out and there's the idea of there's this one ring, but we can't use it, we can't use the enemy's weapon, it would change who we are. Not unnaturally, people thought this was a political allegory about the nuclear bomb and about how do we defend civilization without becoming uncivilized ourselves. Now, that's always a good question.
I mean, Socrates asked that question, how do you defend civilization? But... Tolkien had a laugh about this, because he had already figured out the whole network of how the story of the ring works before we even knew about nuclear weapons. But here's a great thing, if you want to think about how to read this in the different political circumstances we're in.
So when Lewis reviewed The Lord of the Rings when it came out, he said a beautiful thing. He said, this is not allegory, but it's great myth written at such a deep level that it is, this is exactly Lewis's phrase, it is continuously suggestive of incipient allegories. So the story is so primal that when you read it, Almost the story is wiser than you are. It's wiser than Tolkien.
He trusts the story. So the story keeps telling you certain things. It keeps suggesting ideas to you about how things are now. Now, I'm not a political animal, I have to say, so I don't particularly want to stray onto the extraordinary minefield of American or even my own politics.
I'm pretty old-fashioned sort of... I'm happy to live in a constitutional monarchy because I'm a constitutional monarch, but... Here's a thing that Tolkien does in these stories, and this does come out in the film, so you get this. He often has, if you like, kind of... connected but antithetical pairings of characters.
And what he's doing is he's exploring the way a thing could be done well and the way the same thing could be abused, the way a person could flourish or the way a person could be corrupted in themselves. So if you think about it, how do you be the kind advising wizard who actually has more power than the people he's advising but doesn't want to exploit them? Well, Gandalf is an example of that.
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