The Wise Imagination

In December 2001, I sat in a darkened theater and watched Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring. I had read the books as a child, but seeing that world come alive sparked something inside me. My friend Sam and I made a pact to see every installment together. We returned for The Two Towers, and finally, for The Return of the King.

But as I left the theater on that final cold December night, the feeling was different. I felt as though I had ended a three-year relationship. There was a profound sense of loss—a yearning connected to those final scenes where the magic of the Elves departs Middle-earth. Like Sam, Merry, and Pippin standing on the docks, I wanted the magic to stay. I wanted to be part of it.

This ache is the hallmark of truly great fantasy. It awakens the “moral imagination,” a faculty George MacDonald mastered long before Tolkien reached for a pen.

Mirroring the Truth: MacDonald’s Symbolism

George MacDonald believed the imagination was not a tool for daydreaming, but a mirror made to reflect reality. As scholar Rolland Hein explains, MacDonald used symbolism to create a reality “more ideal and more unified than that of daily life.”

For MacDonald, symbols are the “perfect vehicle for exploring our confrontment with the unknown.” They function as conduits that convey divine meaning to the sensitive reader. Vigen Guroian notes that children are instinctively “literate” in this symbolic language; they are natural participants in a “sacramental universe.” However, these imaginative powers must be exercised—like muscles in the body—lest they “atrophy or grow grotesquely.”

A Case Study: The “Passive” Virtue of Snow White

To see how this works in practice, we can look at the Grimm version of Snow White through a moral lens rather than a modern, socio-political one.

While Snow White is often criticized as “passive” or “discriminatory,” a symbolic reading reveals a character of profound virtue. If we extend “fairness” and “beauty” beyond physical traits, Snow White becomes a figure of Christ-like resilience. Even in her “poisoned” sleep, her countenance remains “fresh and alive,” echoing the Pauline triumph: “Death has been swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor. 15:54).

Her “passivity” is actually a power over death. Her virtue is so radiant that it prompts the dwarves to create a glass coffin and the prince to pledge eternal devotion. This isn’t the story of a helpless girl; it is the story of a woman whose post-mortem virtue actively transforms everyone who encounters her. By rejecting a purely “rationalistic” reading, we uncover virtues like humility and service that are otherwise hidden.

The Echo of a Greater Need

Not all fantasy is created equal. Our modern obsession with everything from Marvel to Middle-earth is often just an echo of a greater need: the desire to belong to a world that transcends our own.

We may not have a Gandalf or an Aslan to physically walk us through our perils, but we have the truths that burst forth from their stories. When we marry reason to imagination, we realize that the “magic” never truly left. It was simply directing our gaze back to the “Grandeur of God” in our own world.