Final

Smith of Wootton Major This was the last of Tolkien’s published works; a fairy fable about a gifted man‘ s journey throughfairyland. The story starts where ten-year old Smith is invited to the festival of good children where he gets to eat a cake with a fay-star in it. The fay-star from then on acts as his ticket to fairyland where he gets to experience both joyous and perilous moments which in the long run he claims to have broadened his vision of the ordinary.
As Smith travels back and forth to the fairy realm and back to reality he gets to experience change in his perspective of things. At one point he gets to see the hall in a repainted form and more colorful. This gift is what makes him excel in his career as a blacksmith. He takes time to be precise in what he makes; this is because he gets to see things for what they really are and not what one is used to seeing. His journeys through fairyland bring out a sense of enlightenment. When he visits fairyland he gets to visit another realm not so far apart from reality and gets to see it in their eyes. He thus gets a fresher and refined view of reality when he is teleported back to it.
The question of space and time also arises with the flow of the fairy tale. It is not said how long Smith takes in his travels through this unknown land; not in terms of hours, days nor years. It seems that the time he spends in this other unknown land does not heavily affect the time in the real world. With this advantage, Smith takes his time sometimes even ages studying features of this enchanted world, a tree or even a leaf with an intention of gaining greater knowledge in the understanding of things, some of these which seemed quite strange. The perilous moments Smith gets to experience are but a representation of what he had to go through to better his skills, to get to see what he had to see thus bring the knowledge back to reality where it yielded productive results.
The story of the Smith of Wootton major can be taken as an allegory of the autobiography of its writer Tolkien. In this allegory he takes the Smith to be him, privileged to get the gift of artistic works in terms of words. He uses Wootton Major and fairyland as a comparison to the real world and the world of art, literature and book writing. The character’s journey through fairyland are but a representation of his struggle and experience in his field of work and what he could manage to bring forward to his readers(the real world). Finally he ends his allegory by making the main character Smith to pass down his star to the next generation. Being the last of his works, the fable was a way for him to pave way to the next generation of fairy tale writers who would also be endorsed with the gift such as his.