Tolkien lived through WW2.
Which he used as inspiration for how the nations would react to a great catastrophe.
WW1*
Tolkien was a soldier in WW1 and his experience as a soldier would have had an effect on his writing, especially considering the Lord of the Rings books were written before and during WW2, which he’s also denied had any influence on them.
I think this, along with most of the comments in this thread, is oversimplistic and does Tolkien and his work a pretty serious disservice.
Tolkien was an academic, a student of myth. The reason his works are some of the best-selling books ever written, and that they still resonate with people so strongly seventy-five years later, is not because LOTR is a gritty take on the realities of trench warfare - it’s because Tolkien understood, possibly better than anyone else ever has, feelings, experiences, and tropes that are timeless, ideas that are innate to the human experience.
Everyone saying “Tolkien based LOTR on his experiences in WWI” is entirely missing the fact that Tolkien was attempting to create a mythology. Mythical stories across the world throughout history, from the Bible to Germanic sagas, to Finnish myth, to Greek myth, to middle-eastern myths, feature similar tropes of “not acting until it’s almost too late”, and I honestly think it’s insulting to ignore the fact that Tolkien was tapping into his vast understanding of myth to distill truths about the human experience that have nearly universal appeal, only to instead put him into a shallow box of “he wuz riting about Worl War I/II/nuclear bombs/whatevs lol”.
Did those experiences factor into his Middle Earth writings? Of course they did, but it’s still badly missing the point to claim that his works are allegorical as a result. That’s why Tolkien always reacted so strongly when people accused him of allegory - it’s, frankly, an insult, and a complete misunderstanding of the point of Tolkien’s work in the first place.
Goddamn, your comment inspired me to reread the trilogy. Well done!
I’m right in the middle of my yearly reread now as well. :)
Hey, me too! Rohan has just arrived to aid Gondor. God I love these books.
Arise now, arise, Riders of Théoden! Dire deeds awake: dark is it eastward. Let horse be bridled, horn be sounded! Forth, Eorlingas!
Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden! Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter! Spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered, a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises! Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!
One of my very favorite scenes in the story. Gives you chills
Exactly. It’s the difference between “the ring is a great power that corrupts” that the reader can draw parallels to their own experiences with, and “ring = nuclear bomb, Isengard = No Man’s Land” like it’s a slide puzzle with only one right answer.
A work can be deeply personal and reflect your beliefs without having to be strictly allegorical.
Myths are one of the most allegorical kind of story-telling, though. The fight between good and evil is how the world came to be. This guy is wisdom, that guy is trickery. This is why the seasons are. Don’t fly too close to the sun. The gods behave much like the kings and emperors, and maybe they’re even related. It’s a very Christian take to call these mere fables, just stories, divorced from any reality or historical context. No! They were renditions of the philosophical questions and material forces in the lives of the people who told them. That’s why they were so important to them. Just as those people did, Tolkien told myths which drew on the questions and experiences of his own time. That is allegorical, whether he liked the word or not.
On the surface to a casual observer, sure, but once you spend any time with myth at all, you start seeing the powerful similarities and tropes shared between these age-old stories across the world, regardless of culture and what natural phenomena the individual stories happen to be about, and you realize that there’s something much more fundamental, universal, and human about myth than just “a bunch of allegorical stories about why the sun rises every morning”.
That’s the difference between studying a myth and studying myth. And that’s not a Christian take - it’s an anthropological point of view that places these stories in their proper context and realizes that they are expressions of a shared humanity.
It’s no coincidence that Tolkien’s work in philology and linguistics came precisely during the structuralist revolution that grew out of the anthropological linguistic work of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Shared human behaviors have local, contextual realizations, and individual myths are a reflection of that fact.
Just as those people did, Tolkien told myths which drew on the questions and experiences of his own time. That is allegorical, whether he liked the word or not.
I could not disagree more strongly. All works of art draw on experiences of the artist’s life, and to conclude that all art is therefore allegory is not just doing Tolkien a disservice, but allegory as well.
Allegory is a powerful tool, one of the most effective ways of speaking truth to power, and is one of the main reasons that bards and poets across the world throughout history have been so feared and respected by authorities.
As such, “allegory” is far too useful a term to water down to “any story that has any sort of meaning to it whatsoever”, and I think that doing so is a mistake.
That doesn’t mean that each reader can’t take whatever meaning is relevant to them from a work, of course, and I believe that Tolkien would certainly encourage this - it only means, specifically, that the ability of a reader to attempt to practice allegoresis does not entail that the work in question is necessarily therefore allegorical.
That is to say, you’re still conflating a story being allegorical with a story being meaningful.
they are expressions of a shared humanity.
Of course they are, I’m in complete agreement here. People all around the world tell myths and they describe universal human experiences. People around the world have a great deal of experience in common. One of them is telling stories where characters in some way represent big ideas, superhuman forces of the world, or great human figures renamed. There are other good uses for the word ‘allegory’ but this correctly describes the form of so much of myth.
I really would never describe them as
just “a bunch of allegorical stories about why the sun rises every morning”.
at all. On the contrary, it is noteworthy in it’s universality. But it’s not the only kind of storytelling, and not the only universal kind, and it is certainly not the only universal kind of art. So I think it’s not watering anything down or doing either of them a disservice to make the distinction this way.
Anyway, despite disagreeing with you I want to say I do respect your opinion, you’ve clearly read and thought about it a lot, and I think it’s a valid position to come to. Agree to disagree I guess.
He also served in WW1.
Exactly. And I suspect the world is heading towards another big international war, given how the patterns repeat. It will be a sudden change, a quick realization that yesterday was the last day of peace for a long time coming.
I dearly hope my suspicion is wrong, but atp I expect to be proven right.
After all, war is peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength.
Not surprising considering it’s partially allegory for the world wars.
“I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.” -JRR Tolkien
Edit: I think a lot of people in this thread are conflating a story that is meaningful with one that is allegorical. See my comment elsewhere in this thread for more of my thoughts on the matter.
The guy who wrote about trees smashing industrialism dislikes allegory. I love Tolkien but come on.
A distinction without a difference, really. I think he’s wrong to say that people confuse these. What he says here boils down to “when it’s heavy handed it’s allegory and when it’s good it’s applicability” but I don’t think most authors or scholars use these terms this way. He’s right to say that it isn’t good to beat your readers over the head with the relationship between your story and real events, and it makes sense that he felt strongly enough about that to want to use different words. But it’s IMO still totally fine to say that LOTR has some allegorical character.
I interpret it quite differently to mean that a good (hi)story is indeed its own unique creation which can exist and be judged and enjoyed on its own accord without necessarily being a commentary or reflection of anything in the real world. Of course, all imagination relates to the real world to some extent—and that’s where applicability comes in—but it’s possible to reject the elements of allegory and in doing to build your own world which feels just as real and nuanced as our own.
I don’t really believe that it’s possible to write a fictional history which draws heavily on themes from real history that can’t be described as somehow allegorical. You can reject it all you want but if it quacks like a duck…
That’s fair, I don’t be necessarily disagree, but perhaps another way of thinking about it is simply by looking at the diversity and types of interpretations that there may be for a particular work. For example, a book club reading 1984 would likely discuss the author’s intended reflection on the real world; whereas a book club reading LOTR (depending on the individuals) is much more likely to be discussing the emotions and individual travails and growth of the characters and how the relate to a world which is distinctly its own (even if there are inevitable similarities to our own). In practice, I feel that is a clear enough distinction.
Yeah, I mostly agree with you too. I do think it’s important to consider that diversity of interpretations, and it’s why I say “has some allegorical character” rather than it having some kind of direct correspondence with real events as something like 1984 does, but the parallels to the political environment that Tolkien was personally experiencing at the time that he wrote it are too strong to ignore entirely. Although it has plenty of depth in the relationships of the individual characters to each other and their own world, it is also grounded in the intellectual ideas of early 20th century Europe and those ideas come through in the various factions and the characters that lead them or shape them. I think that kind of applicability to the political thought and events of that time can correctly be called allegory, even if he wouldn’t have liked it much that I’m saying so.
What’s the difference between distinction and difference? I hate this silly platitude.
A distinction is made actively, labelling things distinctly, with different names. A difference refers to some properties of the things not being the same. The phrase just means “to label things differently while they are not actually different”, and you could qualify it a bit to say “except maybe in degree”.
The definitiom of distinctly has the word different in it.
Yes, of course their meanings overlap. Both of these words have several definitions. Even so, a distinction is more about the act of making a distinction, while a difference is more about how the things actually are.
Needs more bombadil
I’d argue it was too late for the many people who died…
They can still help as ghosts. 🤷♂️
Especially if they broke an oath to the King of Gondor before dying
That too is very realistic
Hunh. I thought it was that there’s always the one that thinks he’s the main character, and everyone around him had to share the load. I mean, FFS, you know at least a handful of the others were aware that giant eagles’d carry them straight off, but who wants to tell the hero-who’d-rather-walk?
ugh, the eagles argument is so old and played out. there’s a million reasons why the eagles couldn’t have carried them in.
for one thing, mordor had an airforce. the nazgul were stronger than or equal to the strength of the eagles. the only reason they could fly in at the end is because the ring was already destroyed and the nazgul fell with it.
another is that the plan only worked because it was done in secret. if they had flown in, sauron would have seen them days or weeks before they arrived. he would have had that entire army waiting for them on mount doom. even if the eagles made it past the nazgul they never could have made it into the mountain.
the eagles are intelligent willfull creatures. they also didn’t want to risk active war with mordor. just like this meme is pointing out, no one would have helped if they didn’t absolutely have to. that’s made much more clear in the books. every race and nation believes that either they are too far for the danger to reach them or that they can appease sauron. the eagles were not fully committed to war with mordor. they were kind of like Europe helping ukraine right now. they had a side, they supported that side, but only with the occasional assist never an actual battle.
also, the ring’s corruption will basically slowly turn all who bear it for long enough into ring wraiths. that’s why frodo and bilbo had to take the boat to basically heaven at the end. they were immortal, but the magic that gave them that life was gone from the world. they would have withered away into husks over time, but not died. while the movies didn’t show it, Sam also suffered this fate in the end. he got to live his life with his family, but he too eventuality needed to make his exit in that manner. the only reason Hobbits could bear the ring is because they so free from want of power that it simply doesn’t sway their hearts the same way. if the eagles had carried the ring bearer for the length of journey that would have been required they too would have been corrupted. that was why they dissolved the fellowship. because the ring was starting to corrupt other party members despite only frodo carrying it.
so no, the eagles couldn’t have just carried them.
