[Legolas]

Sharing similar roles does not make one character a direct representation of the other.

Eru is not Allah or Yahweh; Aragorn is not He-Man; Gandalf is not Optimus Prime, or Merlin; Mandos is not Thanatos; Morgoth is not Skeletor, or Hades, or Lucifer, or Emperor Palpatine; Eowyn is not She-ra; Ulmo is not Poseidon; Eonwe is not Gabriel, or Michael; Frodo is not Willow; Sauron is not Darth Vader or the anti-chirst; Tilion is not Phoebe; and so on...

The reason that Tolkien's works are compared with the Bible so often is that each tells the (near-)complete story of world. Mainly how it was created, how evil came about, how it was defeated, etc.

You can compare them (for what reason, I don't know), but to say one was the basis of the other is not accurate.

I dislike Allegory – the conscious and intentional allegory – yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language. (And, of course, the more 'life' a story has the more readily will it be susceptible of allegorical interpretations: while the better a deliberate allegory is made the more nearly will it be acceptable just as a story.)

There is no 'allegory', moral, political, or contemporary in the work at all.

It is a 'fairy-story', but one written – according to the belief I once expressed in an extended essay 'On Fairy-stories' that they are the proper audience – for adults. Because I think that fairy story has its own mode of reflecting 'truth', different from allegory, or (sustained) satire, or 'realism', and in some ways more powerful. But first of all it must succeed just as a tale, excite, please, and even on occasion move, and within its own imagined world be accorded (literary) belief. To succeed in that was my primary object.

But since I have deliberately written a tale, which is built on or out of certain 'religious' ideas, but is not an allegory of them (or anything else), and does not mention them overtly, still less preach them, I will not now depart from that mode, and venture on theological disquisition for which I am not fitted. But I might say that if the tale is 'about' anything (other than itself), it is not as seems widely supposed about 'power'. Power-seeking is only the motive-power that sets events going, and is relatively unimportant, I think. It is mainly concerned with Death, and Immortality; and the 'escapes': serial longevity, and hoarding memory.

There is no 'symbolism' or conscious allegory in my story.

That there is no allegory does not, of course, say there is no applicability. There always is. And since I have not made the struggle wholly unequivocal: sloth and stupidity among hobbits, pride and [illegible] among Elves, grudge and greed in Dwarf-hearts, and folly and wickedness among the 'Kings of Men', and treachery and power-lust even among the 'Wizards', there is I suppose applicability in my story to present times. But I should say, if asked, the tale is not really about Power and Dominion: that only sets the wheels going; it is about Death and the desire for deathlessness. Which is hardly more than to say it is a tale written by a Man!

So something of the teller's own reflections and 'values' will inevitably get worked in. This is not the same as allegory. We all, in groups or as individuals, exemplify general principles; but we do not represent them. The Hobbits are no more an 'allegory' than are (say) the pygmies of the African forest. Gollum is to me just a 'character' – an imagined person – who granted the situation acted so and so under opposing strains, as it appears to he probable that he would (there is always an incalculable element in any individual real or imagined: otherwise he/she would not be an individual but a 'type'.)

The last two quotes (especially the part that I italicized) are particularly good in helping you understand why his work is not an allegory.

While characters, events, and ideas may exemplify some you have seen elsewhere, they do not represent them, and are not intended to. Hope these quotes help!

[ January 27, 2003: Message edited by: Legolas ]