[davem]

Can only agree with B88. I do think Tolkien protested too much re 'allegory' though. He was very skilled in the use of allegory. I suspect what he disliked was 'hidden' allegory. When Tolkien used allegory he was usually very clear that he was doing so - the 'Tower' allegory in the Beowulf lecture, Niggle, & even the use of the Great Hall in Smith (for which he is kind enough to provide us with an 'allegorical' interpretation himself:

The Great Hall is evidently in a way an 'allegory' of the village church; the Master Cook with his house adjacent, and his office that is not hereditary, provides for its own instruction and succession but is not one of the 'secular' or profitable crafts, and yet is supported financially by the village, is plainly the Parson and the priesthood. 'Cooking' is a domestic affair practised by men and women: personal religion and prayer. The Master Cook presides over and provides for all the religious festivals of the year, and also for all the religious occasions that are not universal: births, marriages, and deaths. The Great Hall is however no longer painted or decorated. If antique carvings, whether grotesques like gargoyles, or beautiful and of religious import, are preserved at all it is by mere custom. The Hall is kept rainproof, weatherproof and warm: that is the prime object of any care spent on it. Festivals are mere public assemblies, for talk assisted by eating and drinking: there are no longer songs, music, or dances. The church has been 'reformed'. Memory survives of 'merrier' days, but most of the village would not approve of any revival of them. That a MC should himself sing is regarded as out of accord with his office.
Industry and sober hard work are mainly to be commended; but the profit motive for such assiduity is becoming dominant. The less commercially profitable an occupation the less it is esteemed. (One feels that though there is yet no hint of this, the time is not far distant when the office of ME will be abolished. The Hall will become a mere place of business, the property of the Craft Council, hirable by those who can afford it for great family occasions. If any Cooks survive they will become traders, opening cookshops and eating houses adapted to the various tastes of clients.)

Yet he still seems uncomfortable with admitting his use of it. At three points in his writings on Smith he warns us off doing what he himself proceeds to do:
This short tale is not an 'allegory', though it is capable of course of allegorical interpretations at certain points., 'There is no need to hunt for allegory.' &

BUT Faery is not religious. It is fairly evident that it is not Heaven or Paradise. Certainly its inhabitants, Elves, are not angels or emissaries of God (direct). The tale does not deal with religion itself. The Elves are not busy with a plan to reawake religious devotion in Wootton. The Cooking allegory would not be suitable to any such

In short, Tolkien himself was capable of finding 'allegories' in his own work, & of composing very effective ones. However, Boromir 88 is perfectly correct in that even where Tolkien does use allegory he would not, I think, want to impose them on the reader, who should be free to 'apply' his or her own meaning to the story - or apply no 'meaning' to them at all.