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Originally Posted by Hookbill the Goomba
I'm inclined to agree here with Mr Dave. Reading Tolkien's forward alone tells us that looking for deeper meanings or messages wasn't the intension in creating the Lord of the Rings or the Silmarillion, but merely to create a history for his languages and an entertaining story.
It is folly, I think, to assume that Tolkien had any ulterior motive. Perhaps there are hints towards Christ. Perhaps there are some similarities. Who can say? I think that trying to look too deeply down this road can lead to us walking in circles for a long while.
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Listen to what Hookbill says, he's speaking sense!
Tolkien
told us that LotR was
not an allegory. Therefore we can find all the metaphors we like in x y or z character or situation, but he didn't intend it that way. So if we do find these metaphors or symbols or whatever, we're not necessarily getting closer to understanding the text as intended, only our own response to it. It's intellectual navel gazing - loadsa fun but then someone might well come along and ask us what the hell we're looking at.
Temper this with the knowledge that Tolkien was indeed a Christian, in fact a devout Catholic, a very particular type of Christian. So of course put together with the other 1,001 influences on his mind, his faith would influence his work. I've just been talking about Catholicism/Gothic elsewhere.
I think the key point is that LotR has a Christian spirit; note that this 'spirit' is not an exclusively Christian one - how
could it be for people of so many faiths (and none) to all join in enjoying this book? So it can't be co-opted by one group of society - sorry if anyone was planning on doing that - not that you were.
The book's a good one for Christians as of course some of the themes support a lot of Christian tenets (but do they all??? Now there's a discussion), but it also supports non-Christian ones too. And that is a very good thing as far as I'm concerned, and only further demonstrates Tolkien's sense of humanity