LotR - an allegory? No, not WW2 this time, I promise... ;)

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

I was talking about the wisdom of LotR with my sister yesterday, and I started to think of something. One of the big themes of LotR is undoubtedly the diminishing of the old world - the departure of the Elves, the eventual fading of the Hobbits and the Dwarves and so on - and the beginning of the era of Men. All the mystery, magic and old beauty is gone, and Men are left to govern the world and make their own decisions.

Now, this sounds rather familiar, doesn't it? It sounds like the relatively recent development of our world, or the beginning of our modern times. People know more, solve many unsolved mysteries and change the world around them... and if Tolkien, when he was writing LotR, looked back he could still see, in his childhood or in the times of his parents or grandparents, a different world, a world where science had not solved the mysteries of the world or humans did not dominate earth the way they now do.

I cannot help thinking this was reflected in the Lord of the Rings. It is another question whether the allegory was deliberate - as has been said dozens of times, Tolkien hated allegories and denied LotR being one - or whether something Tolkien (a conservative person with a dislike of modern technology, mind you) subconsciously wove this theme to his book.

Any thoughts?

I don't think Tolkien was at all subtle or allegorical when it came to his abhorrence of technology or the modern over-consumption and destruction of the environment. He purposely placed many sequences in LotR that mirror his feelings (particularly in the Scouring of the Shore, and Saruman's deforestation of Fangorn), and even Tom Bombadil is an admitted inclusion based not on significance to the story, but rather on the significance Tom had to Tolkien in regards to nature and the woods of Oxfordshire of Tolkien's youth.

In another sense, the diminishment of wonder and waning glory not only mirrors Tolkien's feelings, but his choices in literary influences and the bedrock of his studies: Icelandic/Norse tales, Beowulf, the Arthurian cycle, Plato and the bible itself, all refer to the twilight of the gods, the death of the last great warrior, the Once and Future King sailing for Avalon, of the destruction of the Atlantean superculture and the world destroyed in Flood, as well as a Ragnarok or Apocalypse at world's end.

Tolkien was a man bound to his influences. His true genius lay in the manner in which he synthesized those influences into something altogether different, vaguely familiar yet totally unique, a new mythos built on the bones of the old. And an integral part of his mythos, like those that preceded it, is the loss of grandeur and nobility as the youthful world turns to bitter middle age.