I agree that LOTR is not a WWII allegory–not that I would always trust an author on his own work.
The Hobbit was published in 1937 and LOTR was conceived and written post-Hobbit publication. I think the confusion may arise in part from the fact that WWI was indeed JRRT’s war, and that the other Eldar Days stories were indeed in existence in the 20s (so, Middle Earth already existed, but LOTR did not). LOTR was begun before WWII and work on it continued through the war and after too–it’s just that date in the 20s that is not correct.
OK, so my paraphrase was more or less accurate. Tolkien claims that the oldest part of LOTR, which in his view predetermined the rest, was written long before WWII.
Yeah, you gotta pan thru a lot of common rocks and dirt to get to the gold nuggest.
I’ve have shot myself rather than try to do it all. Of course, if it was my only work, and it would be my meal ticket forever and ever, then I might have tried to do it. Then shot myself.
This coming from the man who wrote “Leaf by Niggle”. But that’s OK, since it’s not an allegory, it’s a fairy tale. Even though it comes right after an essay where he gives a definition of “fairy tale” which is completely and utterly inconsistent with “Niggle”. Did Tolkien ever comment on this apparent inconsistency?
I understand Jackson’s choice to leave “The Scouring” out of an already long movie. However, he seemed to go out of his way to imply that the other hobbits of the shire were blissfully ignorant of the troubles their world had experienced in the previous year or two. Not only weren’t the four travellers welcomed back as heroes, but the Shire seemed completely unaware that they had even gone away.
Well, first, remember that Mark Twain insisted “Huckleberry Finn” had no plot and no moral, and said anyone who looked for them should be shot. Anybody really believe “Huckleberry Finn” had no plot or moral?
I understand Twain’s point, however, and I think it’s one Tolkien would have agreed with: if you START with a moral and build a story around it, you’re likely to end up with something dull, preachy and OBVIOUS. And even little kids learn early on to recognize stories like that. A bright little kid who hears an earnest morality tale or a story with a blatant metaphor is likely to groan to himself, “This is another of those stories that’s supposed to teach me a lesson, isn’t it? Sigh… I HATE those.”
That’s not to say a good story can’t or shouldn’t teach us something valuable, only to say that the STORY has to come first, before any lesson the author hopes to impart. Indeed, any GOOD story WILL teach us something of life, even if that wasn’t the storyteller’s primary intent. For example, Homer wasn’t a Christian, but a Christian is liable to gain more valuable insights from reading Homer’s “Odyssey” than from a blatant Christian fable like “Pilgrim’s Progress.” And I think Tolkien often found that he learned more about his own Catholic faith by reading Viking pagan legends than by reading the usual Catholic propaganda for kiddies. That’s one reason he was less than impressed by his colleague C.S. Lewis’ fantasy stories- it was far too OBVIOUS, in Tolkien’s view, that Aslan was Jesus. And if 10 year old Tolkien (or 10 year old Samuel Clemens) had read “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”, he’d have recognized it instantly as an allegory, a story with a Big Moral, and his eyes would have glazed over.
But even though Tolkien, like Twain, resisted obvious metaphors, it would be foolish to think they weren’t men of their times, and that their stories didn’t reflect what was really happening in the real worlds and times they lived in. No, the Scouring of the Shire was not a mere metaphor for postwar England, but I still believe that the dismal realities of postwar England influenced Tolkien’s view of the SHire under Saruman’s rule.