OK, so we’re back to my “writers are complicated” bit.
Well, so much for my theory.
Yep. Maybe I had better keep my conjectures confined to “Bored of the Rings”. Much less likely to get proven wrong. 
I understand you undertake quests…
Niggle seemed to me to be about non-conformity. So why the hell did it end that way?
If it is religious allegory, then I guess it would be saying that conformity is a Good Thing.
Thanks.
I think…
I dunno about conformity… I don’t remember anything about conformity, pro or con, in “Niggle”. In fact, the Heaven he ends up in is largely of his own creation: It’s the World where the tree he so painstakingly painted is real and growing. The ending, where the single leaf is found and framed, seems to just be a commentary on how little any of us can understand each other within this world.
What’s especially amusing about “Leaf by Niggle” as allegory is that he preceeds the story with an in-depth discussion and definition of what constitutes a fairy tale, and presents the story as being an example of such… And then writes something completely and utterly inconsistent with the definition he just gave. Personally, I think the simplest explanation is that he originally meant the comment about disliking allegory in jest (remember, it was in a letter to his best friend, a prolific writer of allegory), but that when folks took him seriously, he took the joke and ran with it.
And the Ballhog was definitely from Villanova, as I noticed while reading the book and attending that institution. Which is another way it’s dated: Had it been written at the time I read it, the runes would assuredly have read “Georgetown”.