You stay idle because you can afford it, until you can't
You stay idle because you can afford it, until you can't
Tolkien lived through WW2.
Which he used as inspiration for how the nations would react to a great catastrophe.
WW1*
Tolkien was a soldier in WW1 and his experience as a soldier would have had an effect on his writing, especially considering the Lord of the Rings books were written before and during WW2, which he’s also denied had any influence on them.
I think this, along with most of the comments in this thread, is oversimplistic and does Tolkien and his work a pretty serious disservice.
Tolkien was an academic, a student of myth. The reason his works are some of the best-selling books ever written, and that they still resonate with people so strongly seventy-five years later, is not because LOTR is a gritty take on the realities of trench warfare - it's because Tolkien understood, possibly better than anyone else ever has, feelings, experiences, and tropes that are timeless, ideas that are innate to the human experience.
Everyone saying "Tolkien based LOTR on his experiences in WWI" is entirely missing the fact that Tolkien was attempting to create a mythology. Mythical stories across the world throughout history, from the Bible to Germanic sagas, to Finnish myth, to Greek myth, to middle-eastern myths, feature similar tropes of "not acting until it's almost too late", and I honestly think it's insulting to ignore the fact that Tolkien was tapping into his vast understanding of myth to distill truths about the human experience that have nearly universal appeal, only to instead put him into a shallow box of "he wuz riting about Worl War I/II/nuclear bombs/whatevs lol".
Did those experiences factor into his Middle Earth writings? Of course they did, but it's still badly missing the point to claim that his works are allegorical as a result. That's why Tolkien always reacted so strongly when people accused him of allegory - it's, frankly, an insult, and a complete misunderstanding of the point of Tolkien's work in the first place.
Exactly. It's the difference between "the ring is a great power that corrupts" that the reader can draw parallels to their own experiences with, and "ring = nuclear bomb, Isengard = No Man's Land" like it's a slide puzzle with only one right answer.
A work can be deeply personal and reflect your beliefs without having to be strictly allegorical.
Myths are one of the most allegorical kind of story-telling, though. The fight between good and evil is how the world came to be. This guy is wisdom, that guy is trickery. This is why the seasons are. Don't fly too close to the sun. The gods behave much like the kings and emperors, and maybe they're even related. It's a very Christian take to call these mere fables, just stories, divorced from any reality or historical context. No! They were renditions of the philosophical questions and material forces in the lives of the people who told them. That's why they were so important to them. Just as those people did, Tolkien told myths which drew on the questions and experiences of his own time. That is allegorical, whether he liked the word or not.
He also served in WW1.
Exactly. And I suspect the world is heading towards another big international war, given how the patterns repeat. It will be a sudden change, a quick realization that yesterday was the last day of peace for a long time coming.
I dearly hope my suspicion is wrong, but atp I expect to be proven right.
After all, war is peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength.
Not surprising considering it's partially allegory for the world wars.
"I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author." -JRR Tolkien
Edit: I think a lot of people in this thread are conflating a story that is meaningful with one that is allegorical. See my comment elsewhere in this thread for more of my thoughts on the matter.
The guy who wrote about trees smashing industrialism dislikes allegory. I love Tolkien but come on.
A distinction without a difference, really. I think he's wrong to say that people confuse these. What he says here boils down to "when it's heavy handed it's allegory and when it's good it's applicability" but I don't think most authors or scholars use these terms this way. He's right to say that it isn't good to beat your readers over the head with the relationship between your story and real events, and it makes sense that he felt strongly enough about that to want to use different words. But it's IMO still totally fine to say that LOTR has some allegorical character.
I'd argue it was too late for the many people who died...
That too is very realistic
Needs more bombadil