A lot of times, when people talk about allegory and Tolkien, I suspect they are talking about something different from how I see allegory and probably how Tolkien saw it too. To be fair, even the experts have a hard time agreeing on what constitutes an allegory. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, an allegory is “The representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form.” According to the Norton Anthology of English Literature (volume 1, 8^th edition), allegory is

saying one thing … and meaning another. … Allegories may be momentary aspects of a work, as in metaphor (”John is a lion”), or, through extended metaphor, may constitute the basis of a narrative, as in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress; the second meaning is the dominant one.

“But there it is!” I can hear my detractors cry. “Right there in Norton! ‘Allegories may be momentary aspects of a work.’ Surely, even she won’t argue with Norton!”

And they’re right; I won’t. I know when I am bested in experience and knowledge. But it’s a non-issue: Momentary aspects of a work aren’t what I am questioning here. When someone says that The Lord of the Rings is a Christian allegory or an allegory to World War II, she or he does not mean that The Lord of the Rings contains metaphors. This is simply ridiculous. Nearly all creative works contain metaphors yet all creative works, as a whole, are not allegories. Tolkien’s famous line from The Fellowship of the Ring–”The dragon passed like an express train”–may be a metaphor, or a “momentary allegory,” if you will, but it does not make Fellowship as a whole an allegory about mid-20^th century advancements in transportation.

No, when people talk about Tolkien’s stories acting as allegories–and when Tolkien denies this–they are talking about the second definition Norton gives: “extended metaphor … the basis of a narrative.” They are alleging that Tolkien’s stories as a whole have either Christian or historical parallels and act as extended metaphors to express them. This is what I am debating.

Yet, in the discussion of Tolkien and allegory, I frequently see people making points that hit rather off the mark from this definition of allegory. Many times, they bring up valid points in defending Tolkien’s works as allegories … except that the points they bring up have nothing to do with allegory!

First, allegory is not the same thing as theme. “Frodo’s quest to destroy the Ring may be read as an allegory about the struggle between good and evil,” I read recently. Not at all. One of the major themes of all of Tolkien’s works is, of course, the struggle of good versus evil (and, ultimately, the triumph of good), but Frodo’s quest to destroy the Ring is hardly a metaphor for that. No, it is a direct example of how forces of good and evil work in Tolkien’s world, much in the same way that dropping an apple isn’t an allegory for gravity but a demonstration of it.

Much like the point I made about “momentary allegory,” all creative works have a theme. That does not make all creative works into allegories.

Perhaps more importantly, though, and the more challenging distinction: inspiration is not allegory. Tolkien was a Christian and a veteran of World War I. It takes a Tolkien ignoramus indeed to assert that 1) Tolkien’s religious beliefs didn’t influence the construction of his world and 2) his brutal portrayal of war can’t be explained at least in part by his combat experiences. But neither is the question here.

In Letter 142 to Robert Murray, Tolkien writes, “The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.” But does this mean that it is an allegory? No. It means that the morals and values the work glorifies are in keeping with the Christian–and particularly the Catholic–faith. The actions of characters like Frodo champion sacrifice and forgiveness, both tenets of mainstream Christianity. His villains and antiheroes alike are often brought low by their wrath, pride, and envy, sins against which Christians are cautioned in Christian teachings.

Or, to put it differently, we do not see Tolkien advocating for values not prescribed by Christian teachings. We don’t see him making an argument that satisfaction of one’s lusts is acceptable and that it is really the influence of our culture that causes jealousy and pressures us to accept monogamy. We don’t see him arguing that brilliant, strong-willed characters like Sauron and Fëanor should be allowed to pursue their studies to whatever ends they take and that, ultimately, the pursuit of knowledge and understanding is itself virtuous. No, the lessons one takes from Tolkien’s stories fit nicely within what Tolkien believed as a Christian. If it would have been controversial to bring up in church, it isn’t in his stories.

Later, in the same letter to Robert Murray, Tolkien writes, “For as a matter of fact, I have consciously planned very little; and should chiefly be grateful for having been brought up (since I was eight) in a Faith that has nourished me and taught me all the little that I know.” In other words, it is the depth of his belief in the Christian faith that led him to create a story glorfying its ideals and values without conscious realization. The lack of realization alone disqualifies allegory. I’ve never heard anyone say, “Oops, I’ve created a metaphor!” … at least not on the grand scale necessary to maintain an allegory across a whole work.

Through this, though, I would like to reemphasize a point that I made in Tolkien, Allegory, and the Maddening Perseverance of Denial that came up in the comments there as well. I am not denying you your right to read Tolkien’s works as an allegory if this explanation makes sense of those works for you. Nor am I saying that an interpretation of Tolkien’s writings as allegory is wrong. I don’t believe that there is any “right” or “wrong” interpretation where literature is concerned, even if that interpretation is in direct conflict with what the author says she or he intended. What I do debate is the idea that Tolkien intended his works to serve as an allegory and reader insistence that his denial of this fact is deliberate deception on his part.

Next time, I’ll debunk some popular Tolkien “allegories.” One of my theories regarding Tolkien and allegory is that what appears to a reader not well-versed in his canon to be a clear allegory often has a better explanation in Tolkien’s own canon or Legendarium. In the meantime, if you have any ideas for allegories to debunk, feel free to suggest them in a comment.

The course has been pretty tame so far, mostly looking at the literary influences on Tolkien’s work, his biography, and so on. But this? This is a can of worms.

I made myself some rules before embarking on this discussion (for, to make matters even worse, the assignment for this particular topic is participation in an online discussion). I will not–I promised myself–argue with anyone who insists despite Tolkien’s dozens of assertions to the contrary that his stories are allegory. I will make my point once (always a challenge for me) and I will allow myself to agree with people who make a similar point, but I will not attempt to convert anyone else in the class to my line of thinking beyond simply presenting my opinion (once!). It’s just plain mean to foist my passionate views on this subject on someone just beginning to study the material. And everyone must draw their own conclusions; I believe in this. If a newcomer to Middle-earth continues his or her studies beyond this course, I’m sure he or she will eventually formulate an informed opinion on allegory in Tolkien’s works. Then, we can debate to our hearts’ contents.

So I’ve behaved. But that doesn’t mean I can’t rant about it in my blog, right?

Tolkien couldn’t make himself any plainer on the fact of allegory and whether or not it is present in his stories. Open up a digital copy of The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien and search “allegor,” which nicely covers mention of both allegory and allegorical. He’s pretty definitive. I’m not one who likes to break out what I call the “Ouija board” argument of canon–that whiny, self-superior “because Tolkien wouldn’t have wanted it that way” argument that is used to defend all manner of intolerance in the Tolkien fandom–because Tolkien was dust in his grave before I was even born. I have no way of knowing what he would or would not have wanted had he lived to 2008 to see what we’ve all done with his stories. But really. I don’t need a Ouija board. The guy couldn’t make it any clearer.

“I dislike Allegory”–Letter 131 to Milton Waldman

Yet anyone who’s been discussing Tolkien online for more than five minutes knows that someone will inevitably insist that Tolkien’s work is allegory. How do they overcome the clear statement of authorial intent, you might ask? My text for my epic fantasy course, Michael Graham’s Tolkien and Makers of Modern Epic Fantasy, (1) provides an insight into that: “It is fashionable for authors whose intentions are premeditated to suggest that their readers are putting too much in to the work. This is a luxury enjoyed by authors, since it permits them to play a deep game with their readers–a game upon which they and the reader (particularly the academician who lives on analysis) thrive.”

I wholly agree with the idea of approaching a work skeptically in all regards. But, at the same time, I find the blatant denial of an author’s stated intentions a little disrespectful.

“Oh, he couldn’t have meant that!” Oh no, sure, he didn’t! He only stated it how many times in letters to various individuals?

And let me be clear on something (because I can already hear the cries of “Hypocrite!” on the tongues of those with whom I tend not to see eye to eye): There is a huge difference between reading and interpreting a story in a way that makes sense and is meaningful for you and claiming that this particular view, unique to you, is really what the author meant all along.

In other words, if a reader picks up LotR for the first time and comes away overawed by the depth of the allegory presented therein, and this perceived allegory is what the reader finds beautiful and moving about the story, then who am I to argue with that? I’m not one to advocate for any “right” way to read a story. For that reader, there is allegory in the novel. However, it is another matter entirely for that reader to say, “Oh, yes, Tolkien carefully constructed that allegory!” and to insist on this despite evidence to the contrary. It’s rather cocky, actually. I may not always agree with an author on how her or his work should be interpreted and I reserve the right to see the story however it best makes sense to me, but I draw the line at insisting that my reading of the story trumps the author’s intentions. As an author myself, that just bugs me.

Furthermore, I find it ironic when Christian readers insist that Tolkien presented this grand allegorical call to the fold of Christianity through …

Deception?

Even this agnostic knows the line, “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” This agnostic didn’t know the Catholic catechisms on the subject, but I suspect that Tolkien might have been familiar with them. To suggest that Tolkien witnessed for Christ and then lied about it is simply absurd.

More realistic is exactly what Tolkien said he did: He created his stories as a philological playground for himself and achieved a depth to those stories that touched readers in a way he didn’t expect. Those readers took myriad meanings from his work, including allegory. But that doesn’t mean that he wrote the stories to be read that way.

I suspect, at times, that certain extreme factions of that broad and diverse (and not altogether intolerable) creature called Christianity simply cannot understand how Tolkien could have been so devoutly religious and, yet, that religion did not influence every last choice that he made in his fiction. Did it influence the values he advocated? Of course it did. Did it cause him to construct Frodo as a parallel to Christ? Not necessarily.

The wonderful thing about Tolkien’s stories–where C.S. Lewis and his blatant allegory often fall short for me–is that they appeal not to a Christian but to a human audience. In describing The Silmarillion to Milton Waldman (Letter 131), Tolkien says,

In the cosmogony there is a fall: a fall of Angels we should say. Though quite different in form, of course, to that of Christian myth. These tales are ‘new’, they are not directly derived from other myths and legends, but they must inevitably contain a large measure of ancient wide-spread motives or elements. After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of ‘truth’, and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear. There cannot be any ’story’ without a fall – all stories are ultimately about the fall – at least not for human minds as we know them and have them.

There, I think, explains the power of Tolkien’s stories to a human audience: He devoted his life to studying the stories of human history and so gained an intimate understanding of those founding truths that transform fiction from merely entertaining to profound and moving. His selection and shaping of those truths reflects his Christianity, no doubt, but they also speak to a wider audience in a way that stories confined by creed tend not to.

This issue is too complicated to cover in its entirety in a single post. Next up, how nuances of Tolkien’s fiction might get mistaken for allegory and a summary and debunking of common allegorical connections made.

Notes and Other Such

1. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, this text isn’t available outside of this course, since it was authored by the professor and printed and bound by the university. However, if anyone is desperate for it, I can inquire.