Yes, it was in fact an allegory against all they love.
[Update a couple minutes later]
As Gail Heriot (from whom I got this link) notes, they would never have destroyed that ring; they’d have used it. For our collective good, of course.
13 thoughts on “Tolkien And The Left”
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Tolkein was under no illusions about the way that people were likely to react to offered power. In denying that LotR was an allegory for WW2, he wrote:
“The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dûr would not have been destroyed but occupied. Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth. In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they would not long have survived even as slaves.”
Well, you’re way more of a Tolkien scholar than I am. I never got through The Silmarillion. And I think I only read the trilogy twice, and The Hobbit once.
And I haven’t seen the movie of the latter.
Hate hate hate five of the six movies; “Fellowship” is ok for the most part (the Moria sequence is quite good) but the rest stink on ice to me. Jackson simply did not get Tolkien at all. Pretty much everything he changed significantly from the books is terrible, and the only good in the movies is what hews closely to the books.
At least The Silmarillion is basically unfilmable and therefore immune from Jackson’s clod-fisted vision…
Agree. Frodo was a limp-wristed whiny wuss. I just couldn’t get into it.
IIRC, plans are in the works for a series based on a story or two out of The Simarillion.
Interestingly, Tolkien intensely disliked allegory:
“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.”
I read The Hobbit when I was in high school, and couldn’t put it down. It was a wonderful experience. Then I tried the trilogy. I couldn’t get more than halfway through the first book, and just tried skimming the other two without much luck. They were just awful.
However, having read just enough of them did prepare me to enjoy Harvard Lampoon’s parody Bored of the Rings. One has to have grown up in the late 1950s to fully appreciate the book. It has so many references to contemporary culture (especially to TV commercials) that it would be largely lost on a millennial. Still, my millennial older son read it and found it hilarious. Most Bored fans I’ve encountered agree that the only reason to read any of the Trilogy is so you can appreciate the parody.
When I was young . . . OK, when I was in high school, there were books that students were reading because they wanted to, not because we had to read them in English class. It was cool to be seen carrying around one of these books, to signal that one was cool.
The Hobbit/Ring Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien,
Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda
Dune by Frank Herbert
The last two books may have been popular because they glamorized drugs. Journey to Ixtlan, I am told, had something to do with Castaneda being the disciple of an indigenous-people’s religious leader named Don Juan who “did”, was it mushrooms? This was to evoke visions or trances for religious purposes. This was briefly satirized on the cartoon Simpsons show by Homer being dared into eating super spicy hot chili and seeing the beings from Don Juan’s visions (I recognized Coyote).
Dune, what is there to say, the whole space-travelling civilization was based upon the use of mind altering drugs.
I guess there wasn’t an obvious drug experience in LOTR although Bored of the Rings certainly suggested there was.
And, anything by Kurt Vonnegut.
“Ah, white robes for white magic!”
“No, white robes for white flag!”
Still one of the funniest exchanges I know of anywhere outside THHGTTG.
The one that really puzzles me is the Harry Potter series. The real enemy was an officious bureaucracy that stifled individuality and demonized its opponents. Yet, that is precisely the sort of government that J. K. Rowling seems to support. I sometimes wonder if she really wrote the books.
I remember when Tolkien was idolized by hippies . . . the same people who would vote for a “progressive” Sauron if he offered them free stuff.
I read an excerpt from The Hobbit in an elementary school textbook and liked it, saw the movies as an adult and then tried the LOTR novels. But I have become too impatient a reader for Tolkien’s Ent-like pacing and gave up after the Prancing Pony.
I never cared for the post-Tolkien big fat fantasy novels so perhaps I should have expected the genuine article would not be for me either. I may read the complete The Hobbit some day.