OK, but you asked for it! I posted the following on another thread (Irrationalism in LotR - since relegated to pg 4 or so of the Books forum) awhile ago and since I'm too lazy to reword it, I'm just going to quote myself...
Quote:
I once had a Lit professor with whom I used to argue CONSTANTLY about symbolism, allegory, etc. in great works. For instance, in Moby **** - my prof's. opinion (and apparently that of thousands of scholars) was that Melville sat down to write a symbolic work in which a giant white whale symbolized evil and that it was all the more striking because it was white, the color usually associated with good and it was juxtaposed in such a way as to point out...blah, blah, blah.
My own opinion is that...well, let me ask your opinion - do any of YOU believe that Melville actually sat down and said, "Hmmm, I'm going to make Ahab symbolize the inner-struggle of Man and show how we can desire to wipe out evil but still have evil purposes in our hearts."? I know I don't. I think Melville heard a good tale about a whale that attacked a fishing vessel some years before and decided to write a good story about it.
To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a whale is just a whale and sometimes a [story] is just a [story]. I see no parallels in the LotR trilogy to anything that's going on in the world right now except for what people with nothing better to do work very hard to extract from it. As Sam said of Lothlorien, "...folk takes their peril with them...and finds it there because they've brought it." The only allegory that's there is the one you read into it.
We don't read it or go to see the movies because we find allegory or symbolism, we do so because it is a fantasy world so well written that it makes us all wish we had the nobility and courage exemplified on each page. We admire these characters and have grown to love them - not because this one can decapitate an orc in one stroke or because that one can hit a Ringwraith at 50 paces in the dark, but because they are noble characters who fight for Good. There is no question about which side is good and which side is evil - it is all very clearly deliniated and we don't need to guess. There are no Vietnam-style gray areas or Middle East-style oil wars or lesser interests to muddy up the issues. There is only a very clear Good and a very clear Evil. Why must anyone make more of it?
More to the point, why would anyone want to? People read these books and see these movies for the same reason others have been doing so for years - escapism. We do not see the U.S. in the Dunedain nor Saddam in Sauron - not only because they aren't there, but because it is precisely these reasons among others that we have left Earth and entered Middle-earth for awhile. Who wants to drag all that baggage along on such an otherwise liberating trip? Who can imagine they're journeying beside Frodo or going into battle with Aragorn if you keep looking over your shoulder and seeing George W.?
These stories came about not because Tolkien wanted to teach us all a lesson on war, but because he had such a detailed and involved story to tell that it had to spill out somewhere. Luckily for us, we all get to see the end result and any life-lessons we may get out of them are simply an unintentional by-product. We should all say a silent prayer of thanks for Tolkien and his works and leave the symbol-seekers to pick each other to death and leave us the heck alone!
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This deals somewhat with the movie(s) as well but by and large I was speaking on the books. While I agree with many on this forum who hold that Tolkien's experiences HAD to have impacted his writings, I simply refuse to buy into the emerging thesis that, "he experienced something like this in real-life, therefore it MUST be symbolic." No! I'm quite certain every fiction writer has borrowed somewhat from his/her everyday life - that does not make symbolism, just good story-telling.
On a side-note, Eruantalon, none of the angst in the above is directed at you - this was written in response to a bothersome article someone posted on the above-mentioned thread.