<font face="Verdana"><table><TR><TD><FONT SIZE="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">
Pile o' Bones
Posts: 21</TD><TD><img src=http://www.geocities.com/robertwgardner2000/gilspin.gif WIDTH=60 HEIGHT=60></TD></TR></TABLE>
Re: Hmm
The initial post (was it Heliotrope?) I thought summarized things rather well.
I would say, however, that the Hobbits were simply the common-folk of the free nations. The "little guy!"
I've always thought of
the West as America in allegory (if we continue against Tolkien's express wishes to play this game!).
Gandalf would be Churchill. That would make Denethor, Roosevelt!
The allegory quickly breaks down, as even intentional allegory does upon close examination.
And I always thought the Dwarves would have been like the Jews. Of course, the forced-allegory does not contain a Holocaust.
Even though it is not an allegory, what I think makes it
feel like one is the applicability to war and especially to modern war with its ultimate weaponry.
This is a serendipitous function of Tolkien's reach into the deep archetypes of our myths and legends. There is Truth in these, that is felt even through the fiction. It is that Truth about apocalyptic war that we feel applies to the Reality of the modern potential for apocalypse.
<center>
~~~http://www.geocities.com/robertwgardner2000My Bare Bones Webpage</a>~~~ </center></p>