View Single Post
Old 01-31-2001, 12:53 AM   #1
Heliotrope
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Ring Parallels between LOTR and WWII?

<font face="Verdana"><table><TR><TD><FONT SIZE="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Newly Deceased
Posts: 1
</TD><TD></TD></TR></TABLE>
In the Author's Foreword to my 1970s Ballantine paperback edition of Lord of the Rings, Tolkien says his epic was never intended to be an allegory of World War II, as some people thought.
He said that he detested all allegory or roman-a-clef writing; furthermore, if LOTR had followed the actual course of events, the One Ring would not have been destroyed, but rather taken by the Allies and used against Sauron; Barad-Dur would have been occupied rather than destroyed; Saruman would have discovered enough information to build his own Ruling Ring, and eventually would have challenged &quot;the self-styled Master of Middle-Earth. ... And in that conflict hobbits would not have lasted long, as both sides would have held them in hatred and contempt.&quot;
Can anyone help me reconstruct the parallels JRRT makes here for the sake of argument? (Keeping in mind that his larger point is that these parallels clearly don't hold if you look at the actual plot of LOTR.) To start with, the Alliance of Elves, Men, and Dwarves that overcomes the dark power of Sauron would stand for the Allies of WWII.
Sauron = the Axis powers (Nazi Germany, Japan, and Italy)?
The One Ring = the nuclear bomb?
Barad-Dur = Germany and/or Japan?
Saruman = the Soviet Union? (Although this isn't a very close parallel. Saruman was an ally before the war, then gradually became (or was discovered to be) an enemy. The USSR was an enemy to the West right before WWII, what with its invasion of Finland and non-aggression pact with Germany, but then reversed and became an ally. Then the minute the Axis was defeated, the USSR grew into an enemy in its own right.)
&quot;the self-styled Master of Middle-Earth&quot; -- first of all, in the book this presumably would have been whatever Good character gave in to the temptation Gandalf and Galadriel resist, and Boromir temporarily gives in to, of taking the Ring and its power for their own purposes, right? The real-life counterpart = the U.S.?
Hobbits = ?? The Jews, maybe? Finland? Hungary, Czechoslovakia? Any small and peaceable country that doesn't care to become a satellite of either the West or the East? Pacifist and/or noncombatant individuals? Nuclear scientists? Your guess is as good as mine.

</p>