WWII and LOTR..Compare/Contrast

[Thinlómien]

Hmmm... Tolkien himself hated allegories.
This is such a big topic that I think this might have already been discussed about. I don't know, though. Perhaps you should make a search.

(When I first read the title I thought WWII meant Werewolf II... Silly me... Too much werewolfing... )

[Rimbaud]

Any essay based on that comparison is going to be necessarily hampered by Tolkien's repeated refutation of any allegorical connection twixt the two. In fact, he would become quite heated when many insisted despite his denials that it was clearly an allegory - like any good work, however, it certainly holds applicability.

As Thinlómien says above, you're in the right place. This forum holds some of the better discussions on allegory / applicability in several fields from Catholicism to environmentalism to international politics as you suggest.

[tar-ancalime]

(When I first read the title I thought WWII meant Werewolf II... Silly me... Too much werewolfing... )

Me too!

As for dissimilarities between Lord of the Rings and the Second World War...well, one had atomic bombs, the other had magic rings. One had concentration camps, the other had talking trees. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

In all seriousness, though, you ought to read the introduction to the second edition of the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien addresses the relationship of his story to actual events. The WWII parallel is often drawn, and it's undeniable that certain relationships are easy to find (many people have compared the Ring to the atomic bomb, for instance). However, with Tolkien's work you tread dangerous ground when you start to make specific comparisons like that one.

As Thinlomien mentioned, there are lots of threads on this site about meaning in Tolkien, various interpretations of his work, and some very healthy discussions of authorial intent and its usefulness (or not) in informing one's reading of a text. There may be some threads dealing specifically with WWII--try doing a search, but don't be surprised if you find that "WW" tends to stand for werewolf around here (at least recently).

EDIT: Cross-posted with Rimbaud, who managed to make the same point more clearly and with less verbosity.

[The Saucepan Man]

There are also a number of discussion threads concerning the relationship between LotR and Tolkien's own experiences in WWI, in case you are interested. Again, a Search should bring up the relevant threads.

[Boromir88]

I don't think Tolkien purposefully used allegories. Since he has come out and said he didn't like 'em, I think he even says there are no allegories?

But, I find it hard to say that there can be no connections to WWII (but WWI especially), because something that life changing has got to have an effect on you.

I think Saruman represents the typical view of WWI, down with nature, and all "yay industry!" It was a race to see who could build the best stuff fastest, and when industry really began to take shape. WWI was called "the war to end all wars" because it was so horrific that people couldn't imagine being able to cope with such a disastrous war. If you think about it, it's really the first war (though there are cases prior) where chemical and biological weapons were used. It was the first war where if you stuck your head out of the trench, someone may be able to kill you from a mile a way. And all the technology (machine gun, generic bombers...etc) caused mass destruction and casualties. I can't see Tolkien not being effected by it and probably subconsciously encorporating it into his books.

If lotr was like WWII, Gandalf or Aragorn would took the ring to fight against Sauron...

[davem]

On Allegory

Don't know if this is relevant to the discussion, but at the beginning of the essay Tolkien wrote on Smith of Wooton Major he writes:

This short tale is not an allegory, though it is capable of course of allegorical interpretations at certain points.

Flieger (the editor) comments:

In fact, as Tom Shippey has pointed out, Tolkien used allegory frequently & to good effect....What he seems to have disliked & repudiated was ''moral'' allegory, in which the second level of meaning is related to a moral or ethical or religious or political position.

I don't think LotR (or any of Tolkien's writings) can be interpreted as 'allegory' per se, but certainly 'it is capable of allegorical interpretations at certain points'.

For all his proclaimed preference for 'applicability' over allegory, he certainly took things from his experience of the primary world & presented them in a new form in his secondary world, but the point is, once they had entered the secondary world they became part of it, & no longer required a knowledge of the primary world inspiration to give them meaning.

LotR (or parts of it) can be read as primary world events 'seen through enchanted eyes' (Garth's phrase: 'Tolkien & the Great War). Whether The Fall of Gondolin (BoLT) is an 'allegory' of the Somme, with its 'iron dragons' destroying the Elven city = the tanks which had just appeared on the battlefield & the Balrogs with their whips of flame = the German infantry with their flammenwerfers (flamethrowers) depends first & foremost on whether the reader knows anything at all about WWI - if he doesn't then he won't come up with an allegorical interpretation, obviously.

I do wonder whether Tolkien wrote FoG to be read as an allegory, & even if he did, whether the older Tolkien still wanted it to be read in that way. Applicability is about the freedom of the reader to find whatever meaning they wish in the text - even, one assumes, an allegorical one.

I think Tolkien's objection to an allegorical interpretation wasn't so much that he was offended that a reader would do such a thing, but more that he didn't want to get lumbered with the responsibility for what the reader 'found' there.

[Anguirel]

Werewolf II was more akin to the Silmarillion if I recall...I got a rather Eol-like part, and was landed with a similarly cheerless fate early on...