WWII and LOTR..Compare/Contrast

[radagastly]

I think Bethberry has it right. Tolkien rejected allegory for the sake of timelessness. He didn't want his personal experiences to influence peoples "applicability" of his work. While World War Two may have had a personal impact on Tolkien's telling (and creating) of this story, he did not want (it seems to me) that experience to impact the reception of the story as a story. He wanted (like most authors) for the readers to bring their own experience into the story and find what lessons or meaning they encountered or discovered. Isn't that any artist's hope?

Bergil:
I (and Tolkien) dispise allegory. what's more, the end results of the wars were opposite. the corruption in gondor ended with the War Of The Ring, but World War 2 started the moral fall of the United States (pet theory, no offence meant to Americans).

Being an American, I suppose I should challenge this, but I really can't. I can only say that this moral decay is shared across the rest of the western world. This is probably more a discussion for PM's or chat than here, though.

I must take Tolkien at his word, and say that the war of the Ring is not World War Two, despite the similarities the reader may bring to it.