LotR - an allegory? No, not WW2 this time, I promise... ;)

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

Now, this sounds rather familiar, doesn't it? It sounds like the relatively recent development of our world, or the beginning of our modern times. People know more, solve many unsolved mysteries and change the world around them... and if Tolkien, when he was writing LotR, looked back he could still see, in his childhood or in the times of his parents or grandparents, a different world, a world where science had not solved the mysteries of the world or humans did not dominate earth the way they now do.

I cannot help thinking this was reflected in the Lord of the Rings. It is another question whether the allegory was deliberate - as has been said dozens of times, Tolkien hated allegories and denied LotR being one - or whether something Tolkien (a conservative person with a dislike of modern technology, mind you) subconsciously wove this theme to his book.

I believe it was a sort of self-reflection, like you say, and I think that is the general feeling of the modernising world. If you read On Fairy-Stories, he again says something very similar there plainly - I will quote:

...the great voyages had begun to make the world seem too narrow to hold both men and elves; when the magic land of Hy Breasail in the West had become the mere Brazils, the land of red-dye-wood...

That more or less catches the point. With the growing knowledge of the world, there remained less and less to place the fantasy in, here in the "Primary world". (Tolkien is also saying something similar in his essay about translating Béowulf: by the time of Béowulf, the world of the Men ended by the wooden wall enclosing the village, and further on, the world was unknown and untamed. Not as much anymore.)

However, I am not sure whether Tolkien himself was really as much concerned by this. Even the thing I quote above was something he said in the middle of the polemic on how Elves need not to be small (and thus hide better even in the known world). The Elves do not rely on our knowledge of the world, or on the size of the "Primary World". Actually, Tolkien even said - "to make seem too narrow"! - now doesn't that in fact say that the world seems too narrow for Elves and Men, but in fact, it isn't still?

However I am sure this is just a very general feeling people have, and Tolkien had it as well, I am sure - to think that the world nowadays is losing some of its "magic" (that is not a feeling only a modern man gets when the world gets "modernised", though: I believe it is a feeling every man and woman gets when they are growing up. Because for a child, even a small wood next to their house is sufficient to contain many Elves and Orcs and Ents). But I am not sure that it would have frustrated the Prof to that point to make LotR an "allegory" of that. Maybe it surfaced unconsciously.

In either case, the narration of the Elves leaving was a way to make the Middle-Earth connected to our current world: this is the way it used to be, a long time ago, and now we are in the present, in the Age of Men. There are no Elves: for all of them have left (only a few remained in the woods, somebody lucky might meet them). (And, I cannot resist to say, there are no Hobbits: for they are small and can run away from a Big Person coming - now here poor Prof did after all resort, against all his beliefs, into this "they are small, thus we can't see them" - cf. On Fairy Stories, where he is really strongly against such dealings.)

This way, Tolkien managed to solve the problem of his Middle-Earth having place in our world. A 7th century writer could have said that in the mountains on the horizon, there is a Dragon living there. A 15th century writer could not have said that some are in the land beyond the Sea. A 19th century writer could have said that Dragons live on Mars. Nowadays, one would have to say - and many writers do that - that Dragons live in a different star system, or in a different galaxy. Or - and that's what a postmodern fantasy writer does most often - that in some fantasy world, which has no connection to our own, there are Dragons, Elves, Dwarves or anything...

Tolkien was a great man in the sense that he made his tale believable - on the most basic level - in the Primary World. True, the archeaologists have never found the remains of Barad-Dur, the tomb of Elendil or any mithril weapons, but still - for a common man, it is not an apparent contradiction: they might find some still, perhaps one day. (Well, recently, some have found the Hobbit skeletons, right? )

I have a constant fear that I might stray too off-topic on this thread. I could write a lot more of paraghraphs, but they won't be as much touching the original question. So, let us leave it at that.