Welcome Guest 

Register

Author Topic:
Sargon of Akkad
Council Member
Posts: 2
Send Message
Post Admitting My Ignorance
on: October 08, 2015 11:58
Dear Tolkien Fans

I am completely new so please forgive my ignorance. Also, the question I pose is so obvious I know that you experts have already addressed it. I am not trying to prove a point, I really am curious and don't have a position either way. My question is, can we really refuse to see the Lord of the Rings as a direct reflection of World War II. I know that Tolkien later denied this saying that he hates allegories. But even so the parallels are so tantalizingly close. Sauron = Hitler, Saruman = Italy, Rohan = Britian, Gondor = the United States, The Ring = Nuclear Bomb and World Domination, orcs = nazis, Urukhai = the S.S., Aragorn = Churchill

I don't have a stake either way, just looking for comments
tarcolan
Movies Moderator and General Dogsbody
Posts: 6046
Send Message
Post
on: October 09, 2015 04:39
You could draw parallels with a lot of wars. Try it with 'Star Wars' or Napoleon. Where does Japan fit in? There are many more reasons why your analogies don't work. Tolkien chose the Ring as linking device between The Hobbit and LOTR before WWII started. It is an abstract representation of the addictive nature of power. Much of the mythology had been created before even WWI. Aragorn didn't smoke cigars, nor did he drop bombs on Easterling villages. Sorry, it just doesn't work.
Gandolorin
Council Member
Posts: 24040
Send Message
Post
on: October 09, 2015 05:42
To a certain degree, WW I had more of an influence on JRRT's writing, because he experienced it in the horrible trenches of that war, and in the Battle of the Somme, 1916. He called the Orcs "the infantry of the old war" (if my memory is correct). And don't forget, the One Ring existed (for millennia) and was destroyed as the climax of the LoTR. As tarc mentioned, too many things don't work. And a for Gondor = the United States, that concept would probably have caused his sarcasm to reach previously unattained levels. He was no fan of the US in very many ways.

Just a thought: perhaps Boromir = US? (The Manhattan Project also does not fit into the LoTR at all. I'm thinking of diverting the One Ring from the necessary destruction to a futile attempt to use it.)

[Edited on 10/09/2015 by Gandolorin]
Image
Elfeawen Lomiondil
Council Member
Posts: 346
Send Message
Post
on: October 09, 2015 05:09
Tolkien said that if he'd meant LOTR to be WWII, that the West would have used the Ring instead of destroying it.
"There shall be war between the Children of Iluvatar and the Ainu Melko. What if we perish in our quest? The dark halls of Vê be little worse than this bright prison" ~ Fëanor
Cenor
Council Member
Posts: 5267
Send Message
Post
on: October 09, 2015 05:42
This is what Tolkien wrote in response to LotR being compared to WW2

One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.


My personal belief, is that he cannot believe that we are forgetting the Great War, and he wants to remind us that men died over there, good men and bad. No, if LotR can be compared to any war, let it be compared to WW1.

[Edited on 10/10/2015 by Cenor]
Image "Every good pirate has an alias" Felix glanced down, looking at contraption around the stump of his wrist. "Hook," he answered. "My name will be Hook."
Members Online
Print Friendly, PDF & Email