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Comment by Gloomily3819 | Hacker News Reader

>Tolkien, thus, gave explosives (“blasting fire”) to his bad guys, to goblins and orcs who represent the emerging forces of industrialization

Tolkien hated allegorical writing. It's doubtful goblins and orcs are supposed to represent industrialization.

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Nevertheless, the allegory works well enough that there's a great book about it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer

"Of course my story is not an allegory of Atomic power, but of Power."

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien #186

Right, Scouring of the Shire represents industrialization.

(Not in an allegorical way; it's literally what happens.)

He didn't. He was in fact quite clear that Lord of the Rings was inspired in large part by his experiences in the First World War: Dead Marshes especially, but also Sauron and Saruman and their forces of industrialization.

It has been some years since I read LotR, but wasn’t there one very widespread edition that contained a foreword by Tolkien where he very clearly denied any allegory behind the story, and was obviously fed up by people claiming such?

Tolkien was against reading his works as allegory for any specific historical event, especially if that event related to the Second World War (Sauron is not an allegory for Hitler, for example). But he did mention in his letters that his writing was obviously influenced by his combat experience in the First World War.

Inspired and allegorial are two very different things. Tolkien was very explicit that LOTR was not allegory.

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