"If The Lord of the Rings is about the rise of fascism and the trauma of the second world war,"
Which it isn't, as Tolkien makes clear in the foreward.
Which it isn't, as Tolkien makes clear in the foreward.
But authors are necessarily a part of their environment. It is -- literally -- inescapable. The good Professor was directly involved in the first World War, and the second was at his doorstep. His aversion to modernity could have led to him simply denying a a conscious connection between those real world epics and those created by his own mind.
But the works themselves put doubt to his claim. If we take him only at his word, and stop there, then that is the end of it. But if we recognize the imperfect ways we self-assess, well...
Really LotR is about mortality and power.
The power of the ring is primarily to delay the inevitable and it corrupts all who cannot accept that.
It hardly takes more than a smidgen of familiarity with the author's history to see it's deeply rooted in the experience of the first world war, not the second. As Tolkien notes, the themes flat out don't make sense for the second.
WWI saw a lot more walled fortifications where bunkers where the preferred WWII due in no small part to increase aircraft use.
LoTR used walled fortifications, some ranged combat but a lot of hand to hand combat, artillery where there but of minimal value, you can even think of the eye as eairly aircraft useage, where you can't really hide, but aircraft can't Effectivly attack. Etc.
- He dislikes allegory in all its forms
- The relationship between any author's experiences and his writing are amazingly complex.
- The story is meant to provide a good long tale that would move, delight and surprise readers. It is not meant to have a deeper meaning by intention.
- Parallels between WWII and LoTR simply don't work.
- The key parts of the story are by far the oldest.
- The old miller had a black beard and his name was not Sandyman (his final dig).
He was far more influenced by his classical background and philology than current affairs.
How do bugs/mistakes change the intent and meaning of the actual work by the person creating it? When I create a software program, I don't expect people to come along and point out that I'm actually creating it for different reasons or a different purpose.
You must be new. :) It happens all the time.
While I'm not sure I agree with the Tolkien assessment above, I understand the sentiment of being too close to one's work.
Often a bug comes into being because our ability to translate our intents into language is limited by our perceptions.
In code, this works out that we think we told the machine to do one thing, but in practice our instructions have side effects or unforeseen meanings in corner cases.
In language, this could be seen in two way. On one hand, even the best of us can't grasp all the possible meanings of our language and stories, especially given the fact that they will be read in a future that might create a whole new context for those words.
And, on the other hand, sometimes we are strangers to ourselves and are, to over simplify, acting on subconscious impulses that we don't fully understand.
Every reader can get a different meaning because of something specific to them, but I don't see how that would change the author's intentions. He/she can absolutely state exactly why they wrote something and what the meaning is, without contest.
My point: meaning is subjective and we should leave it as such, ie: "I think this story is a nice fit for this scenario" instead of "the author meant this even though he clearly states he didnt."