Hacker News Reader

Comment by revscat | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I agree with Tolkien on this front. Yes, I know: I'm disagreeing with an author's assessment of his own work.

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...

View on HN

What Tolkien was largely dismissing is the notion that his world was a direct allegory. He readily acknowledges that the comraderie and sacrifice he experienced in the trenches of WWI manifests itself in Frodo and his companions, as well as the doomed but defiant determination of the people of England/Gondor in the face of assured destruction, etc. So there are themes that bind the two worlds but he was adamantntly dismissive of any direct mappings (ie Germany as Mordoe or whatever).

Really LotR is about mortality and power.

I am pretty sure there is a passage in the Carter's biography where he clearly states that people drawing parallels between Sauron and Hitler or the West vs the East are idiots.

I believe Tolkien directly said it was about mortality, and that power was a sideshow to move the plot along.

The power of the ring is primarily to delay the inevitable and it corrupts all who cannot accept that.

> I'm not sure I agree with Tolkien on this front. Yes, I know: I'm disagreeing with an author's assessment of his own work.

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.

Yep. And he points out that the Lord of The Rings as a concept and plot was finished well before WWII even started.

I'm not going to cut and paste (or type out) the whole forward but more than half of it talks about this claim in considerable detail. It's not new. Tolkien says:

- 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.

I think LoTR has much deeper connections to the First World War than the second. WWI is outside of our frame of reference, but for example LoTR was very much a ground war.

Would lotr have a deeper meaning if I read a wwi history or novel first?

Possibly, though I am more thinking about how combat worked in WWI vs WWII. Cavalry for example was still useful in WWI at the start and become less useful over time. Trench warfare in WWI often devolved into hand to hand fighting where firearms where more useful and machinguns far more common and better used tactically making tanks a requirement vs simple massed charges. Running out of ammo was also a common issue in WWI though this still happened in WWII.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com