The Despair and Hope of J. R. R. Tolkien
The novelist J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) repeatedly insisted that his epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings, written from 1937 to 1949, was not allegorical.
But some scholars have argued otherwise, detecting contemporary, 20th-century influences in his storytelling.
Tolkien fought at the nightmarish Battle of the Somme in World War I. He witnessed the slaughter of the youth of Europe in the trenches that lived with him the rest of his life. In the 1930s, he despaired over both the rise of the godless Communist Soviet Union and the transformation of a once-enlightened Germany into a monstrous fascist regime.
Tolkien, a devout Catholic, was dismayed not only by the growing power of these totalitarian empires but also by the West’s urbanized industrialism and secularized modernism on the eve of World War II. In middle age, he lived through the even greater slaughter of World War II. Adding to his concerns, he finished his novel at the height of Soviet expansionism, as the Cold War began and nuclear weapons emerged.
The catastrophic decades of the 1930s and 1940s not only shaped his overall worldview but plausibly helped inspire at least some of the most dramatic elements of his novel.
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