There is a mystery at the heart of “The Lord of the Rings” that continues to baffle and confuse the critics. Is it “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work,” as author J.R.R. Tolkien claimed in a letter, or is it, as he claimed elsewhere, devoid of any intentional meaning or message?
The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. — J.R.R. Tolkien to Robert Murray, S.J. [1]
As for any inner meaning or ‘message,’ it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical…. I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. — J.R.R. Tolkien (Foreword to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings.) [2]
There is a mystery at the heart of The Lord of the Rings that continues to baffle and confuse the critics. Is it “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work,” as Tolkien claimed in a letter to his Jesuit friend, Fr. Robert Murray, in December 1953, or is it, as he claimed in the foreword to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings, devoid of any intentional meaning or “message?” If Tolkien dislikes allegory in all its manifestations and if he insists that it is “neither allegorical nor topical,” how can it be Catholic? If there is no literal reference to Christ or the Church and no allegorical level of meaning, the work cannot be Catholic. It’s as simple as that. And yet, it can’t be as simple as that because Tolkien also insists that it is “religious and Catholic,” prefixing the assertion with “of course,” as if to state that the religious and Catholic dimension is obvious.
The mystery deepens when we realize that Tolkien, on another occasion, refers specifically and unequivocally to The Lord of the Rings as being an allegory, thereby contradicting what he says in the foreword. Replying to a letter in which he was asked whether The Lord of the Rings was an allegory of atomic power, he replied that it was “not an allegory of Atomic power, but of Power (exerted for Domination).” Having confessed the allegory of power, he asserted that this was not the most important allegory in the story: “I do not think that even Power or Domination is the real centre of my story…. The real theme for me is about something much more permanent and difficult: Death and Immortality.”[3]
It seems, therefore, that Tolkien contradicts himself, describing his work as an allegory in one place and denying that it is an allegory in another. Is he confused, or is he simply guilty of employing the same word to denote two different things? Is The Lord of the Rings an allegory in one sense of the word and not an allegory in another?
Clearly, Tolkien is not confused about the meaning of allegory. He was a highly respected philologist and professor of language and literature at Oxford University. As such, we can safely assume that he is using the word allegory in two distinct senses. In one sense, The Lord of the Rings is an allegory; in another sense, it is not.
Perhaps, at this juncture, it would be helpful if we took a moment to discuss the various meanings to which the label of “allegory” is attached. Linguistically “allegory” derives from the Greek word allegoria, itself a combination of two Greek words: allos, meaning “other,” and agoria, meaning “speaking.” At its most basic level, therefore, an allegory is anything that speaks of another thing. In this sense, and as St. Augustine illustrates in his discussion of conventional signs in De Doctrina Christiana, every word that we use is an allegory. A word is a label that signifies a thing. A word, if spoken, is a noise that points our mind’s eye to the thing that the noise signifies; if written, it is a series of shapes that points our mind’s eye to the thing that the series of shapes signifies. It is, indeed, astonishing to realize that we cannot even think a single thought without the use of allegory—a mysterious fact that subjects all perceptions of reality to the level of metaphysics, whereby the literalness of matter is always transcended by the allegory of meaning.
It is clear that Tolkien could not have had this basic meaning of allegory in mind. At this level of understanding, The Lord of the Rings is obviously an allegory because it couldn’t possibly be anything else! This being so, let’s continue with our exploration of the different types of allegory so that we can discover what sort of allegory The Lord of the Rings is and what sort of allegory it isn’t.
The most elevated form of allegory, or at least the most sanctified, is the parable. This is the form adopted by Christ to convey the truth He wished to teach. The prodigal son did not exist in reality; he was a figment of Christ’s imagination. Yet the story of the Prodigal Son has a timeless applicability because we can all see something of ourselves and others in the actions of the protagonist and perhaps also in the actions of the forgiving father and the envious brother. Insofar as the parable reminds us of ourselves or others, it is an allegory. Insofar as Frodo or Sam or Boromir remind us of ourselves or others, The Lord of the Rings is an allegory.
A far less subtle type of allegory is the formal or crude allegory in which the characters are not persons but personified abstractions. They do not have personalities but merely exist as cardboard cut-outs signifying an idea. Thus, for instance, the Lady Philosophy in The Consolation of Philosophy is not a person but a personified abstraction. She exists purely and simply to signify the beauty and wisdom of philosophy. Similarly, Christian in The Pilgrim’s Progress is not a person but a personified abstraction who exists purely and simply to signify the Christian on his journey from worldliness to other-worldliness. As a formal or crude allegory, every character in Bunyan’s story is a personified abstraction. C.S. Lewis in The Pilgrim’s Regress echoes Bunyan’s method, introducing characters such as a beautiful maiden in shining armour called Reason who has two beautiful younger sisters called Theology and Philosophy.
It is this kind of allegory to which Tolkien is evidently referring in the foreword to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings. He cordially disliked such allegories because they enslaved the imaginative freedom of the reader to the didactic intentions of the author. In order to teach and preach, the author of a formal or crude allegory dominates the reader’s imagination, forcing the reader to see his point. Whereas good stories bring people to goodness and truth through the power of beauty, formal allegories shackle the beautiful so that the goodness and truth become inescapable. Such allegories may have the good and noble purpose of teaching or preaching, but they do so at the expense of the power and glory of the imaginative and creative relationship between a good author and his readers.
It goes without saying that The Lord of the Rings is not this sort of allegory.
Many other forms of allegory could be discussed, such as the intertextuality employed most memorably by T.S. Eliot in “The Waste Land,” or the way in which allegory is subsumed with great subtlety and dexterity within the works of Homer and Shakespeare and by modern novelists, such as Evelyn Waugh. Although there is no obvious employment of intertextuality in Tolkien’s work (though it is present), there are numerous parallels between the ways in which allegory is subsumed in The Lord of the Rings and the manner in which this is achieved by the greatest writers of epics, tragedies, comedies, and novels. It is in this sense that The Lord of the Rings can be seen as part of the great Tradition of western civilization and as one of the priceless gems of Christendom.
This essay has drawn extensively from the opening chapter of Joseph Pearce’s book, Frodo’s Journey: Discovering the Hidden Meaning of The Lord of the Rings.
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Notes:
[1] Humphrey Carpenter, ed., The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), p. 172.
[2] J. R. R. Tolkien, Foreword to the Second Edition of The Lord of the Rings; see J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), pp. xxiii-xxiv.
[3] Carpenter, ed., The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, p. 246.
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When writing to his Catholic friends congratulating him on LOTR’s Catholicism. Tolkien acknowledged he might have been subconsciously influenced by his Catholic upbringing. He insisted, however, that he had tried to eliminate purely sectarian elements. Mr. Pearce quotes from Tolkien’s letter to Father Robert Murray about LOTR as “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work.” Read in context, Tolkien is denying Pearce’s basic point. “The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously so in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion,’ to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.” (Letters, 172) Symbolism, not allegory. Fr. Murray and Mr. Pearce, however, assert “references to cults and practices.” They think Galadriel is the Virgin Mary (and so is Elbereth) and the Elven waybread (lembas) is the eucharistic wafer. Elsewhere Mr. Pearce finds it “not merely erroneous bur patently perverse to see Tolkien’s epic as anything other than a specifically Christian myth,” adding, “The ‘myth’ behind Tolkien was, of course, Catholic Christianity, the ‘True Myth.’” He has found references to Christmas Day, the Annunciation and the Crucifixion.
But Tolkien wrote to Deborah Webster in 1958, “I am a Christian ( which can be deduced from my stories) and in fact a Roman Catholic. The latter ‘fact’ perhaps cannot be deduced.” (Letters, 288) He seems to me to be saying that there are no explicit references in his stories to Roman Catholicism. In the letter to Fr. Murray Tolkien says he “cut out” references to religious cults and practices. In his 1951 letter to Milton Waldman he criticizes the Arthurian legend because it “explicitly contains the Christian religion. For reasons I will not elaborate that seems to me fatal.” (Letters, 131) It seems to me “not merely erroneous but patently perverse” to ignore Tolkien’s statements on this point.
Mr. Kopff, it is important that we avoid sweeping statements. I do not, of course, say that Galadriel is the Virgin Mary, which would be absurd; I do say, echoing Tolkien’s own words in one of his letters, that Tolkien put all of his love for the Blessed Virgin into his characterization of Galadriel. Galadriel is, therefore, Marian – but she is not Mary! Similarly, I do not say that lembas is the Eucharistic wafer, which would be absurd; I do say that lembas, in Elvish means “lifebread” or “bread of life” and that it feeds the will more than the body, which is an attribute of the Eucharist, and I also quote Tolkien’s own reference inone of his letters to the connection between lembas and the Eucharist symbolically.
Regarding your insistence that Tolkien employs “symbolism, not allegory”, the whole point and purpose of my article, which you seem to have missed, is that there are different types of allegory, of which symbolism is one.
I’m surprised that you did not mention Dante’s Divine Comedy in your short enumeration of specific works of allegory.
Well said.
I believe Tolkien elsewhere in his letters makes the distinction between allegory and applicability, which is what I believe Mr Pearce is getting at here. (Forgive me for not having the reference at hand.)
I am doing a thesis paper on this topic for school and I just thought is was interesting that we came to similar conclusions through our individual research. Your article really helped me articulate what I wanted to say in terms of what Tolkien did and didn’t want in terms of drawing Christian conclusions from his works like The Lord of the Rings. This is the first article that I have seen that examines the subject in such a thorough way. Most people assume that either it has Christian allegory in it or it does not and never even realize that there is a controversy. Thank you for the good article!
It has been a few months since I have finished my thesis paper on a similar topic. I would very much appreciate if you would look over and tell me what you think of it. If you are interested, please tell me how I can share it with you.
” Whereas good stories bring people to goodness and truth through the power of beauty, formal allegories shackle the beautiful so that the goodness and truth become inescapable. Such allegories may have the good and noble purpose of teaching or preaching, but they do so at the expense of the power and glory of the imaginative and creative relationship between a good author and his readers.”
As a writer of fiction myself, I just want to thank you for that extremely astute point. I think it applies to all art, really.
Mr. Pearce sites an instance in which a fan wrote to Tolkien asking if the LoTR was an allegory of Atomic power and Tolkien responded that it was not an allegory of nuclear power, but perhaps of power for the sake of domination. It is suggested that this proves Tolkien intentionally put allegories into the Lord of the Rings.
I would suggest another possible reading of this and other instances. Perhaps Tolkien simply adopted the language the fan was using because he was tired of correcting people about allegory, or didn’t want to be pedantic about correct terms in the context of this letter to a fan, or perhaps he simply didn’t feel that the distinction was as important as the rest of the ideas being discussed in that particular context.
I would argue, for example, that the Ring is not an allegory for the power to dominate precisely because that is what the Ring actually IS in the story. That is the whole point of the Ring, that is literally what it does. This isn’t allegory because it is an explicit literal element of the story. It is rather silly, in a certain sense, to talk about what the Ring “means” because the story itself literally tells us exactly what the Ring is. What the Ring IS has great applicability to the prime creation, the real world, but that is very different than the Ring “meaning” something else, or “standing” for something else.
In literary terms what Tolkien was pointing out to that fan were not the major allegories of the story, but the major themes of the story. The theme of power to dominate and the theme of immortality and death are woven through out the entirety of Tolkien’s legendarium from beginning to end.
It is, of course, nonsense to say that any story (except perhaps a post-modern one) has no internal meaning. If it didn’t have any internal meaning it would not be a story, and certainly not a good one. This would be to say that there is no theme, no ideas, no real character or feeling to the story. I think what Tolkien is saying when he points out that there is no allegorical meaning is that the story is written for it’s own sake, not for the sake of some other point.
Tolkien himself said that he preferred applicability to allegory. The differentiation between the two is a distinction Mr. Pearce makes in his comment regarding Galadriel and Mary posted above. To say that Galadriel IS Mary would be allegory. To say that Galadriel has imagery, ideas, and principles which are Marian is applicability. Similarly, as Mr. Pearce points out, Lembas and Miruvor do not stand for, or represent the Eucharist in the story, but they have undeniable applicability to the Eucharist. Neither Frodo, nor Gandalf, nor Aragorn ARE Christ, but they all have Christ-like qualities that give them applicability.
Now, you can of course say that this is just splitting linguistic hairs, but I would answer that precision in vocabulary is valuable and just lumping them all together as “allegory” is confusing and perhaps overly simplistic.
In my view, LOTR is allegorical in the sense it can be read in the allegorical or typological way that the Old Testament can be read in light of the New Testament.
Just as the Flood in the OT can be seen as a type of Baptism, Galadriel’s in her rejection of the Ring at the mirror can be read as a type of the Virgin Mary’s humility–to give just one of many examples.
To extend this thought, LOTR can fruitfully be read in all three spiritual senses in which the Fathers of the Church read the OT. For example, in the moral sense, Aragon’s servant leadership is an example of how those in authority should behave. The High Elves living simultaneously in Middle Earth and the Blessed Realm can be read in the anagogical sense of giving us a glimpse of heaven.
I read his work as a simple 7th grader, and I still read it as such. No need for allegory or what not. I’d like to think that I’m more ‘bombadillian’ than most.
I’m a 7th grader and currently in the middle of confusion to which my English teacher says the lord of the rings is escapism and not allegory. I’ve been told and shown lot’s of reasons how it is allegory by my relatives and been trying to ask my teacher questions on it. This has helped me conclude that it is an allegory I can tell my teacher so!
Joseph,
In line with what Josh Cooley says above, don’t you think it is more in line with Tolkien’s own commentary on his work to say that his stories are full of themes? These themes simply being truths of life that find themselves in true characters in a book?
I wish I had more precise words to split hairs. There is allegory, as you say, that forces the reader to read something apparently creative but does not allow the reader themselves to read it but a singular way. Then there is stories written that let the reader connect over events, ideas, and human responses that are common to all people.
Frodo and Sam are not allegorical to friendship, they are good friends. The ring is not representative of power, evil, and temptation, it truly is.
Perhaps the word representative is more useful. The characters and situations represent or carry with them truth that is common to all experience.
I definitely see it as an allegory now. Not just sometimes, but always. I am certain.