J. R. R. Tolkien's Use Of Allegories

Reality: It is Not All Its Cracked Up To Be

In this essay I analyze J.R.R Tolkien’s fantasy epic, The Lord of the Rings, and the relationship between the language of its fictional warriors and how they relate to the language and tone of the First World War in Britain. Tolkien was an officer in the British army during WWI and took part in the Battle of the Somme, in which 60,000 British soldiers were injured or killed on the first day alone. According to Paul Fussell, author of The Great War and Modern Memory, “The attack on the Somme was the end of illusions about breaking the line and sending in the cavalry through to the end the war.” (13) The Great War was a turning point for the way the British, and for that matter, the world, thought about

In the introduction of the second edition of LR he wrote “I cordially dislike allegory in all of its manifestations… I think many confuse ‘allegory' with ‘applicability’; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.” (Tolkien 11) Thus, as Tolkien would have wished, my analysis will be applying Tolkien’s work as it speaks to the cultural context of World War One, not as an allegorical work drawing direct connections between specific people or places. It is interesting to note that Tolkien wrote that his works are in no way an allegory to World War Two, yet in the same breath he says “One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in the youth of 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead,” (Tolkien 11) hinting that his works may indeed allude to WWI. Despite this, I will try to avoid any direct

Shippey points out that Tolkien “spent enormous amounts of effort trying to create language that was aesthetically and morally more pleasing than that of everyday.” (“Orcs, Wraiths, and Wrights: Tolkien’s Images of Evil” 188) It is important to note that orcs never use this “pleasing” language, in contrast to the men who have an almost poetic meter in their speech. Instead the orcs use a considerable amount of what would be consider lowbrow dialect in Tolkien’s time. Similarly, like the difference between formal and informal writing, orcs use contractions, the men of Gondor and Rohan do not. This further reinforces the paradigm of raised versus low language in Tolkien’s work. This type of language is exemplify when the orcs, surrounded by the enemy, debate what the Rohirrim’s plan of action will be “‘They’ll wait for the Sun, curse them!’ growled one of the guards. ‘Why don’t we get together and charge through? What’s old Uglúk think he’s doing, I should like to know?’ ‘I daresay you would,’ snarled Uglúk stepping up from behind. ‘Meaning I don’t think at all, eh? Curse you! You’re as bad as the other rabble: the maggots and apes of Lugbúrz. No good trying to charge with them. They’d just squeal and bolt, and there're more than enough of these filthy horse-boys to mop up our lot on the flat’” (Tolkien 475-476) Towards the miserable end of