There's no doubt a lot of WWI in there. I would guess that part of his goal was to talk about the universality of much of what was going on. For that he'd need to draw from a lot of history, and he had first-hand experience with WWI.
But the major plot element of having a weapon too powerful for humans (and humanoids) to wield (and which must be destroyed) is clearly influenced by his reaction to the atomic bomb. The ring gets a pretty big promotion from an Gyges-style invisibility ring in the original edition of the Hobbit, to a civilization-destroying force in LOTR.
There's also arguably a Japanese influence on the Orcs, as an army of people who don't look quite like the English and are fighting hard for a way of life the English don't understand. Japan was England's ally in WWI but an enemy in WWII.
Tolkien has repeatedly and explicitly said that he never wrote allegories for anything, and that he simply wanted to write a good story.
Of course he also readily admitted that his own experiences and views on life influenced his writing. He went off to fight in the trenches with his university friends and he was the only one to come back. This obviously leaves a mark. And if you read his writings aware of his views on Catholicism, then obviously quite a lot of that shines through as well.
But all of that is fairly subtle. The notion that this or that is an allegory for such and such is pretty much always wrong. Tolkien just wanted to write an entertaining story – nothing more, nothing less.
With a large work of fiction and a large set of real-world events, you can find allegories in everything. Doesn't mean the author intended this.
This is largely an issue of definition. When Tolkien spoke of disliking allegories, he was largely referring to the medieval tradition - https://slate.com/culture/2016/05/an-allegory-is-not-the-sam... - where you are quite explicitly making a direct connection to a specific thing.
He did, however, love to speak of "applicability," which many people would call allegory today. The One Ring, for example, is clearly meant to to embody power and the temptation of it/addiction to it. This is pretty unambiguously true! What Tolkien didn't want was for people to view The One Ring as some specific embodiment of power, e.g. the atomic bomb, and instead for readers to draw parallels to their own lives, experiences, and knowledge. To him, this was "applicability," but in the modern discussion of literature this sort of thing would still often be called an allegory.
The great thing about interpreting LOTR as an allegory for WW1 is it nicely explains the lack of female characters, without us needing to say critical things about an author we like.
Sadly my English teachers in high school wouldn’t accept this as a response to their request for an essay on Tolkien. It was extremely frustrating, to say the least, given his repeated stance on the matter.
I never said it was an allegory. I think you're confusing two ideas. One is whether the story in as allegory, and the other is whether Tolkien was inspired by one of the most significant events in the history of humanity.
He said if he had written an allegory it would have a different ending, as in if he wanted to preserve a one-to-one mapping things would have changed. But there are story types that are not allegories and which also are influenced by things.
> But the major plot element of having a weapon too powerful for humans (and humanoids) to wield (and which must be destroyed) is clearly influenced by his reaction to the atomic bomb.
Sorry but no. The ring had been written into existence before 1937 (in the Hobbit) and it's darker nature in TLOTR was defined sometime in 1938, long before anyone knew about the bomb [0]. Much later, Tolkien specifically addressed the relationship with WW2 by saying IIRC that if the ring war had reflected the real war, the allies would have used the ring against Sauron and Saruman probably would have made his own in the chaos that followed.
Tolkien continually revised his writings and published in 1954. I'm sure there are some hints looking back in retrospect at his earlier drafts.
And we know he changed the Hobbit to give the ring more power in later editions, for example making it irresistible to Golem. This sort of changed was likely propagated throughout the LOTR drafts as he made the ring more powerful.
Yes, but Tolkien knew from the outset (in approx 1938) that the Ring absolutely could not be used. This was the whole point of Frodo's mission, that the Ring must be destroyed, even though the details of the tale changed substantially as Tolkien wrote and rewrote.
By 1944, Tolkien was already writing about Frodo trudging through the dead marshes on the way to Mordor, bearing the hideous burden of the Ring. The bomb was still a year away.
The Ring also has some very nebulous power up effect that it would give to the forces of evil. It isn’t at all clear what it does, just that it would be real bad for the bad guys to get it.
If it was a nuke, presumably Elrond would have mentioned that, haha.
I think it has more of a wide ranging philosophical power or something like that. If it fell into the hands of evil, it would mean the arc of history was going their way, all the little dice rolls would bend imperceptibly their way, they’d wake up just a little more energized than the forces of good every day, etc etc. It is better that way, because it becomes a battle for the soul of Middle Earth.
> I think it has more of a wide ranging philosophical power or something like that
The Ring was a force multiplier for Sauron (who had in effect transferred some of his power into it, for whatever reason). He could already wield extreme control over his underlings (and we see what happens when he gets distracted at the very end) and strike fear into the hearts of his enemies. All of these capabilities would have been enhanced if he got it back. He would also have been able to perceive the actions (and thoughts?) of the other ring bearers (i.e. the elves). And perhaps a load of other things that Gandalf and the other experts didn't know about (they didn't appear in middle earth until long after the ring was forged).
> the major plot element of having a weapon too powerful for humans (and humanoids) to wield (and which must be destroyed) is clearly influenced by his reaction to the atomic bomb.
Didn't he write mostly before the public knew about the bomb?
I'm sorry but the proposed metaphor is just completely unworkable. The ring is not "too powerful for humans" it's not useful at all to humans! it induces irrational desire for it, but actually is of minor real utility, one person at a time can become real stealthy, it's cool but it's not beating an army. oh but actually when you try and use it for that minor ability, it secretly calls goons on you. Not desirable!
So it's like the atomic bomb, except there's only exactly one, and only the nazis can use it as a bomb, when the americans have it it just poisons the local groundwater a bit. But they have to keep it around and just let it do that because it's really important to guard it against the axis getting their hands on it.
The Ring provided much more power than that, especially to bend (masses of) people to your will, see their minds, etc. It was believed that if Sauron got it, he would be unstoppable. IIRC, some character said it provided power matching the user's 'stature'.
Definitely both imho. Tolkien’s own ww1 experience shines through. But then his sons served in ww2 and you can feel a lot of bilbos pain come through as Frodo has to take on the burden of fighting evil.
You can clearly see the pain at the end of return of the king where Frodo and Bilbo together just leave. They had both been through too much and are basically shell shocked.
It’s really hard to not view it as an allegory of the journey of two generations through ww1 and ww2 imho.
I must have missed the part where Gondorians and Orcs where sitting for months in trenches opposite to each other fighting for the same few kilometers of ground?
The entire war of the ring lasts less than a year, and most battles are won after at most a few days of fighting by glorious charges on horseback with the leader in front of his men. Making them far more similar to the battles of Arthurian legend rather than anything contemporary to Tolkien.
That's the "hot" period of the war. Before that there were several centuries long war of attrition between Dunedain, their allies and proxies of Sauron.
The capital city of Gondor, Osgiliath, was turned into ruins, front going straight through. And before that, the same thing happened to Minas Ithil. Those big towers next to Black Gate? Those were fortifications built by Gondor. But after Great Plague, which was probably a biological weapon of sorts, there weren't enough people to man them.
What we see in lotr, is essentially last days of war. When one side is barely clinging on, and can muster only localized offensives.
Tolkien has specifically stated that the Dead Marshes were inspired by the appearance of Northern France after the battle of the Somme. And that Sam is a reflection of the privates and batman he served with. That said, he explicitly denies that WW1 or WW2 had any influence on the actual plot.
I don't know how much you want to take the Tolkien's word for it (death of the author and all that) but there it is.
Trench warfare thing is a thing, a big thing, about WW1. But it isn’t the only thing that happened in WW1. It looms large in our imaginations, probably because it impacted the geopolitical situation, and that’s what we see through the zoomed out lens of history.
But Tolkien experienced WW1 in first person. When people say his books were influenced by WW1, I think they mean the experience of soldiering.
Somebody already mentioned the marshes. The Nazgûl are also described as spreading a sort of deep, supernatural sort of dread; not normal fear, but something that shatters the will of hardened soldiers, just by looming over the siege of Gondor. That could be influenced by the experience of artillery bombardments, without explicitly referencing it.
It is also a story in which the good guys are agrarian, and the bad guys are industrial; this was possibly influenced by the experience of being on the receiving end of industrial warfare. I hear it is unpleasant.
from ww1 we know that Tolkien took a strong dislike in industrialisation which made war and killing much more effective than before. Hence the "good" hobbits as traditional farmer-like society, and evil portayed as destroying the natural realm.
It was one swift attack that managed to push the Gondorians out of the eastern half of the town, that also marked the beginning of the war, and one surprise attack with boats 9 months later to take the western half that a few weeks before the end of the war.
I don't know if it's mentioned anywhere what happened in the meantime, but Denethor says he's expecting an enemy strike against Osgiliath shortly before the second attack happens, so it can't have been an active frontline at the time.
Not really, though I suppose you can interpret art how you like:
The Lord of the Rings was actually begun, as a separate thing, about 1937, and had reached the inn at Bree, before the shadow of the second war. Personally I do not think that either war (and of course not the atomic bomb) had any influence upon either the plot or the manner of its unfolding. Perhaps in landscape. The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme. They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in The House of the Wolfings or The Roots of the Mountains.
Probably not, it doesn’t seem to have any direct power to just, like, blast stuff, as far as we see on the page. I think it is more like a wide-ranging enhancement to all the forces of evil if they get it. The power of every orc waking up on the right side of the bed to go do the day-to-day work of evil every morning.
