Tolkien and Allegory

I picked up a book and very quickly put it back down. It goes by the title Finding God in The Lord of the Rings, and it's written by Kurt Bruner and Jim Ware. It is a book that provides some Christian meditations on The Lord of the Rings. I think I remember trying to start it before, and this is the second time the attempt has ended in failure. Part of me is bummed that it didn't pan out, especially since it's such a short book and it would have been nice to get it knocked off the "haven't read" collection in my possession and added to the book bracket for this month.

Alas. I'm not actually that troubled, as the thought comes to mind that, you know, there are an awful lot of other books about The Lord of the Rings out there that I'd much rather read.

All that aside, I read enough of the book to find something to write about. Here is the quotation of the part that inspired this little reflection:

"The Lord of the Rings is not, as some have suggested, a covert allegory of the gospel. Tolkien clearly denied that idea. We must not turn this wonderful adventure into something it was never intended to be...Tolkien was telling a story, not proclaiming a message. His Christian worldview pushed itself up of its own accord. It is not our goal to declare Tolkien's intentions, but rather to explore the inference of his imagination, an imagination that could not help but reflect Christian themes." (Introduction, pp. xiii-xiv)

Oh boy. Oh boy.

My Frustration

My frustration with this assessment of Tolkien's work is that, I think people conflate the term "allegory" with any deeper meaning in a work of fiction. 

I will concede that Tolkien very clearly stated that his work was not allegory, and that, depending on your definition of allegory, that could shape your perception of the work. I will NOT concede that there is only one definition of "allegory." 

While is seems that some people, like Bruner and Ware, believe allegory means any sort of message that is deeper than the bald face of the adventure itself, there are definitely definitions of "allegory" that mean different things. The best take I've ever encountered on this subject is that there is such a thing as a formal allegory, where specific characters are supposed to have exact counterparts in a moral message (for example, in Medieval plays, there was a character named "Everyman" who was meant to represent, literally, every single human working out his or her salvation on earth), and there's no way that Tolkien could have meant his work to be this formal allegory. I'm not sure who stated this idea, but it may have been Joseph Pearce.

So, problem solved. There can be deeper meanings in LOTR because allegory can have differing definitions. This is not the end of my reflection, though. I'd like to take the lines quoted above and dig a little deeper into why it's problematic.

A Problematic Line of Thinking

I've complained to several people recently that I'm tired of Catholics referencing Tolkien's essay "On Fairy Stories" as one of the end-all-be-alls in exploring creativity as a gift from God, but here I am, about to reference that exact work. I should have known this would happen, and you shall now call me "The Pot" for having called the kettle black and doing that which I have criticized.

Tolkien talked about fairy tales, or "fairy stories," as he calls them, having elements that reflect Gospel truths, not least of which is the "eucatastrophe," or the unexpected happy turn of events when things looks least likely to end well, which is a sort of representation of what happened with the Resurrection. When it looked like all hope was lost for man's salvation, for God had been killed, He rose from the dead and defeated the final enemy. Tolkien certainly makes use of the "eucatastrophe" in LOTR, and it will probably be one of the finest examples of such a device in literature, no matter how many Catholic fantasy authors pay homage to it or try to recreate it in their own works.

I have spent time outlining all this information about eucatastrophes because it directly contradicts the idea stated by Bruner/Ware that "Tolkien was telling a story, not proclaiming a message." If the eucatastrophe of Gollum biting the finger from Frodo's hand and resulting accidental destruction of the Ring is not, in essence, a proclamation of the tale of the destruction of sin and death and the salvation of the world through Jesus' death and resurrection, then I don't know what proclaiming a message would look like. The sharing of this story is evangelization, in its own subtle way. It doesn't contain the entirety of catechesis, but it sure sums up some of the essential points of Christian faith.

Even if I'm completely wrong, I find it hard to believe that people who definitely don't believe there's deeper meaning to LOTR would take the time to write a book full of reflections on said non-deep-meaning work to help readers encounter God. The Christian ideas they draw from LOTR are not there in spite of Tolkien's attempts to keep the story surface level. Rather, they are there because Tolkien is a masterful writer who wove in so many of the things he had to say about sin, suffering, death, life, and redemption in the light of revealed Truth.