In reality, it does mean something, because meaning requires both a communicator and receiver. It’s more accurate to say Tolkien didn’t intend for the trilogy to be anything other than a story. Not all stories have to be intended to be deep or symbolic; I share Tolkien’s distaste for allegory. With allegories, I’m always of two minds: one is consuming the story, the other is figuring out the grand analogy and constantly second-guessing myself. So maybe that’s three minds, but at least one extra mind is enough to keep me from absorbing the story and yes, enjoying it.
I wouldn’t be able to find meaning in the Tom Bombadil chapter, especially in the story he told the four hobbits, if the story demanded I hack away at the stone to make logical connections to real world things, and wondering what it really meant—which is nothing.
From the foreward to the 2nd edition.
The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them.
….
As for any inner meaning or ‘message’, it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical. As the story grew it put down roots (into the past) and threw out unexpected branches: but its main theme was settled from the outset by the inevitable choice of the Ring as the link between it and The Hobbit. The crucial chapter, ‘The Shadow of the Past’, is one of the oldest parts of the tale. It was written long before the foreshadow of 1939 had yet become a threat of inevitable disaster, and from that point the story would have developed along essentially the same lines, if that disaster had been averted. Its sources are things long before in mind, or in some cases already written, and little or nothing in the war that began in 1939 or its sequels modified it.
The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dûr would not have been destroyed but occupied. Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth. In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they would not long have survived even as slaves.
Other arrangements could be devised according to the tastes or views of those who like allegory or topical reference. But I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory’; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.
An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous. It is also false, though naturally attractive, when the lives of an author and critic have overlapped, to suppose that the movements of thought or the events of times common to both were necessarily the most powerful influences. 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 youth by 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. Or to take a less grievous matter: it has been supposed by some that The Scouring of the Shire reflects the situation in England at the time when I was finishing my tale. It does not. It is an essential part of the plot, foreseen from the outset, though in the event modified by the character of Saruman as developed in the story without, need I say, any allegorical significance or contemporary political reference whatsoever. It has indeed some basis in experience, though slender (for the economic situation was entirely different), and much further back. The country in which I lived in childhood was being shabbily destroyed before I was ten, in days when motor-cars were rare objects (I had never seen one) and men were still building suburban railways. Recently I saw in a paper a picture of the last decrepitude of the once thriving corn-mill beside its pool that long ago seemed to me so important. I never liked the looks of the Young miller, but his father, the Old miller, had a black beard, and he was not named Sandyman.
3 Comments
This statement’s a bit absurd. LotR “means” many things to many people, and it certainly “meant” something to Tolkien. You’re referring to LotR not possessing inherent meaning bestowed by its creator, but this claim, bolstered by the foreword you shared, is a bit ambiguous to me. Knowing what I know about Tolkien’s life, I would suggest he found meaning in his creation of Middle-Earth through his profession as a philologist — a profession that, in turn, is a subsequent piecing together of historical culture through literature.
The grand arc of the story itself may not have direct allegorical significance to an existing work or objective morality, but it carries meaning in that it pays homage to dead civilizations whose rich, often unique cultural insights are explored through literary wholes or fragments. This would not be possible without Tolkien’s attention to detail, from the way, e.g., battles are portrayed or linguistic wordplay in the Elvish languages are mixed in with English, to the type of world-building that gives the illusion that folklore, people, mythical creatures, spiritual beings, and kingdoms have permeated this fictional land for thousands of years.
I suppose what I mean to say is any claim regarding “meaning” is expressly arguable.
The statement is absurd (and I would say impossible), but I qualified it further in the post. I think we’re in agreement here. There is more meaning, as you said, meta-textually, with how Tolkien researched and created the Elvish language. There was a short documentary about that on Netflix a long time ago; I forget the title but it was interesting.
Yeah. Certainly true that Tolkien didn’t mean for the story to be anything more than a story. That’s unsurprising and sensible. But you could still derive “meaning” without getting meta-textual like I did in my previous post. For example, you could draw parallels to events in the story that coincide with events that took place during the time of, say, the Three Houses, thanks to Tolkien’s illustriousness, consistent lore. Because of this, in spite of the stated foreword, you can go as deep as you want in any direction. Whatever floats the reader’s boat.