Middle Earth: What Did Tolkien Mean?

 The debate over Middle Earth’s role has been active since the publication of The Lord Of The Rings. Some view it as allegory, a commentary by Tolkien on contemporary events in Europe, particularly the Second World War. Others see it as a mechanism for autobiography, a kind of reflection by Tolkien on his experiences in the First World War. Yet another view suggests that Tolkien was not only non-allegorical but entirely uninspired by any meaningful cultural or historical events or symbols, that he was merely creating a fictional world for entertainment; he was writing a children’s tale which could be enjoyed by adults. Another perspective views Middle Earth as totally inspired by various ancient mythologies.I will use Letters 151 and 183 in order to explore which of the many claims about Middle Earth, of which the above are just a few, are supported by the evidence and which are not. 

In letter 151, part of a longer text addressed to Hugh Brogan, Tolkien notes that “Middle-earth is just archaic English for [...] the inhabited world of men” (Letters, p. 186), expressing that he sees Middle Earth as historical in an almost literal sense. He is careful to clarify, though, that The Lord Of The Rings contains both “legend and history” (Letters, p.185) and should therefore not be seen as some kind of fictionalized capturing of real-world history. Furthermore, Tolkien regrets, in the same letter, overloading Book 1 with “too much [...] setting and historical background” (Letters, p.185), which would certainly be a bizarre view for an attempted historian to take. Letter 151 informs us that we cannot take The Lord Of The Rings as some kind of historical document, although it is inspired by real history.

Letter 151 only briefly, and almost as an aside, dealt with the issues of historicity and Tolkien’s intentions. Letter 183, meanwhile, includes a much more substantial and direct look at his motivations. While letter 151 deals with the topic of impersonal, far-back history in relation to The Lord Of The Rings, letter 183 tackles the relationship between Tolkien’s personal history and his work. While Tolkien readily admitted a mixture of history and legend in Middle Earth, he stoutly rejects any attempt to read his stories as autobiographical. He writes that he has “never thought of trying to ‘objectify’ my personal experience of life” (Letters, p.239) in The Lord Of The Rings. He goes on to say, in even more clear fashion, “The story is not about JRRT at all, and is at no point an attempt to allegorize his experience of life” (Letters, p.239). It is hard to imagine a clearer rebuttal of the ‘autobiography’ camp and seems to attack those who would view Tolkien’s writings as allegory generally. A renewed assault on the ‘allegorizers’ is taken up shortly thereafter, where Tolkien writes that “Middle-earth is not an imaginary world [...] The theatre of my tale is this earth, the one in which we now live, but the historical period is imaginary” (Letters, p.239). Here, Tolkien continues the theme from letter 151, in fact reiterating the linguistic legacy of the term ‘middle-earth’ in that same quotation. We again get the sense that Tolkien intends Middle Earth to be a kind of halfway-point between history and legend, one which blurs the line between strictly historical and magical fairy-tale. Tolkien goes on to talk about Beowulf, through an indirect comparison to The Lord Of The Rings whose specifics are not important - the point is that he strengthens on the one hand the historical nature of the story and on the other its links to mythology and fiction.

Tolkien concludes letter 183 with a very significant section on his work’s relationship to Christianity. He writes that Sauron approximates Satan because both of them fell from goodness as a result of pride: “Satan fell. [...] Sauron [...] had gone the way of all tyrants: beginning well [...] But he went further than human tyrants in pride and the lust for domination, being in origin an immortal (angelic) spirit” (Letters, p.243). Tolkien’s comparison here seems to strengthen the by now heavily damaged allegorical cause; Sauron seems to be a pretty direct allegory for Satan. He goes on to say that his work is fundamentally “about God, and His sole right to divine honour” (Letters, p.243), which Sauron attempts to usurp in a sort of Satanic revolt. Tolkien also doubles down on the ‘realness’ of his story in this section, writing that his critics view him as “simple-minded” and “adolescent” (Letters, p.244) for representing the ‘good guys’ as unfailingly moral in every way, which he refutes with reference to Denethor, going on to say that his world “is not an ‘imaginary’ world, but an imaginary historical moment” (Letters, p.244). This statement supports and is supported by his writing shortly before that, as a Christian, he does not “deal in Absolute Evil” (Letters, p.243). Representing any character as either perfectly good or perfectly evil, even individuals like Gandalf or Sauron would violate the Christian nature of the story - no mortal can be perfectly good, for that is the reserve of God, but equally no mortal can be perfectly evil; after all, even Satan fell.

Tolkien’s letters shed light on his complex relationship to his own work. He seems to be engaged in a kind of balancing act, not wanting to be overly historical, or obsessed with a kind of historical accuracy, but also not wanting to write detached fiction. The absurd and fictional elements of the story are grounded in and by the English language, historical mythology (like Beowulf) and a Catholic worldview. The only view of those presented at the beginning of this post which we can say with certainty is false is that which says that The Lord Of The Rings is personal allegory on the part of Tolkien. Tolkien, who was engaged in a grand project of historical recovery and documentation would probably view his own experiences to be vanishingly unimportant in the face of civilizational myth-making. 

-LM