effigy

If you go out and talk to secular readers of Tolkien, they will always quote to you, as I say, ad nauseam, the statement by Tolkien in the preface to the 2nd American edition -- which [statement] is now published in every edition, anywhere -- "I despise allegory, in all its forms." And these people will use the logic, "Well, if he hated allegory in all its forms, and there's no mention of Christ or the Church, or Christianity in Lord of the Rings, therefore, there is no Christian allegory in it." Well, Tolkien on other occasions refers to the book as an allegory! An allegory of power, an allegory of death vs. immortality.... So, at other times, Tolkien does refer to it as an allegory.

The key thing, as Tolkien says, is applicability. The sort of allegory that Tolkien despises is formal allegory, or crude allegory; and the best way of explaining it is, well, let's look for example at at Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, or C.S. Lewis's Pilgrim's Regress. In The Pilgrim's Regress, Reason is a knight in shining armor -- a beautiful woman, clad in shining armor, on a white horse -- and her name is just Reason. She has two younger sisters: Theology and Philosophy. Now, we get the point. You know? We know exactly what Lewis means. Tolkien didn't like this, because it gave the reader no freedom to use his imagination. This sort of allegory is the domination of the author over the imagination of the reader. There's no scope for the reader's imagination.

A formal allegory is where you start with a point you want to make.... [Suppose] that's the point I want to make, [that spot] on the ceiling there, this is my story: the whole of my story points toward the point. Has no point except the point: to point toward the story. All the characters are hoops that go neatly onto the point. The plot itself is a hoop that goes onto the point. Another way of [illustrating] it would be to draw a circle, put a point in the middle; the whole plot and the characters just go 'round and 'round the point being made.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Beowulf, The Lord of the Rings are very different. Should be likened more to a piece of string. The story is a piece of string. It has a beginning, it has an end; the important thing is the story itself. The writer starts out with the intention primarily of telling a good story. However, throughout the length of the story, this piece of string, at various times, this string is tied into knots. And at those moments, where the knot is, is a moment of applicability, where what is happening in the story has an applicability beyond the story, i.e., for instance, [an applicability] to our world. And those moments, of course, that's an allegorical leap, an allegorical jump, an allegorical connection. It's not a formal allegory.

Thus, if you look at Beowulf -- Beowulf is certainly not meant to be a figure of Christ throughout the whole poem. That would be absurd.... There's at least be fifty years between the two earlier adventures and the last one.... He calls himself a miserable sinner and everything else, so he obviously isn't a figure of Christ. But there are certain moments in the story...a point choosing twelve knights to follow him; so at these moments he reminds us of Christ. It's the same thing in Lord of the Rings: certain moments, various characters remind us of Christ, but none of them are Christ throughout the whole story.