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Originally Posted by Son of Númenor
What I was most interested in when re-reading the Foreword was the passage that describes what The Lord of the Rings would have been like if Tolkien had written it as an allegory for World War II. The allegory described in this alternate tale is pretty straightforward and does not require explanation for the purpose of my post. What was interesting to me in this passage was not the content, but the bitterness with which he describes this bizarro-Lord of the Rings - the wholly negative outcome of the work if it had followed Tolkien's views on WWII. It made me wonder. Though Tolkien stated that any allegorical connection to WWII was out of the question, and that the First World War affected him far more than the Second, what effect did World War II really have on The Lord of the Rings? .
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I'm also struck by the words in the first foreword:
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But not all are interested in such matters, & many who are not may still find the account of those great & valiant deeds worth the reading. It was in that hope that I began the work of translating & selecting the stories of the Red Book, part of which are now presented to Men of a later age, one almost as darkling & ominous as was the Thrid Age that ended with the great years 1418 & 1419 of the Shire long ago
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This 'darkling & ominous age' was the post WW2 period, the Cold War. Does he mean that he considered the Cold War worse than WW2? Its strange that he should. Did he fear the possibility of Russian nuclear attack as a worse threat than that of the Nazis? Did he see a Third World War as imminent in the mid fifties? And if he did, then had those fears abated by the mid sixties when he came to re write it? Was his belief that the 50's were 'darkling & ominous' a reflection of his struggles at the time, before the book became successful, & he became 'rich' as a result? And was his success in the 60's reflected in the fact that in the second foreword he can claim it has no 'inner meaning"?
In other words, did he feel during the 50's that it
did have some inner meaning - at least to the extent of being able to sustain readers during what he felt to be a world on the brink of destruction? Perhaps by the 60's, optimistic & wealthy, he could dismiss such fears, & felt able to present it as simple entertainment?