Tolkien and Allegory
There is much debate amongst fanboys and literary critics alike over whether JRR Tolkien's masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings , used allegory. Part of this stems from Tolkien's alleged dislike-even hatred-of allegory. This often bubbles up in discussion arguments about Tolkien's writings. On one hand, you often have those more ready to fully embrace the allegorical, particularly the religious and/or moral allegorical, interpretation of Frodo and the Ring of Power in the identical way one must interpret Aslan on the stone table. Then you tend to have the atheist/secularist crowd who with equal vehemence loathe any allegorical interpretation of Tolkien, or really any major work of literature with anything less than a sneering "We know better than those theist types." I paint in broad brush strokes, of course. Neither side is really right in the most technical of senses. There are many different types and degrees of allegory. Yes, some are what we might call "in...