'Rings' not likely war propaganda

Over the past couple of years, Peter Jackson's film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" has been invoked countless times as a metaphor for the war on terror.

For example, columnist Kathleen Parker suggests that America is divided "into two cinematic camps: those who believe that America's story was best told in Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' and those who think Peter Jackson pretty much captured the essence of current events."

Those in the latter group, such as Parker herself, believe "we are in a global struggle against Mordor's Orcs — radical Islam's terrorists — to save Western civilization." (In Tolkien's tale, Orcs are subhuman, wholly evil creatures, devised by Sauron, an immensely powerful spirit who aims to rule the imaginary world of Middle Earth.)

One problem with wars in the real world is that dehumanizing metaphors get used on all sides. Thus Simon Jenkins writes in the Times of London that "the American soldier abroad is no more a figure of jocular affection but rather a Tolkien Orc, an armored monster spewing indiscriminate death."

Interestingly, those who employ such metaphors seem not to have considered Tolkien's own views on the meaning of his work. Tolkien rejected the notion that "The Lord of the Rings" was an allegory for World War II, despite the popular conception of that war as an unambiguous clash between Good and Evil.

If his narrative had been modeled on World War II, Tolkien wrote, then the Ring of Power would not have been destroyed but rather "seized and used against Sauron," and his kingdom "would not have been destroyed but occupied." The traitor Saruman "would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found 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," Tolkien notes, "both sides would have held hobbits (the book's peace-loving central characters) in hatred and contempt: They would not long have survived even as slaves."

Tolkien was a renowned scholar of medieval languages and literatures, and he loved heroic-warrior narratives those cultures produced, such as "Beowulf" and the Norse sagas.

But he was also a veteran of World War I's trenches. He knew from experience that, unlike the inhabitants of Middle Earth, we do not live in a heroic age of warriors and monsters.