In the twentieth century special circumstances or “accidents of history” made Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, as a re-creation of the ring quest, not only relevant and meaningful but to some degree prophetic That is not to say that The Lord of the Rings is an allegory of our time Tolkien rightly rejected the allegorical view as too narrow for his tale He especially abhorred questions of the “Are Orcs Nazis or Communists?” kind Tolkien’s purpose was both more specific and more universal He once wrote: “I think that many confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory,’ but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.” In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien gives us an adventure in the form of a ring quest with a simple human moral truth at its center However, the nature of that adventure and that moral position were undeniably “applicable” to the most dramatic conflicts of the twentieth century Although Tolkien did not intend to mimic the events of his time, he did acknowledge when he began writing The Lord of the Rings in 1937 that something of the impending conflict with Nazi Germany was discernible in the dark atmosphere of its composition Furthermore, as the bulk of the book was written through the dark years of World War II, there were aspects of the real war that were inevitably comparable to his “War of the Ring.” It is interesting to note Tolkien’s own comments on this in his wartime letters to his son, Christopher, stationed with the British forces in South Africa He sent chapters in serial form to Christopher as he wrote them, along with personal letters with constant references to Hobbits, Orcs, and Rings, as similes for individuals and issues relating to actual events in the conflict with Germany “Well, there you are: a hobbit among the Uruk-hai,” Tolkien wrote “Keep your hobbitry in heart and think that all stories feel like that when you are in them.” However, this did not mean that real events in the war shaped Tolkien’s invented war His “War of the Ring” was about ideals, not political realities It essentially revolved around a human moral crisis, which he perceived in the real war, but not just in the enemy In one letter to Christopher, Tolkien wrote: “We are attempting to conquer Sauron with the Ring And we shall (it seems) succeed But the penalty is, as you will know, to breed new Saurons, and slowly turn Men and Elves into Orcs Not that in real life things are as clear-cut as in a story, and we started out with a great many Orcs on our side …” Clearly, Tolkien’s war had its own direction to follow, which had no parallels in the war with Germany This is not to say that Tolkien was neutral in his view of Hitler and Nazi Germany—far from it In 1941, he wrote to another son, Michael, who was at the time an officer cadet at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst “I have spent most of my life, since I was your age, studying Germanic matters (in the general sense that includes England and Scandinavia) There is a great deal more force (and truth) than ignorant people imagine in the ‘Germanic’ ideal … Anyway, I have in this war a burning private grudge—which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light Nowhere, incidentally, was it nobler than in England, nor more early sanctified.” Indeed, one might even perceive that this “grudge” against Hitler might have had something to do with Tolkien’s ambitions in writing a new version of the ring quest In the nineteenth century, Richard Wagner recognized the absolute centrality of the ring quest in the vast mythological themes of European and especially Germanic peoples He consciously seized upon the ring as a symbol of the German identity, heritage, and state In the twentieth century, the music of Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung became so closely allied with the Nazi Party and the rise of the Third Reich that they became synonymous in the popular mind During World War II, the grand themes and traditions of the ring quest were usurped (or, as Tolkien saw it, ruined, perverted, and misapplied) by the German state with which Tolkien’s nation was at war On one level, The Lord of the Rings is certainly an attempt by Tolkien to reclaim the ring as a symbol of “that noble northern spirit,” which had fallen into such disrepute in Germany With some justification, Tolkien blamed Wagner and his heirs for the dimming of the “true light.” Although Wagner’s genius was indisputable, his politics were repugnant The great musician’s family and heirs were not innocent dupes of the Nazi Party Wagner’s