Editing Blog/2026-03-03/As The Magic Leaves (section)

== Not Quite Allegory ==

Tolkien is famous for disliking allegory, especially the classic mechanistic mapping of real-life to characters in fiction. Perhaps this is why Sauron did not die by killing himself and his wife by cyanide poisoning. But I think the single striding impulse in his work is the fading of the magic in the world he made, and I believe that he could not but tell the story that way considering that the country he was born into was in steady decline from heady heights. The entire series has a trend of melancholiness. By the time we come to Elrond he is weary of the world from the things he has seen in his immortality. The Rohirrim are implied to be far lesser than the Eorlingas of the past, Osgiliath has been abandoned for ages, and Minas Ithil has been lost to Sauron entirely. Each time we encounter something, we get a sensation that these people are living in the ruins of greater civilizations.

Now, it's foolish to claim that this is the reason for the sadness of the books. There's his religious faith, his war experiences, and his studies of history that informed his language. And these are admittedly what he himself credits. But every man does not know what he does not know about himself. We reflect the weather of our societies without knowing we are. I think Tolkien felt what he did because they all who lived his life did.