This question gets asked fairly regularly on Quora, or related questions like “What is the allegorical meaning of” this or that character or event.
The answer is that none of these books are allegories, none of the characters or events in them allegorical. Lewis and Tolkien were both professors of medieval literature and knew full well what allegory was. They said these works were not allegories, and they knew what they were talking about. Lewis wrote a non-fiction work on medieval romantic allegory (The Allegory of Love, 1936) and an actual allegory (Pilgrim’s Regress, 1933). Tolkien did not like allegory and did not write any (though “Leaf by Niggle” (1938) gets dangerously close).
People mistake their works for allegories because we don’t see much allegory today, and so mistake parallelism for allegory. The commonest form of modern allegory is the political cartoon, in which, for instance, the donkey “is” the Democratic Party and the elephant “is” the Republican party.
In an allegory, every major character and event represents something, can be decoded into “plain text” as what the author means. When allegory is in fashion, people who like it get a pleasure from it similar to the pleasure of working a crossword puzzle, from seeing through the coding, while also enjoying the literary ornamentation. But there is no such decoding to be done for Narnia or Lord of the Rings.
People mostly look for Biblical symbolism. But Aslan, for instance, does not “represent” Christ; he is Christ, plain and simple, an imaginative appearance of Christ for a world like Narnia. Lewis said so, and he has Aslan say so in the books: “In your world, I have another name.” Lucy, Edmund, and the other children do not represent Biblical characters or abstract virtues; if you try to make the match, they don’t fit. Events in The Magician’s Nephew and The Last Battle resemble Genesis and Revelation, but they are about the beginning and end of a world, so of course they do; they have to.
Likewise, for Lord of the Rings, Frodo, Gandalf, and Aragorn all do Christ-like things, but they are not symbols of Christ. There are parallels, and they are meant to remind the reader of the Bible accounts, but they are not meant to decode into the Bible accounts. If you try it, you fail and, if you don’t realize that, you get weird distortions. And the Ring is not the atomic bomb, which had not even been invented when Tolkien made it up.
This is an allegory:
Nature and Time
by Lord Dunsany
Through the streets of Coventry one winter’s night strode a triumphant spirit. Behind him stooping, unkempt, utterly ragged, wearing the clothes and look that outcasts have, whining, weeping, reproaching, an ill-used spirit tried to keep pace with him. Continually she plucked him by the sleeve and cried out to him as she panted after and he strode resolute on.
It was a bitter night, yet it did not seem to be the cold that she feared, ill-clad though she was, but the trams and the ugly shops and the glare of the factories, from which she continually winced as she hobbled on, and the pavement hurt her feet.
He that strode on in front seemed to care for nothing, it might be hot or cold, silent or noisy, pavement or open fields, he merely had the air of striding on.
And she caught up and clutched him by the elbow. I heard her speak in her unhappy voice, you scarcely heard it for the noise of the traffic.
“You have forgotten me,” she complained to him. “You have forsaken me here.”
She pointed to Coventry with a wide wave of her arm and seemed to indicate other cities beyond. And he gruffly told her to keep pace with him and that he did not forsake her. And she went on with her pitiful lamentation.
“My anemones are dead for miles,” she said, “all my woods are fallen and still the cities grow. My child Man is unhappy and my other children are dying, and still the cities grow and you have forgotten me!”
And then he turned angrily on her, almost stopping in that stride of his that began when the stars were made.
“When have I ever forgotten you?” he said, “or when forsaken you ever? Did I not throw down Babylon for you? And is not Nineveh gone? Where is Persepolis that troubled you? Where Tarshish and Tyre? And you have said I forget you.”
And at this she seemed to take a little comfort. I heard her speak once more, looking wistfully at her companion. “When will the fields come back and the grass for my children?”
“Soon, soon,” he said: then they were silent. And he strode away, she limping along behind him, and all the clocks in the towers chimed as he passed.
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