Lord Of The Rings - Metaphor ?

[TommyC]

Regardless of the actual story narrative, what is the MAIN overriding central metaphor or theme in the LOTR, which has made it the enormously popular and resonant creation which it is - across ONLY generations of the Western White world (it's not remotely important or admired in any way in the Islamic or African worlds) ?

[Tilly2]

Good versus Evil
Good wins.

[barry1010]

The Lord of the Rings books have been officially translated in to Arabic and Hebrew and the films have topped the popularity charts in Botswana and Nigeria so to say the books and films are not remotely important or admired in Islamic or African 'worlds' is false.

[Mozz71]

Personally, I think the central theme is that even the smallest, and seemingly most irrelevant individual can change the world. In this case the Hobbits.

[ToraToraTora]

I thought it was some sort of gay societal rank.

[Mozz71]

A secondary theme is that the natural world will conquer technology. The tree ents (representing nature) rise up against and ultimately destroy Saruman's genetically engineered army of the Uruk-Hai at Isengard.

Tolkein was widely known to be an environmentalist, who loved a more old fashioned way of living.

[andy-hughes]

Tolkien always said that his only purpose in writing LOTR was to see if he could tell a really good story.

The answer appears to be 'Yes', and everything else is people reading things into the story that he never put there, or intended to be derived from it.

[naomi24]

Like the Harry Potter books, I think it’s basically a simple tale of the struggle between good and evil - with all the characteristics of man - good and bad - and in various guises thrown in. I found it a very difficult book to read. Going backwards and forwards to remind myself who was who and what was what was very time consuming. Always one to have a few books on the go at once, that one took me a full year to read - and I missed it dreadfully when I finally finished it. An absolute masterpiece.

[Peter Pedant]

google - criticism of Lord of the Rings
there should be a lot about there ( lit crit)

it looks as tho you can make the central theme whatever you want