It was during a cataclysmic period in his own time that Tolkien gave rise to a fantasy preoccupied with these particular dilemmas.
Tolkien’s disclaimer. The Lord of the Rings is a work of fantasy, and Middle Earth is an imaginary world, belonging to no specific time or place. In addition, Tolkien, who despised allegory and “topical reference,” was adamant that no direct connections be drawn between the events of his novel and those of recent European history. Thus he could claim that, though his novel was written during World War II, “the real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or conclusion” (Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, p. xvi). That having been said, The Lord of the Rings is emphatically a work of the twentieth century, and bears the scars of its major upheavals.
The war in the trenches. Germany declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914. Russia, along with its ally France, quickly responded in Serbia’s defense. Within a week, all of the major European powers were embroiled in World War I, England entering the fray on August 3.
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