Why Allegory is the Death of Art
What Tolkien and Plato Taught Me About The Difference Between Artists and Philosophers
The first time I heard about Plato’s Allegory of the Cave was sophomore year in college. My friend mentioned it in a conversation and it captured my imagination right away. For those who haven’t heard of it, watch this great 70s animated video narrated by Orson Welles.
Later, when I changed my major to philosophy, I took an upper-division class on Plato and dove deeper into the allegory. Plato used it to explain his philosophical system, which would come to be known as Platonic Idealism. The allegory was written as a blueprint for a layperson to understand Plato’s system, and clarity was the goal.
About a year and a half later, I enrolled in a 6-week summer course on J.R.R. Tolkien that would count as an elective for my English double major. Interestingly, when allegory came up in Tolkien’s work, I was surprised to find that he resisted it vehemently.
In an introduction to The Fellowship of the Ring, Tolkien wrote:
...I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory’; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and other in the purposed domination of the author.
Tolkien’s language here is striking. He writes that allegory leads to the “purposed domination of the author.” These words mean a lot coming from an author who was very interested in stories about power and its ability to corrupt. Tolkien understood allegory to be itself a kind of power or domination of the author because it would choke out the possibility for readers to engage with the text as active interpreters.
I recently watched Tolkien, the 2019 biopic of the author’s life that draws overt connections between his experiences in World War II and his fantasy world-building. I wonder if Tolkien would have liked that the film drew those parallels.
In his introduction to The Fellowship of the Ring, Tolkien goes on to write:
... the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous.
He seemed to be uncomfortable with people drawing clean connections between an artist’s work and the historical experiences of their time.
Another famous author who pushed back against allegorical readings is sci-fi pioneer Ursula Le Guin. Le Guin, in a 1976 essay titled “Myth and Archetype in Science Fiction,” called allegory “dead equivalence.”
Le Guin complained that college English classes flattened rich texts by teaching students to decode them in shallow ways. “This character represents fertility” or “that character was a stand-in for Mussolini.”
Allegory would turn art into some kind of variable algebra. X + Y = Z. Solve for Z. X is fascism. Y is corporate greed. And once you’ve solved the equation, you can wipe your hands clean and move on.
But that’s the WORST way to engage with art. Art is about richness, about layers. It’s not math. It requires you to do work, to open up a pleated accordion and expand it to its full length to understand its beauty. And the accordion would need a skilled player: the reader or viewer.
Allegory, then, would turn the artist into an autocrat. “This is what I made. This is clearly what it all means. Understand it and absorb my message.” There was no room for audience participation. No wonder Tolkien called it “domination.”
Okay, let’s jump back to Plato. Did Plato have a redeeming use of allegory? I mean the Allegory of the Cave is just brilliant.
It’s important to realize that Plato was not an artist, but a philosopher. He was after clarity, truth, and justice. While Tolkien reveled in the imagination and in the mystery of stories and myths, Plato was deeply critical of imagination and myth. In The Republic, Plato even proposes that we stop reciting myths and fictions because they confuse people. Art was Artifice, i.e. more illusions for people to have to cut through to see the reality of things. “Just give us the blueprint man!”
In the end, I think Tolkien and Plato just stand for two different ways of arriving at truth. Plato is the consummate philosopher who relies on clarity in thought and communication. The artist has a different agenda. The artist is a wizard who conjures symbols. They channel mysterious forces inside of them and produce mysterious work in turn. They weave tapestries of meaning, for others to admire, puzzle over, and interpret. Ambiguity is the philosopher’s weakness and the artist’s most valuable tool.
In fact, ambiguity and incompleteness were things Tolkien seemed to celebrate. He never published much of his life’s work. He left mountains of drafts to his sons and grandchildren to finish and publish. And he clearly wanted collaborators and strangers to dive into his world and reinvigorate it with their own sensibilities.
As he was writing his books, he wrote to a friend:
Do not laugh! But once upon a time I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic story… I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama.
Tolkien wanted to “leave scope for other minds and hands” to touch his work. He was open to others reinterpreting his work long after he was gone. But it would only be possible if his world relinquished the “domination” of the author.
So what does this all mean to me?
I’m thinking a lot more about allegory nowadays as I have been working on building a sci-fi world that I’m hoping to expand into a transmedia project. I’ve been writing for years now and the influences for this world have come from every nook and cranny of my life experience.
That immense cauldron of influences also contains immediate sources, including the steady drip of news I consume daily. And as I write stories and complex characters, I notice the tendency inside to use what’s at the top of my mind.
When I start creating a leader figure who harnesses the discontent of his people, it’s tempting to model him on our former president. It’s tempting to pluck Putin as inspiration for an autocratic leader. There are also the billionaire space entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, and controversial futurists like Ray Kurzweil. These figures have strong values and opinions, which they are pushing out into the world and making headlines.
But, like Le Guin and Tolkien, I’m resisting the temptation of easy allegory. I want to do the hard work of finding REAL and ORIGINAL characters that are organic to my world.
I’m hoping my stories aren’t simple blueprints. Instead, they are artefacts of a world that lives inside of me, which is a fractal of a larger mythic world that lives inside us all. Carl Jung has written a lot about this world.
And if you’ve ever entered that world in your own creative work, you know the feeling. It’s unmistakeable. It feels like something is speaking from both deep inside of you and outside. It’s the mysterious Muse at work.
So, the clear moral here is to probably avoid allegory. Finesse your influences into your work. And if anyone ever accuses your work of allegory, swing your arms in defiance and deny it blatantly and aggressively. Like you know who.