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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

>Dune is not an allegory for anything any more than Lord of the Rings is an allegory for anything

Which I'd consider bad news for the argument because Lord of the Rings is, despite Tolkien's opposition deeply allegorical. Whether it's the machinist east vs the pastoral West, the ideal Catholic community, the return of the King as a Christ like figure, and so on. It's at times painfully obvious.

You, just like Tolkien appear to have a conservative attitude towards fiction which always tends to deny obvious, often political intent in fiction because from your point of view, which I wouldn't even agree with, it allegedly diminishes art.

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You can read politics into anything with people in it.

> Which I'd consider bad news for the argument because Lord of the Rings is, despite Tolkien's opposition deeply allegorical.

Tolkien was quite right that his work was not allegorical. He created a fantasy world to explore themes that were important to him. It was not some coded message where Sauron is Hitler or something. He rightly despised such allegories, as do I.

> You, just like Tolkien appear to have a conservative attitude towards fiction which always tends to deny obvious, often political intent in fiction because from your point of view, which I wouldn't even agree with, it allegedly diminishes art.

I deny attempts to twist the plain meaning of words to fit a narrative. Tolkien created a fictional world to tell a story and convey certain universal truths he felt were important. Frank Herbert did the same. Some people, however, would like to twist that to fit a political agenda. Yes, for some strange reason I find that appalling. It doesn't simply diminish the art... it destroys it. As many are wont to say in such situations: go make your own art.

> Tolkien created a fictional world to tell a story and convey certain universal truths he felt were important

Honestly I don’t really care if anyone wrote an allegory or not, but how is this different than writing an allegory? If I had to define what writing an allegory in fiction means I would probably use this exact phrasing.

> despite Tolkien's opposition

This should tell you and all english (and german) teachers enough. Not everything has a deep meaning, and certainly the protagonist isn't sad because he has blue curtains.

Actually if you look into it a little more, and speak with authors today, a lot of authors heavily think about the themes they’re trying to explore in their work and how to best express them. Similarly, sometimes authors aren’t even aware of some things they’re exploring in their work (for example, latent trauma).

Honestly, writing literature is not dissimilar to programming in this way. You have to consider the structure of your piece as you build it, and then even if you do so you might create unintended behaviors.

They are both allegorical, Tolkien was just less willing to admit it.

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