lotr inspiration

I think the most important inspiration for him was still language.

Middle-earth isn't just another fantasy world (ignoring the fact that it was one of the first and that Tolkien is actually the founder of "Fantasy"😉 and also not a well-worked adventure story but a linguistical work. It's mostly based on words, words becoming names, names becoming subjects of stories and stories becoming history.
So Finnish and Welsh were perhaps two of the most important inspirations for LoTR, making Tolkien invent own perfect-sounding languages with delicious grammar - and languages of course need someone to speak them.

Tolkien hated allegory, can't forget that, ww1 was probably a big inspiration, but he also said that the more human a story gets, the easier it is to attatch allegory to, i don't think ww2 had great inspiration, also him and cs lewis couldn't find the type of books they wanted to read, so they wrote thier own

yeah i know, but saruman and hitler are similar....the power of voice, even the scene from orthanc ("my lord there is no such army *saruman walks onto balcony"😉 was quite a mirror image of what hitler did,

I think that PJ wanted to make that connection. The connection in the films is almost identical to pics of Hitler.

well you have all seen the saruman scene of him on the balcony, does this seem familiar

That does look scaringly familiar... 🙁

But I don't think that Tolkien used real persons for his stories... rather the feeling what it's like being in a war, seeing friends dying (just imagine Tolkien wouldve died 😱 😠 )

Last August there was book release call "Tales Before Tolkien: The roots of modern Fantasy" and is a compilation of 19th century stories of fantasy that according to the author Douglas A. Anderson it might had inspired Tolkien literature. Now World events during his lifetime maybe a reason why he created Saruman and Sauron. As for the inspiration of Hobbits I think it has something to do with Bloemfontein.

no he had a plan

you know in a war they say theres a bullet with your name on it* well tolkein had carved his name into a bullet, so he had the bullet with his name on it, therefore he wont be shot 😛

*meaning that if there was a bullet just for you your going to die anyway, so do it heroicly, going over the top (somme), if theres not a bullet with your name on it, your not going to die in the war so go over the top, youll be safe.....all bull i know, but it was to get up soldiers morale

yeah tolkien lived in a far worse of world than we ever did. Seeing both world wars and their impacts must have been tramatic and ultimately inspirational. And we think that the little , nobody terrorists are things to be afraid off????????

We should remember the horror those years tolkien and those other geniuses lived in and shouldn't complain about ours( life in terror my ass, too many people are wusses these days).
okok me going political again and i have been warned so i will stop.

*applauds fini*

exactly, todays world is just people taking their religion to the extreme

but i dont see how killing yourself and others is good for your religion

i definitely agree about the hitlerv - sauron connection. if you have ever heard hitler speak(and i do understand that what he stood for was wrong and unjust and in no way do i stand for what he believed in) but yeah if u have ever heard one of his speeches or seen a televised speed his is an awesome public speaker and has the ability i believe like saruman to basically bend a mind with words

hitler still holds a strong grip on society today aswell thats what power he had, there are still nazi parties about....just not the great extent they were in that day and age, i believe the reason for this IS his voice, we watched a tape of him in school and after it for the whole day i could just hear his voice repeating in my head.....i believe that THAT was to a lesser extent what the nazi party felt.....also what bilbo gollum and frodo felt of the ring

yeah unfortunately for many hitler had mastered the power of speech. on another point though i definitely agree about the language thing saying that was what helped create LOTR and middle earth and so on. i also believe it is what makes LOTR so special and unique for example as opposed to just mentioning a door gaurd at the hall of rohan tolkien mentions Hama captain of the guard and he also mentions how he dies later creating thousands of tiny stories inside 1 story. thats what makes it so popular so interesting and that is why thousands are still able to speak endlessly about it as we are right now.

sorry got abit carried away there and a bit off subject but nevertheless i stick by my post