Another face of fairy stories is “the Mirror of scorn and pity towards Man.” The fairy story, Tolkien wrote, “may be used as a Mirour de l’Omme,” as something that shows us ourselves.12 It is this aspect of fairy stories, a major feature of Tolkien’s own fairy story, that displays most obviously and potently the allegorical dimension. In reading The Lord of the Rings, we are seeing a mirror of man; we are seeing ourselves, our neighbors, and the world in which we live reflected back to us in charming and sometimes alarming ways.
