“In a larger sense, it is, I suppose, impossible to write any ‘story’ that is not allegorical in proportion as it ‘comes to life’;  since each of us is an allegory, embodying in a particular tale and clothed in the garments of time and place, universal truth and everlasting life.”

        — J. R. R. Tolkien, letter to W. H. Auden, June 7, 1955