J.R.R. Tolkien’s vision of a declining Gondor offers a warning for the troubled West—but also a message of hope that renewal remains possible. The Despair and Hope of J. R. R. TolkienThe novelist J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) repeatedly insisted that his epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings, written from 1937 to 1949, was not allegorical. But some scholars have argued otherwise, detecting contemporary, 20th-century influences in his storytelling. Tolkien fought at the nightmarish Battle of the Somme in World War I. He witnessed the slaughter of the youth of Europe in the trenches that lived with him the...