[T]hat story was the only thing I have ever done which cost me absolutely no pains at all. Usually I compose only with great difficulty and endless rewriting. I woke up one day (more than 2 years ago) with that odd thing virtually complete in my head. It took only a few hours to get down, and then copy out.
Letter from Tolkien to Stanley Unwin, March 18, 1945 (1)
It’s all too easy to dismiss Tolkien’s delightful and packed little short story “Leaf by Niggle” as an allegory and no more than that. No doubt the story has allegorical aspects, but it’s much more than merely allegory. If you haven’t read it, you should. If you don’t possess a copy, you’ll find it in The Tolkien Reader. If you want to read it now, you’ll find it online here in a pdf version. Go ahead and read it. It’s short.
We’ll wait.
So...are we all on the same page? Shaking off the enchantment of that lovely little story? Okay, let’s get going.
Allegory
We might as well get the obvious out of the way first. Many readers have noticed the correlations between Niggle’s experience and Catholic eschatology: the need to prepare for a journey (death), setting off for that journey without the necessary preparations (being shriven from sin) and landing in the workhouse (purgatory) where, after a prolonged period of hard work, the protagonist is rewarded (going to heaven).
On a superficial level, this interpretation works, and it would be ridiculous to argue otherwise. However, I would observe that it’s not all allegory; “Leaf by Niggle” is much more than something that simple. I’d also argue that, although it possesses allegorical overtones, it’s not really an allegory. Characters don’t populate allegories—that’s a job for types, anthropomorphized representations of ideals. (See Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Langland’s Piers Plowman, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress for examples of allegories. See Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Muen’s fabulous Roman de la Rose and Dante’s even more fabulous Divine Comedy for allegories that grew into something more.)
“Leaf by Niggle” didn’t grow into something more—it has always been something more. Its characters are not types, but people, and Niggle is not a character who gains wisdom or salvation at the end; instead, he’s the same artist he’s always been—what has matured is his vision, and what’s at stake in the story is nothing less than the role of art in the world.
Not an Allegory
It is not really or properly an 'allegory' so much as 'mythical'. For Niggle is meant to be a real mixed-quality person and not an 'allegory' of any single vice or virtue. Of course some elements are explicable in biographical terms (so obsessively interesting to modern critics that they often value a piece of 'literature' solely in so far as it reveals the author, and especially if that is in a discreditable light.)
Letter to Jane Neave, September 8-9, 1962 (1)
Within the confines of the story, Niggle is a man whose public duties distract him from his vision of his tree. The tree occupies increasing real estate in Niggle’s head; as his vision sharpens, its details emerge, its complexity and scope grows, its beauty preoccupies him, and his need to work on it fills all his spare time.
Was there ever a better description of a writer who lives in two worlds at once, or a better metaphor for world building?
It had begun with a leaf caught in the wind, and it became a tree; and the tree grew, sending out innumerable branches, and thrusting out the most fantastic roots. Strange birds came and settled on the twigs and had to be attended to. Then all round the Tree and behind it, through the gaps in the leaves and boughs, a country began to open out; and there were glimpses of a forest marching over the land, and of mountains tipped with snow. (2, p. 88)
That Niggle can follow his vision only in his spare time, and that almost no one else knows about his passion (and the few who do know don’t don’t value it) constrains Niggle as an artist to an ideal that is almost entirely private and likely to remain that way. Certainly Parish sees no value in Niggle’s work. But Parish is an obstinately practical sort, an “earth-grubber” who, at least in his first life, is too busy working and worrying to spare a moment to enjoy art. As opposed to Tomkins, who sees art as useful insofar as it can be used as propaganda. And Tomkins is an thoroughly unpleasant and jealous individual, to whom Atkins says, “[Y]ou had your eye on his house, all the same. That is why you used to go and call, and sneer at him while drinking his tea.” (2, p. 111)
Alas, some people are immune to art.
Parish, despite his selfish and inhospitable relationship to Niggle in the first part of the story, is not immune. Niggle needs Parish to help him complete his vision, and the two work to make their neighborhood complete, reminiscent of Milton’s observation that, in Eden, Adam and Eve worked all day; paradise takes labor. As Niggle has learned to labor, Parish has learned to enjoy.
We can draw a dozen lessons from “Leaf by Niggle.” We can read it as autobiography, which Tolkien himself acknowledges:
[I]t arose from my own preoccupation with the Lord of the Rings, the knowledge that it would be finished in great detail or not at all, and fear (near certainty) that it would be 'not at all.' The war had arisen to darken all horizons. But no such analysis are a complete explanation of a short story."
Letter to Caroline Everett, June 24, 1957 (1)
As Tolkien himself observed, autobiography is only a partial answer. It is undoubtedly a celebration of the joys of the imagination, a satiric send-up of the inartistic types who ignore beauty in the world; it is also a meditation of the role of art.
Nothing that Niggle paints in his first life is practical. Even so, it consumes his imagination to the point that he neglects, not his responsibilities to his neighbors, but his responsibility to himself; in neglecting to prepare for his journey, he makes things much harder for himself. After serving his time in a form of purgatory, he sees his vision fulfilled.
He gazed at the Tree, and slowly he lifted his arms and opened them wide.
“It’s a gift!” he said. He was referring to his art, and also to the result; but he was using the word quite literally. (2, p. 104)
In his second life, Niggle and Parish transform the artist’s private vision into something that is much more:
“It is proving very useful indeed,” said the Second Voice. “As a holiday, and a refreshment. It is splendid for convalescence; and not only for that, for many it is the best introduction to the Mountains. It works wonders in some cases. I am sending more and more there. They seldom have to come back.” (2, p. 112)
Allegorically-inflected, inspired by autobiography, “Leaf by Niggle” is nonetheless mythic, a powerful investment in the integrity of artistic vision, the power of art to change reality. Originally published as a companion to “On Faerie Stories,” you can argue that “Leaf by Niggle” enacts the theories of fantasy that Tolkien posits: the creation of a secondary reality, an escape from and return to the world refreshed, a eucatastrophic ending; despite a bittersweet flavor, an earned happy ending. You can also see it as a rebuke to both poles: art is valuable only in its utility, and art for art’s sake. Instead, it’s about the loneliness of a private artistic vision, the work that it takes to manifest that vision, and the power of that vision to affect others who visit, those who sojourn (in Middle Earth) and are changed by their time there.
References
1. J.R.R. Tolkien. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Humphrey Carpenter. NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.
2. J.R.R. Tolkien. “Tree and Leaf,” in The Tolkien Reader. NY: Ballantine, 1966, pp. 85-112.