Tolkien's Own Recorded Word

Tolkien had some strong views on the genre of allegory and he didn't seem to think that was what he's doing. He says explicitly, I set out to write a good story, which has the purpose of teaching morals in the real world but primarily needs to be interpreted as a story. Tolkien is not even terribly opposed to allegory in itself for its own uses. But it's an allegory in that expanded sense of like, well, we know that certain things symbolize certain things but it's not just a sort of hidden message thought line.