 the poem is “groping along the tunnel” trying to navigate his way along the dark trench labyrinth, much like the fellowship does when they are first trapped in the mines after a sea creature entraps them in the mines (Line 1). As the narrator continues on his dark journey he runs into a dead body. This World War I trench experience motif is in the Mines of Moria, in The Fellowship of the Ring when the fellowship comes upon Balin’s tomb after stumbling through the tunnels and discovering the other remains. They are caught by just as much surprise as the narrator in “The Rear-Guard.” As the narrator is in the tunnel he mentions “muttering creatures underground” (Line 21). These “muttering creatures” can be seen in Moria with the sounds the fellowship hears when Pippin makes a ruckus and alerts the Orcs of their presence. A drumming begins and the Orcs make a stir and become the “muttering creatures.” The fear of the “blackening wound” and mutilation of the body felt by the narrator in “The Rear-Guard” when he finds the body in the trenches is then brought to life in Tolkien’s work with the war injured looking Orcs that are inhuman in their appearance (Line 18). The drums emphasize the sound of a heartbeat feeling heavy as fear crawls through a soldier or a member of the fellowship. Having the Orcs making these noises as a warning of their approach, gives living breath to the fears portrayed in “The Rear-Guard.”
By allowing the fellowship to escape the mines and the Orcs being unable to follow them into the daylight of Lorien, Tolkien sends the message that the Orcs have no natural right to leave the hell-like mines for a better place. The Orcs and the upheaval the fellowship leave behind in Moria are similar to the images the narrator in “The Rear-Guard” encounters when he exits the tunnels. They, like the narrator of “The Rear-Guard,” are “unloading hell behind them” (Line 25). Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum Est” shares in this hell description of trench warfare through the image of fire that repeats itself in the poem with lines like “the haunting flares” and “like a man on fire” (Lines 3 & 12). The fire imagery is accented in the Moria passage with Balrog, a creature that is made of fire and rock. This is the “hell” the fellowship leaves behind them as they fight their way out (Sassoon line 25). By having the fellowship leave this “hell” and go directly to the complete opposite landscape of Lorien. The lands of Lorien are denied to the Orcs and are then indicating a denial of availability to the lower classes. Tolkien asserts the fellowships separation from the dangerous matters of Moria through Lorien. This construes a feeling of detachment from the horrors that Sassoon is trying to face. Instead of the fellowship being altered by their encounters with the Orcs in Moria, they stay above them and unsympathetic towards their enemy. As a result the ‘other’ never gets more than one dimension, implying the Orcs’ inferiority to the fellowship who get to leave the Orcs behind in what are the fantasy trenches or hell-like lair. This is opposite of the messages of breaking class barriers and the blurring of good and evil that Sassoon tries to promote.
Both share in a hell-like description which in Tolkien’s case makes the Orcs and the Mines of Moria even more evil, perpetuating the binary of good and evil as polarized. Wilfred Owen’s poem “Miners” continues along the lines of Tolkien’s imagery of fire and brimstone in Moria, painting a picture of it being the “hell” they “unload behind them” (Sassoon line 25). The poem is explicitly about miners that died in an explosion in an attempt to dig tunnels under enemy trenches. It already sounds like the dwarves who dug deep into the pits of Moria and unleashed the Balrog, fire and rock itself. Owen brings images of fire, coal, dark pits, embers and burning. It paints a similar picture to the mines of Moria and its depictions of the Orcs “coal” eyes and the “dark pits” full of “fire” and “ember” (Owen 1973). This poem about explosions and comrades lost has the same descriptions as 