Tolkien's ambiguity, in his Middle-earth fiction, in his literary analysis of fantasy, and in his personal statements about his fantasy, has attracted the attention of critics, who have drawn conflicting conclusions about his intentions and the quality of his work, and of scholars, who have examined the nature of that ambiguity.
In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien is carefully ambiguous in diction and in descriptions. These often seem quite concrete, but scholars such as Steve Walker and Nils Ivar Agøy have noted that he leaves wide freedom for the reader to imagine different aspects of Middle-earth, balancing psychological reality against the possibilities of fantasy, and leaving quite vague his descriptions of characters and landscapes. Others, like Catherine Madsen and Verlyn Flieger, consider the way that The Lord of the Rings is at once pagan and Christian, as events arise seemingly naturally but carrying a moral message. Tom Shippey notes that Tolkien made equivocal statements about fantasy, such as in his essay "On Fairy-Stories". Tolkien was similarly equivocal about the nature of evil, as seen through the One Ring, created by the Dark Lord Sauron to dominate the whole of Middle-earth; it behaves both as an inanimate object, and as a thing with constantly evil intent, seeking to enslave whoever bears it. Shippey admired Tolkien's ability to balance between pagan and Christian worlds through literary skill and suggestion.
Tolkien uses punning names to introduce ambiguity, as when a name like Mordor hints at murder. The name Orthanc, uniquely, is explicitly stated to be a bilingual pun between Sindarin ("Mount Fang") and Rohirric ("cunning mind") – which is its real-world meaning in Old English. Other double meanings are introduced around important concepts, as when Frodo nears the Cracks of Doom, he speaks in "a cracked whisper". And he interchanges the name Old Man Willow, suggesting a sentient character, with the description "old Willow-man", leaving open whether this is a tree-like man or a man-like tree, and how different or similar he may be to the rest of the trees in the Old Forest.
A film adaptation inevitably reduces the complexity and ambiguity of a narrative, not least because any object described has to be represented in just one way. The fact that Peter Jackson's film version also chooses to emphasize the metaphor of a journey further simplifies the presentation. On the other hand, music is, like text, inherently ambiguous, and a work like Johan de Meij's 1989 Symphony No. 1 "The Lord of the Rings" can in its way preserve some of the ambiguity of Tolkien's narrative.