I agree very much with your statement that "Tolkien likes to play with the idea
that surface appearances can hide greater and deeper things, and I guess LotR
itself is a perfect example of this." I find it very rewarding to look at the
stories this way.
I would still rather say that the themes of LoTR are inspired by the losses
Tolkien endured than the work being about death and immortality in its own
right, that's at least how I see it. In this way a lot of LoTR is informed and
fuelled by Tolkien's thoughts about death and loss, although I think themes
like power, sacrifice, the relation to nature etc. are more prevalent.
I do not deny, obviously, what you said earlier about creative work and the
unconscious bit involved in it. But knowing what a perfectionist Tolkien was I
couldn't help feeling that he wanted LoTR and the Sil to be more tightly
integrated thematically and tried to make that kind of integration in his own
mind afterwards. It's a common way of making sense of things, and especially so
for
perfectionists.
