would pull out my Freudian analysis, but it was deemed too explicit for a
family board.
I think any book as popular as LotR means many things to many people, all of
which cannot have been intended by Tolkien. And in a strange way, Tolkien
intended for that to happen, and therefore kept his story non-topical and
universal. It is not surprising, therefore, that readers who are not at
all religious embrace LotR, despite the fact that Tolkien was religious, or
that people from all across the political spectrum find something to like in
LotR.
But sometimes I do think analyses that ignore the intent of the author become a
sort of game. When Freudian analysis goes too far, for example, it
becomes an intellectual version of Beavis and Butthead giggling because someone
says something perfectly innocent, to which they give a dirty meaning.
And the same thing can happen with analyses based on Jung, or Joseph Campbell,
or Derrida, or Marx, or feminism, or conservatism, or any other school of
criticism. After a while, it can become hard to tell the difference
between a serious scholar and a conspiracy theorist. And it can be hard
to distinguish between a great work of literature and tea leaves or chicken
entrails.
“I dislike Allegory - the conscious and intentional allegory - yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language. (And, of course, the more 'life' a story has the more readily will it be susceptible of allegorical interpretations: while the better a deliberate allegory is made the more nearly will it be acceptable just as a story.)” (From Tolkien Letter # 131.)
