[Imladris]

I will attempt to answer your post (which is a brilliant idea as always).

I suppose that there are many things that make LotR real. I do not believe that Oscar Wilde had it right, though and this is why I think so. Books are like words. Either they are true, or they are not true.

What makes a book real, I believe, is if it speaks truth -- if it tells the truth about the universe. That's why books/stories (think The Sting) that make heroes out of bad guys leave an unsatisfying taste in the mouth. It's because they aren't true. Bad guys can never and will never make good role models.

I think that is why Lord of the Rings feels real. How often have we done a good deed and been repayed with loss or badness? Frodo saved the Shire -- yet he could not enjoy it. How often have we tried to do something and failed? Frodo could not throw the Ring into the Mount Doom. He failed.

In short, LotR tells us the evils of war (and life is a war isn't it? There's always fights between individuals [brother/sister squabbles for instance] and among nations), that even though good will (eventually) triumph we all suffer both on a world wide scale and on an individual scale.