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Originally Posted by davem
I've said it before, but I'll repeat myself. We need to leave our baggage on the threshhold as much as we can, forget trying to discover 'sources', interpreting it in the light of psychology or comparative myth, stop trying to find Biblical analogies, allegories of WWII, political messages or anything else. Let Frodo be Frodo, Gandalf be Gandalf & Middle-earth be simply Middle-earth - just as it was when we first found it. Its a bit more difficult the second, third, or even twentieth, time around, but its worth the effort. What we gain from a 'serious' reading is rarely worth having - in my opinion, of course.
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So very right davem
I wish I did this for the first time I read LotR and the Sil... at first, I thought Tolkien was contradicting himself because I found some stuff I thought were allegories. This was some three years ago, and then due to my time-eating (academic) life and because I read works by other authors I did not have much time for Tolkien. Then just some time ago I decided to reread the Sil again, and the allegories I thought I saw I let disapear. I thought again that that time, it was like reading and appreciating Tolkien again.