[Merri]

I'm rereading the LOTR series right now, and I was just reading Peter Beagle's foreward to the books when I found my answer . . . or at least, an answer I agree with. Here's what he says:

"For in the end it is Middle-earth and its dwellers that we love, not Tolkien's considerable gifts in showing it to us. I said once that the world he charts was there long before him, and I still believe it. He is a great enough magician to tap our most common nightmares, daydreams and twilight fancies, but he never invented them either: he found them a place to live, a green alternative to each day's madness here in a poisoned world. We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers- thieves planting flags, murderers crarrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonization of dreams" - Peter S. Beagle

I think that sums it up pretty well, don't you?