I believe that Tolkien was working out a quasi-Christian morality in pagan terms, using a former culture and literary tradition to furnish the scenario to a quest which incorporated the major issues of Life. His landscape is one of utter contrasts, images of good and evil…. The denizens of Tolkien's world fall into two camps, broadly good and bad; and, with a simplicity due to this moral viewpoint, as well as due to the simple characterization in epic, so we find Gandalf ranged against Sauron, Fangorn against Saruman, Sam against Gollum, and Bard against Smaug…. It is thus a dualistic scheme we see, with the ultimate victory to good (the "eucatastrophe"), and in this sense Christian.

Perhaps the most effective of the images representing this Good (or, in Christian terms, Love) is Sam's rehabilitation of the Shire…. [Sam] uses his "magic" creatively, for the good of others, as...