[At] college bookstores all across the country, students who formerly pounced on The Catcher in the Rye and Lord of the Flies are passing them up in favor of a new Lord, The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien. The king of the campus novels is dead. Long live the king. (p. 130)
The Hobbits and their buddies are almost wholly good and, with one exception, light of skin. And no one has much more psychological depth than Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. There seems to be no allegorical meaning to the trilogy. At least the author denies there is, and he also denies that World War II impinged on his plans for the cycle. If The Lord of the Rings has any message at all, it may be that good can win in conflict with evil, but that good is irreparably changed by the conflict. But even reading that much into the books may be reading too much, since they are in essence nothing more than fairy tales, grown up and grown exceedingly lengthy, escapist and nonintellectual.
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