 Of all of JRR Tolkien's great works I probably dislike the lord of the rings the most. While the hobbit is a fantastic fairy tale and the Silmarillion is a mythic cosmology, and the Akallabeth brilliantly turns the human existential drama on its head (more on that later) the lord of the rings merges those two worlds to essentially tell the story of a servant who selflessly and heroically saves the world to claw his way up to the middle class. Lowly servant Samwise Gamgee saves the world out of moralistic devotion to his master and is then patted on the back, given a ceremonial title of mayor (which Tolkien actually goes out of his way in the "concerning hobbits" forward to emphasize has no actual power or influence) and then goes right back to being a servant gardener only now he not only has to be a worthy servant he has a heroic reputation that precedes him to live up to. All the while the rest of upper Hobbit society gets to go right back to blissful ignorance atop the social order. It's the ultimate conservative capitalistic morality tale. Dangling the carrot of 15 minutes of fame in front of the lower classes as incentive to work hard (do that the poor will save their bacon when things do go bad) but makes it clear there is no actual means of raising one's station in life no matter how great your accomplishments.
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