XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: tomek@do.not.spam   
      
   Take into consideration that the *tale* of the Ring was written to   
   resemble the ancient Arthurian legends of Holy Grail and old   
   Celt-Anglo-Saxon fairy-tales and poems. The most important thing in such   
   tales was keeping in anxiety and fear/horror etc. LOTR has all these   
   features except one: logic. But it is not Greek tragedy or criminal   
   story where everything is taken seriously. It's a fairy tale in which   
   everything might happen (for instance sudden intervention of Valars on   
   request of Gandalf, so Sauron had to think about that also) in which   
   feelings are of greater value than mind and logic. Why? Because it is   
   all that *tale* is about: heart is in the center, the rest is just a   
   background.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)