Hi, thanks for your insights into an enigmatic and perpetually fascinating character.

I think that while Tolkein's comments have weight (he wrote the thing after all) The Lord of the Rings is an example of a work becoming self-propelled and leaping out of its author's hands like a runaway vehicle. It by now is as much a cultural force as a written work, having its own ideas so to speak; a long way of saying that readers' interpretations are not necessarily invalid though not specifically validated by Tolkein.