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sacrafice a good book for a mysterious choppy mess.
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Heh. I think it would be wise here to draw a distinction between striving to interpret what a particular work of art (book, painting, film, etc.) means to you and learning from the experience, as opposed to attempting to dissect something just because you want to look smart.
I tend to prefer the former.
I do not, however, think that the LOTR is one of those books choke-full of "hidden meanings" on the same level as something by Fitzgerald, or Nabokov, to give an example. I don't think the sort of intricacy of the layering of different symbols was Tolkien's style or intention.
At the same time, there is a vast difference between the sort of tricks that
Gatsby is choke-full of, and the way that an author's own ideology and inspiration find their way into his or her work.