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Yet Tolkien, through Frodo, seems to be saying that 'spiritual' growth merely brings sadness, resignation, & a sense of failure, at least within the world, & so, only has any value 'beyond the World' . In other words, only religious belief, faith in something beyond the world can give meaning to our suffering here. So, athiests actually gain nothing through suffering. Or to put it another way, unless you accept the existence of God, then the only result of extreme suffering in this world is that you will end up messed up emotionally & so broken that your life won't be worth living.
Perhaps this explains why Tolkien, for all the horror & loss he experienced on the Somme, never lost his faith, refused to give it up, as so many others did - he felt that only God could give meaning to what he'd seen, & to his life after.
So, for an athiest, LotR offers a cop out - there's no hope of happiness within the world, so Tolkien offers a deus ex machina. Because if you remove the spiritual dimension from ME, you have the story of Frodo being slowly destroyed until he dies.
It also implies that the other Hobbits, Sam, Pippin, Merry, et al are not happy, but spiritually ignorant. If the way into the West requires the kind of 'spiritual growth' Frodo has to go through, then how is it that Bilbo, Sam & Gimli pass into the West at the end without going through that degree of suffering? And if they can get there without experiencing the degree of suffering & purification Frodo does, then that implies that Frodo's suffering is not necessary to pass beyond the circles of the world - which means his suffering cannot be justified as the only way to gain Paradise. Which strengthens the sense of 'wrongness' about it, even if it is 'like things are in the world'
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