Doug,
I am comfortable with your concluding sentences that the conscious explanation by the author may not always tell the whole story and that the reader is free to speculate on the subconscious forces that may be at work in any given literary work, including the Lord of the Rings.
However, like Lord of Angmar, I question the position you take on the Letters as a way to reach that conclusion.
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On this website, certain passages from Letters seem to be regarded as canon. Does this apply to the entire book? Should these personal communications by Professor Tolkien, which I doubt were intended for publication, be accepted at the same level of authenticity as his published works?
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You suggest that the Letters should be removed from the body of writings regarded as canon for several reasons: they are personal communications rather than published writings; as later assessments by the author, they may not be entirely accurate; and, they take away the freedom of the reader to interpret.
The difficult thing about Tolkien is that not all the writings regarded as canon bear equal weight or authority. This is because Tolkien himself never appears to have considered any of his major works (published or not) as definitive or final, and was constantly revising and revisiting. He seems to have viewed Middle-earth as an ongoing process rather than in terms of finished or "published" products. Accordingly, the line between published and unpublished writings is more blurred in Tolkien than in other writers. This is even more the case with the wider Legendarium than with those interpretations set out in the Letters, at least those pertaining to Lord of the Rings. Since the creation and interpretation of Middle-earth was a constantly evolving process beginning about 1917 and continuing through the remainder of the author's life, I don't think we can legitimately remove any piece of it
solely for being of "late" or even "early" vintage (such as the round versus the flat earth issue). There would have to be other factors involved.
It is true that the Letters were personal comunications rather than published writings. However, at least we know they were directly from the author and represented his opinions at that particular moment in time. This is certainly not true of the Silmarillion, for example. Christopher Tolkien accepted certain manuscripts over others without really knowing what his father wanted, and even wrote chunks of certain stories himself. Including the Silmarillion in canon is far more suspect than including the Letters, at least those portions and interpretations that deal with Lord of the Rings. A large portion of HoMe and Unfinished Tales also fall in this more questionable category, since we are dealing with Christopher Tolkien's editorial hand.
As far as the Letters go, I would put more weight on those directly penned by Tolkien that deal with any of the works actually published in his life. Those letters dealing with the Silm are of less weight, since we don't know what JRRT's final preferences were in regard to publication.
By this standard, Tolkien's words on Gollum and the Ring from the Letters are indeed canon. I don't feel we can argue those words away. However many creative interpretations we may arrive at, individually or in these forums, there is only one that the author has stamped with his imprimateur. That doesn't mean we are restricted only to that in our own public discussions or private thoughts. As Bethberry suggests, the text is a living thing, capable of interpretation by the individual reader. As such, there is no need to reinterpret the term "canon" or the particular writings that make up that canon. That is a wholly separate issue.
And, in a strange way, it leads me back to the question I posed earlier on this thread. Would Tolkien even have wanted to see all the variations in HoMe actually set out in print? Should this series be considered part of canon? (I am seeing this as questionable, except perhaps for those items left out of the Appendices that Tolkien clearly wanted to publish---these do have the force of canon, I believe.)
But perhaps the question of HoMe is a separate thread....