Just like Frodo failed on his quest to destroy the ring himself, so has Tolkien failed to make Middle Earth a mythology for England, or of England itself. The limitation of mixed cultures (unless it was an evil mix) was it's downfall. He failed to realize that human beings have been intermixing and migrating for over 100,000 years. He failed to realize that not all original settlers of Europe or regions of Middle Earth to include Britain were blonde, blue eyed folks. Too much purism in his races, though I would not go so far to call him a racist. He failed to identify the history of Middle Earth with the real people of the Shire, the Yeomen Farmers. He gave the once lowly longbow of the Yeoman to every "good" race or culture in Middle Earth. I don't think the Romans used Longbows, very not Atlantean like either. Tolkien fell into the trap of writing epic stories of elitists because he had "borrowed" from Beowulf, which he did a great job of. He failed to follow the lines of Chaucer however as he was the first to identify the everyday ordinary person in literature. Not some superhero out on a conquest or to save the world and make a name for himself. Too much of the LoTR focuses on heroic cultures, and heroic men, rather than the 'ordinary' heroes. With a lot of borrowing of different mythologies and languages it is perhaps the downfall for his objective did come with the fact he did not intermix races and culture. Though he was a pluralists in terms of the objective of the quest, but very singular on culture. He made us forget about our reality and great events, and real heroes and legends, this is perhaps the saddest part of one of the greatest pieces of literature ever written. Someday somebody will fill that void and create an en mass frenzy like what happened in Finland. A mythology for Britain, rooted in reality itself and perhaps not copyrighted
