It's perhaps relevant that, when Tolkien rewrote the first chapters of The Hobbit to match the LR, a person to whom he showed it commented, 'it's not bad, but it's not The Hobbit!' Precisely. An effort to 'darken' it or whatever would be a betrayal of the spirit of the book.
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The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it.
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