There are [many] explanations for the popularity of [The Lord of the Rings] as anyone who has taught it knows. It's a great story. It has wildly original and interesting characters. It takes place in a delightful world of fantasy. And, finally, it communicates an extraordinary reverence for natural life. Long before ecology became fashionable, the trilogy celebrated the natural wonders of our world: the earth, the water, the trees, the flowers, the other living things that Tolkien lets us commune with…. To me, all of these are good reasons why any young person could enjoy The Lord of the Rings. In fact, so anesthetizing are they that a great many young people have not only willingly suspended their disbelief when reading the trilogy but their critical judgment as well. For, as I intend to show, read critically, The Lord of the Rings is really an Establishment book.

The first of the six crimes against the counter-culture state that the trilogy makes is genocide: it glorifies age and it disparages youth. Not only are the great figures in the book aged, their age is their greatness. (pp. 48-9)

[There are six superior creatures who] represent the greatness of extremely old age [and] Frodo and Aragorn who might be said to represent the virtues of middle-age…. Frodo is not the Marlowe of Conrad's Youth nor Harry Haller, the Steppenwolf. He is a shrewd, practical, cautious, solid citizen of the Shire who achieves a measure of heroism in spite of himself.

That Frodo is not to be seen as a representative of youth is made emphatically clear by Tolkien's treatment of Pippin who is. At twenty-nine the youngest of the Fellowship, Pippin is characterized in volume one as a thoughtless, disrespectful, irresponsible, foolish child…. In short, Tolkien does not seem to trust anyone under thirty, but almost everyone over three hundred.

Now as ignominious as it is to be young like Pippin, at least he is included in the Fellowship. No woman is. For if to be young is to be disestablished, to be female is to be disenfranchised. Accordingly, a second reason why the Lord of the Rings should turn off the young today is its institutional male chauvinism. In the trilogy this chauvinism takes two forms, the virtually total exclusion of women from the main action of the story, including membership in the Fellowship, and secondly the subordinate role that the few women do play, Galadriel excepted.

The Fellowship itself, like the comitatus of the Heroic Age, consists exclusively of males and affirms traditional male values: bravery, strength, loyalty, and above all the love of fellowship. (pp. 49-50)

[Another of the book's basic ideas is blood supremacy. The whole of The Lord of the Rings makes it clear that] your blood is your destiny. This idea, it seems to me, is a third reason why young people today should critically reject the book….

In the trilogy the theme of blood runs strong, deep, and blue. As a result a rigorous caste system exists, a Great Chain of Being for those who prefer euphemism.

The most important example of a caste relationship is, of course, that between Sam and Frodo. Sam treats his Mr. Frodo with unwavering devotion, loyalty, kindness, self-sacrifice, worship, love, and servility. In turn, Frodo treats his servant Sam with unwavering benevolence, paternalism, tolerance, pity, understanding, love, and patronage. In another context their relationship could easily be construed as a parable defending the institution of slavery. (p. 51)

The retainer to lord relationship is a microcosm of the whole social structure of The Lord of the Rings. From the wealthy Bagginses of Bag End to the galloping Rohirrim of Rohan, from the Mirkwood Forest to the Gulf of Lune waters, this land was not made for you and me but for them and theirs.

Implicit in this hierarchic structure is a value that, as all commentators agree, the young today uniformly and overwhelmingly reject—authoritarianism…. Yet somehow The Lord of the Rings has escaped this tidal wave of youthful rebellion.

This authoritarianism, the fourth reason why the trilogy should alienate and not attract its young readers, so completely informs the work that any documentation of it is necessarily arbitrary and selective. (p. 52)

As well as illustrating the great respect for authority which pervades the trilogy, the fall of Boromir … illustrates the two qualities of the book, the fifth and sixth reasons I will discuss, which are most completely and directly in contradiction to the ideals of the young today. I am referring to moral and political absolutism. Because these two are identified, or confused if you will, in the trilogy, as they have been in our lives, I will not attempt to distinguish between them but rather treat them as one overall world view.

The most explicit statement of the moral and political absolutism that informs the work is Aragorn's answer to Eomer's "How shall a man judge what to do in such times?" To convince Eomer that the war with Sauron is indeed a Holy War, that political neutrality is tantamount to moral depravity, Aragorn answers: "As he ever has judged. Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men." In The Lord of the Rings good and ill do not change—shape or sides. (p. 53)

I am saying that in moral and political terms the Lord of the Rings is a monument to all the pious cliches,… all the self-righteous rhetoric, propaganda, and bullshit of the past. The War of the Rings is another war with God-on-our-side. As Tolkien's history tells it, and tells it so well, the cavalry charged and the orcs they fell. And you never ask questions when God's on your side….

Young people are saying everywhere that they have had enough killing in the name of God and Country; that they are sick of body counts of orcs, slopes, Indians, blacks, trolls, or gooks. Young people today should be aghast at, not entranced by, Tolkien's heroes from Rohan who "sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them" and whose "hoofs of wrath rode over" the dead they had slain. Young people today, as Melanie tells us, bleed inside each other's wounds. Young people today sing songs of peace. (p. 54)