One cannot truly defeat the enemy with the enemy’s tools. The ends cannot justify the means, even if the cost of that virtue is ruin and destruction. Tolkien knew that the alternative, the grasp for ultimate power, meant that the contest between good and evil would be transformed into a contest between evils. The raw quest for power will corrupt all it touches.

This is one of the central themes of The Silmarillion, Tolkien’s tale of the First Age of Middle Earth and the elves’ great war against Morgoth, an enemy even darker and more powerful than Sauron. While the elves are capable of great acts of courage and building a civilization of great beauty, they’re haunted and ultimately doomed by the Oath of Fëanor, a declaration of eternal enmity against anyone who would withhold the Silmarils (three great jewels) from Fëanor or any of his sons.

But that disaster brings us to the other indispensable elements of Tolkien’s work, the elements that are utterly missing from Martin’s—faith and hope. “Lord of the Rings,” Tolkien once wrote, “is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.” At the same time, he also said that it “is neither allegorical nor topical.” In fact, Tolkien said that he “cordially dislike[s] allegory in all its manifestations.”

So don’t read his work like you C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. There is no direct Aslan/Christ figure in Tolkien’s books. But you cannot read this, one of the most famous passages in Lord of the Rings, and not see where Tolkien’s heart lies.