I understand your view.
In my mind, when I was reading the book, I knew the dangers were there - but they were described in a rather light-hearted fashion.
Remember in Return Of The King the scene where Frodo looks at he fallen king' statue, which was overgrown with flowers ? Now that's a thing I don't believe many people wold have kpt in mind. For me, this is one of the greatest scenes, one ith the gretest motion in it. As I was imagining this wole scene, with a last glimpse of the sun before it went don -
just in time ! enlighning the fallen statue of that former King, meanwhile noticing that flowers had been growing around the fallen head, just o that they form a crude kind of crown - and just then ! - the sun vanishes behing "the west" - this is one of the greatest moments I had when reading the book.
But I don't think that man people have remembered this scene as well. They rather remember the action, the battles, the … I don't know what. Everything but this "crown".
And this i imho what makes Tolkien so great for me : His descrptive language - but not over-descriptive - his way of laying out (pun intended
) Middle-Earth … Parts of the stories read like travelling literature. His description of everything so it makes srnse, and the hint - the mre hint ! - to something far greater lying and looming in the background …
There is something that cannot be grasped visually. Authors do write something that's "alive" only in the reader's heads. "Head-cinema", as we call it in German language.
Let me try to explain it with the words of Sir Terry Pratchett, from his novel "Hogfather" :
"What would have happened if you hadn't saved him [the Hogfather, Discworld's version of Santa Clause] ?"
"The sun would not have risen."
"Really ? Then what would have happened, pray ?"
"A mere ball of flaming gas would have illuminated the world."
"All right, I'm not stupid. You say that humans need …
fantasies to make life bearable."
"Really ? As if it was some kind of pink pill ?
No. Humans need fantasies to be human.
To be the place where the Falling Angel meets the Rising Ape."