This essay serves as a guardian, as a true friend of the reader, encouraging them to recognize that if they identify with the hobbits in this book, to be wary of the text trains the reader to become someone who would mistake their actual proud moments of self-decision, self-realization… of bravery, of the genuine kind, for something evil or bad, and mistake the text’s inscriber — the author — as someone who actually isn’t mostly afraid to see these traits manifest in the reader, while of course always pretending to himself the very opposite. The essay, as guardian of the reader, doesn’t confront the reader with this, but nevertheless still basically presumes that the reader already has a built-in inclination to “be brave” in ways that don’t arose their internal censors, internal censors already built-in to their brain to deter them away from ways of thinking, overt “actions,” that would arose threatens of ferocious parental attack or full-out casting off; abandonment. So the true danger of the book is actually not really the way it TRAINS the reader, but the way it reinforces aspects of their world outlook that already malformed, and need, rather, the touch of true guardians, true friends, to learn to snap out of it. If the text itself doesn’t provide it, then the essay implies that text plus critic, text plus GUARDIAN, be thought of as the REQUIRED minimum for much textual contact, textual involvement, to be possibly presumed to be nourishing; promote emotional evolution.