Hilarious. I think the major thematic element of the story is that the industrial revolution was already happening and the societies that rejected it were fail

Hilarious. I think the major thematic element of the story is that the industrial revolution was already happening and the societies that rejected it were failing. The hobbits were basically isolationists and it simply took the scouring to reach them. The Rohirrim were basically obsolete. Living in wooden houses in the hills and plains raising horses and sheep. Gondor, once the great home of civilization and a beacon of prosperity, mostly destitute and hardly able to resist the influence of Mordor. The elves were almost completely drained, having fought a war of attrition against a superior enemy for thousands of years. They were preparing to emigrate from the land at the beginning of the stories as there were so few of them left. Mordor was where the industrial revolution was under way. Sauron had clearly united several nations and had been involved in trade with them for hundreds of years. He’d shown the orcs and humans that followed his cause how to make coke, mine coal, and produce the vast quantities of goods required to field an army. Nothing they made was the quality attributed to the crafts of elves, dwarves, and the other ancient civilizations but they made up for it in numbers, in trade, etc. Ultimately though the reason Gandalf didn’t have a big rifle was because the major theme of the story was one of resisting industrial revolution. Tolkien often spoke of, “the Machine.” I think he was essentially an anti-capitalist.