> It's a fantasy novel written primarily for entertainment

On one hand, you're right.

On the other, it's unfair to Tolkien and to the scholars who study his work. He spent a lot of his life and effort towards developing this world, he deeply pondered the moral implications and theology of his world, and for all his denial of there being any analogies to the real world, you can see he considered them (he did describe modern men in the modern world as "Orc-ish", etc).

All of this to say we cannot just dismiss it as "it's a fantasy novel".