Rosebury noted that much of the work, especially Book 1, is largely descriptive rather than plot-based; it focuses mainly on Middle-earth itself, taking a journey through a series of tableaux - in the Shire, in the Old Forest, with Tom Bombadil, and so on. He states that The circumstantial expansiveness of Middle-earth itself is central to the work's aesthetic power. Alongside this slow descriptiveness is the quest to destroy the Ring, a unifying plot line. The Ring needs to be destroyed to save Middle-earth itself from destruction or domination by Sauron. Hence, Rosebury argued, the book does have a single focus: Middle-earth itself. The work builds up Middle-earth as a place that readers come to love, shows that it is under dire threat, and - with the destruction of the Ring - provides the eucatastrophe for a happy ending. That makes the work comedic rather than tragic, in classical terms; but it also embodies the inevitability of loss, as the elves, hobbits and the rest decline and fade. Even the least novelistic parts of the work, the chronicles, narratives and essays of the appendices, help to built a consistent image of Middle-earth. The work is thus, Rosebury asserted, very tightly constructed, the expansiveness and plot fitting together exactly.