[davem]

Originally Posted by Fordim

but in the Shire, in the incident of the Scouring and its immediate aftermath, I just don’t see any of that. I find the whole incident an extraordinarily purgative/healing (even cathartic) process of regeneration: of the turn from good to better, through momentary worse.

Ok, but if we go back to the Prologue we find:

Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people, more numerous formerly than they are today; for they love peace and quiet and good tilled earth: a well-ordered and well-farmed countryside was their favorite haunt. They do not and did not understand or like machines more complicated than a forge-bellows, a water-mill, or a hand-loom, though they were skillful with tools. Even in ancient days they were, as a rule, shy of 'the Big Folk', as they call us, and now they avoid us with dismay and are becoming hard to find.

'They avoid us with dismay & are becoming hard to find.' Maybe the Hobbits, after the War & the defeat of Saruman felt they had entered a Golden Age of living 'happily ever after', but Tolkien knew better, & wasn't going to let his readers get away with not facing the truth that what happens at the end of the story would be the case forever. He makes sure we'll read that its all over now, by putting it at the start of the book, & not tucking it away in one of the appendices.

The interesting thing is that the defeat of Saruman is only an apparent defeat - they destroy the wizard himself, but actually he brings about their permanent destruction - he's the serpent in their Garden - its what he symbolises with his ''mind of metal & wheels'' that seals their fate - Just as Sauron is not fianlly defeated but remains as a spirit of malice to corrupt men's hearts, so 'Saruman' remains as the spirit of the Machine. The Hobbits ultimate tragedy is foreboded in his appearance in the Shire. And while Frodo may believe Saruman has lost all power & that his words:

'Whoever strikes me shall be accursed. And if my blood stains the Shire, it shall wither & never be healed.'

the Shire does wither. Saruman's 'poison', the poison of 'Machine' thinking, control & coercion of nature rather life in harmony with it is the seed that grows from the spilling of Saruman's blood.

There is a darkness at the end of the story - its the 'shadow' cast by all that 'light & joy' perhaps. However wonderful it all may be, for Frodo its not any kind of Utopia, & Sam by the end longs for the Sea. The story ends with Sam coming home 'as day was ending once more'. After the Scouring there is a brief reward for labour spent, but its no more than that. It will all pass away - after all, as we know, Hobbits are 'becoming hard to find'.