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Originally Posted by Bb
Tolkien, much earlier than most of us, came face to face with contemplating the tentativeness of life and the certainty of his own death. In response, he seems to have devoted his creative life to exploring the quality of goodness and the preciousness of life.
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Can he really do that thoroughly without showing us the true effects of war/violence though? We don't actually meet those little Hobbits from the Shire who lost their lives in the Battle of Bywater, and nor do we know how they lost their lives. They're just a faceless statistic written up on a memorial.
I know I'm going back to what davem has been arguing, but I do think that we aren't able to fully comprehend their sacrifice unless we either know a little of them or the way they died.