[Child of the 7th Age]

All I am saying (in both this and that other thread ) is that we humans, as both animal and having fëar, are not often able to be at peace being both at once. Tolkien's supreme success with hobbits is that they are happy being both.

Littlemanpoet -

Thanks for that clarification. Stated in those terms, I feel you are right in pointing out the Hobbits' singular ability to accept and appreciate both sides of their nature.

Yet there's one other question I can't help raising. I'm not quite sure how to phrase this, but I'll try. Littlemanpoet - Perhaps your statement about the ragged split in our nature and our inability to accept who we are does not apply equally to all human beings. Perhaps this is something that's more prone to strike so-called modern "educated" men and women, those who feel they've gone beyond man's "more primitive" side and rejected anything that can't be proven rationally.

Yes, I'm talking about folk like us who take pride in intellectual achievement and come to a website to spend endless hours analyzing a piece of literature. (Looks guiltily in the mirror....!) Or other folk who take such joy in being "professionals" that they define their worth in terms of a particular niche they fill in a community. Even more likely victims of the disease would be someone like Howard Bloom or Greer Germaine, who were such great admirers of Tolkien! (In fact I wonder if it's possible to be a 'serious' reader of Tolkien, and not have at least a grudging admiration for those furry-footed Hobbits and their unique dual nature.) Basically, I think that in any situation when one faculty is emphasized to such a degree, something else is in danger of being lost.

We lose touch with part of who we really are: that fellow with the big furry feet who finds delight in small family matters and home-cooked meals. I guess I am looking backward in my own life and remembering human beings who contradict what you've said concerning the great rift in the human soul. I think such people do exist. I grew up in what was a neighborhood where few people had any semblance of higher education. While this was not a rural community, the values that I saw were not too different than those Tolkien depicted in his Shire. There was no deep love of the earth, but there was a consistent joy in small things: family, gossip over the back fence, hearty tankards of ale and simple human interaction (without counting who'd scored a point and who did not). Somertimes I found these things missing in the academic world to which I'd managed to gain admittance.

I don't want to idealize that childhood community beyond the point of recognition. There were limitations in thinking, a narrowness and parochialism that Tolkien himself recognized in Hobbits, and which I wanted to flee. Yet, even today, there are things I glean when I go 'home' to that original community that seem harder to find elsewhere. My 94-year old mom, for example, knows who she is and accepts her place in life, which to me is an essential ingredient of any Hobbit. I wish I had a little more of that quality, and a little less of the great divide! (No wonder poor Frodo couldn't live in the Shire any more! I can't think of any character who had a greater divide than he did by the end of the book.)

I think Tolkien modelled Hobbits on real people he had encountered in his own childhood: simple but extraordinary people who had managed to bridge the two parts of the human soul. They were small and limited in many respects but they were also very real. What strikes me about Tolkien is that he was able to appreciate both sides of his own nature in an extraordinary way. He had an amazing mind, but he never stopped appreciating the simplest of joys. There are stories told how the old gentleman professor would stop and strike a conversation with the gardener or porter in the college and have an earnest discussion on one thing or another. Yes, I'm sure there were "class differences" but how many of us treat other people like people even to this degree.

We've come a long way from death and tombstones.....or have we? To understand why those tombstones aren't there in the Shire, we have to acknowledge that a large piece of Hobbit nature was focused on the simple task of living in the present. That meant history was minimized and forgotten. So too was the need to dwell on cosmic questions of mortality and immortality such as the Numenoreans had done. Since Hobbit life focused on the here and now, why erect fancy memorials to the deceased? Whatever came afterwards, you would simply accept....

Hey, thanks for those ideas, Littlemanpoet . You got me thinking, probably more for myself than anyone else's benefit. But it was interesting.