Thank you for your thoughtful, knowledgable posts,
Formy! That's exactly what I was looking for when I first started this thread nearly three years ago. Though your information is not likely to convert me from "by grace alone"
, I find it very helpful for understanding Tolkien's frame of mind and giving necessary background to this story.
I've been going through this tale and "Smith" intensively, preparing a paper for the German Tolkien Seminar, and for the first time, I had this thought:
What do you think was Parish's purgatorial experience? He doesn't seem to have needed the Workhouse as a labour-learning process, since he was already proficient at practical work. When the two men meet in what is to become Niggle's Parish, he is the one now absorbed in simply looking at things, so obviously he has by then learned to see and recognize beauty - something that he couldn't in life before death. So was he perhaps sent to an art school division to catch up on his deficiencies? Or was his training learning to sit still, not being active himself?
The two men remind me of the Biblical sisters Martha and Mary - one always practical and busy, the other one listening attentively.
The only actual information we have about the interim is that Parish also heard the Voices, since he mentions the Second Voice. So of necessity any conclusions we draw are speculative - which has never stopped us from having great discussions!
