Beorn

[William Cloud Hicklin]

When in Middle Earth do men turn into bears? If it's some sort of magic, wouldn't the men of Numenor, the most advanced men, be able to do it? Wouldn't Gondor have an army of giant bear-men? Or more likely, wouldn't Sauron?

Beorn doesn't make sense as a man within the legendarium. No way. The only way I can fit him into the legendarium is to theorize that he is descended from a human who wedded an Ainu who specialized in all things bear related.

Why does he have to fit? Why this obsessive need to systematize everything? Tolkien was creating a world with mysteries and enigmas and unexplained phenomena (just like the real world), not an RPG system.