Beorn

[davem]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

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.

I think you'd really need to address that question to Tolkien himself. It seems to me that was his problem, & the reason we didn't get a completed Silmarillion (but see Rateliff: http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2007/06...marillion.html) - he was too concerned with explaining everything & providing a logical explanation - the whole 'Myths Transformed' farrago is confirmation of that. I think your point stands as far as TH is concerned. Beorn doesn't require explanation in the world of TH (Rateliff suggests he was in there as much because the young Tolkien's all loved bears as much as because Tolkien himself wanted to introduce an 'echo' of the Berserkers into his tale) but he does require an explanation in terms of the greater world of LotR & The Sil - simply because in that world things are explained - or Tolkien drives himself crazy trying to explain them: look at the knots he tied himself (& his readers) in in his attempts to account for Orcs.

In TH things pop up, whether cockerney Trolls, tra-la-la-lallying Elves, skin changers, 'gollums' with magic rings or maiden eating dragons. Its a fairy tale world & pretty much anything is thrown in without need of explanation - & we accept it all without question. LotR/The Sil doesn't work that way, & we approach it differently. Personally, I tend to exclude TH from the Legendarium & read it as a stand alone work, & I find I only have any difficulties when I try & make it fit with the the other works.