[Schmendrick]

I don't usually answer questions that require writing long posts, since english isn't my mothertongue and also because I'm not "a Tolkien-expert". But this time I thought I'd write down some of my thoughts.
Actually, I quite agree with Birdland. I think Tolkien might not have created these "gated communities" deliberately. I'd rather think that he had been influenced by the old texts that he read and just forwarded the models presented there to his own stories (quite unconsciously).
Also - or in consequence- I don't know if one can think that Middle-Earth is supposed to be seen as a "model-society"; I think it rather is a mixture of these old models and the world as it was at Tolkien's time( even if "the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex"). At least "xenophobie" for one, marked Tolkien's period greatly. And personally, I have always thought that there is much criticism of xenophobie in the LOTR, for example in the way that the Hobbits of the Shire think that those " on the wrong side of the Brandywine River" are "queer" (and no doubt, those think the same about the hobbits of the Shire...) etc.
Well, this became really confusing! What I mean is that the societies per se are probably not meant to be "models", but rather the behaviour of the central figures, who fight the prejudices and cross the borders(some obvious examples: Legolas&Gimli, Beregond&Pippin etc).
Hope you could understand something about my english! [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]