An interesting subject,
Mithadan. Why indeed did Tolkien choose to insert these enigmatic and fascinating beings into his works? It seems at odds with the Professor's desire to neatly catalogue everything from etymologies to family trees. As you have stated, most of the beings in Tolkien's created world have a definite place and we feel certain that they belong. Even the balrog of Moria, which could have been one of the more mysterious creatures in LOTR, is given a credible back story.
In the opinion of this humble platypus, there were possibly two reasons why we have enigmas which don't have such a fixed sense of belonging.
Firstly, Tolkien wanted his world to have mysteries to make it more fantastic and more interesting. It would be a little boring if everything was neatly explained, if every creature's origin were known. Perhaps he was harking back to a time in our world when we were not so sure ourselves of the world surrounding us. Even the noble platypus was an enigma at one point, and thought to be a taxidermist's practical joke. Now they have been catalogued by scientists as a monotreme, neatly filed away in the collective mind of the scientific community, and some of the magic alas! seems to have been lost.
Scientific progress has seen us discover the reason why the dinosaurs perished, as well as the evolutionary origin of birds, and we have now mapped the human genome and successfully cloned animals. To Tolkien's mind, maybe, the modern world would be a little sterile and cold, and no longer magical. That could be the reason why certain people are obsessed with inexplicable phenomena such as the legendary Loch Ness monster or sasquatch.
Tolkien, in his invented world, took the enigmatic to new heights. Tom Bombadil is not simply a legend on the periphery of our heroes' consciousnesses; he is a living, breathing character with no explainable background. Something could probably be dredged out of
Letters to explain why Tolkien made him so, but I don't know the work well enough to do so. What I do recall though, is that he was
left as an enigma, purposefully. I put it to you that the first of the two reasons why Tolkien chose to do so, was that to explain something takes away the magic of it. By some wonderful coincidence, the Björk song I am listening to at the moment has a similar idea:
Quote:
so don't make me say it
it would burst the bubble
break the charm
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Secondly, and this is pure guesswork, I would say that Tolkien lacked either the time or the inclination to explain absolutely everything. As Gandalf says,
Quote:
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"the long explanations needed by the young are wearying"
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Yes, there are giants in Middle Earth. They stride along moors or hurl rocks, as the mood takes them. Is any further explanation really necessary? There are nameless things that gnaw the earth below Caradhras; to keep them nameless maintains the horror element.
Tolkien once remarked that certain people want to know more about the geography of Middle Earth, while others want tunes to go along with the songs, and so on. He could not possibly have satisfied all of the Tolkien information junkies out there in one lifetime. He did the best that he could in providing background information and stories, and better than any other author of fiction could ever hope to achieve; the man's imagination and craft were incomparable. You could argue perhaps that the
Star Wars saga is more complete in terms of back stories for characters, but that has come about through the works of countless authors churning out books, comics, cartoons, etc. which, as not the work of George Lucas, can never be taken as canonical anyway. Tolkien was only one (exceptional) man.