Hobbit2 - Chapter 06 - Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

I'm not quite sure it is as clear as that, because Tolkien spent some time trying to "redeem" the orcs, at least as far as we can tell in the Letters, which of course are always a private correspondence between two people.

I will throw a wrench into the works, though, and suggest that 'reading backwards' from The Silm to TH won't work. Certainly Tolkien must have been working on his mythology as he was writing TH, but there's nary a mention of hobbits in The Silm which Christopher Tolkien produced, nor in HoMe. TH was an independent story from the Legendarium, as far as I know (and I could be wrong as I'm not the strongest on Silm history.) While the percolation of ideas which Tolkien went through might well have held all stories in balance, I'm not sure we can take things in CT's The Silm and read them into TH. Tolkien certainly struggled after the fact to work TH consistently into LotR, but I'm not sure we can take The Silm to explicate areas which might seem inconsistent with LotR.

I guess you're right here. Although I read somewhere (ie on the Downs) that JRRT started writing TH with THe Sil in mind, so that the first is part of the second (like, for example, the Lay of Leithian is part on The Sil). But at that point The Sil was not like we know it today either. So you're right.