The Scouring of the Shire

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

I'm drawn to this thread again because I'm reading "The Scouring of the Shire" for the 6th time.

I'm struck by the modern feel of it compared to the rest of the book. It has a similar feel, to my mind, as "The Grapes of Wrath," "Animal Farm," and other works of the period. Something in the air, I suppose...

Well, "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Animal Farm" both deal with social upheaval and change for the worse, rather than progress - although there was a small coterie led by the Sackville-Bagginses who viewed what they were doing as "progress' in a sense, the same sort of horrid sense that probably drove Tolkien to rage after WWII when old cottages and farms were torn down and pre-fab suburbs of half-arsed housing were slapped up (probably much the same in Britain as in the States after the war), with highways running over what was once fertile fields and forest. It is easy to see the dismay of the returning Hobbits as one and the same as Tolkien's.