> 
> >Heh.  One wonders why the dwarves chose a hobbit to be their thief, 
> no?  A middle-class, well-to-do hobbit, a bunch of 
> poor-but-noble-descended dwarves
> >(at least Thorin was, but I thought the rest might have been, 
> too)... hmm.  I feel a classist reading of Tolkien coming on.  
> >
> >darkelf, probably will make me unpopular
> 
> Why?  English society was (and still is to a certain extent) 
> stratified and
> very much class-conscious.  Tolkien couldn't help but be affected by 
> that.

Affected!
It was the warp and weft of his existence. He probably didn't think that
much about it, period.
Simply the Way Things Work (and even corrective measures through out
history did (and do) simply substitute different names (and sometimes
faces) for/into the stratification; but the stratification itself
remains
-- though in some cultures the border between is more permeable.....

=shrug= tygress

Thank you!!  I was thinking something along those lines and couldn't for
the life of me come up with the words. You're exactly right. Even under
Communism, you ended up with an elite and the masses, and some that were
inbetween.

Laurie pleased to see someone assembled my thoughts for me Phoenix


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