Who put all these elves in my hobbits?

[rpgdemon]

Originally Posted by Shyria Dracnoir

It's noted that Tolkien thought of the world of Middle-Earth as a sort of mythical past for our own planet, and the retreat of these more mystical elements sort of supports it.

Yeah, I have a friend who's really into the Lord of the Rings supplementary stuff, and he was telling me about how eventually the stuff leads into our world, and WWII actually happens sometime in the ninth age, or something?

Originally Posted by Aerozord

Bombadil was never a fully formed idea to start with. Tolkien himself said he couldn't explain what his purpose was in the story, only that he felt something would be missing with his removal otherwise he wouldn't have been left in.

I'm betting he was just an idea he wanted to use so he tossed him in without much regard to his nature in the grand mythos

Didn't Bombadil come from a short story he wrote, originally, with no ties to the Lord of the Rings? I honestly don't remember where I heard this, but I thought I did, somewhere. Also, I feel like if he was taken out, the entire book would feel far too tense and as if there was no way the Hobbits could have survived far enough to hit Elrond.