My take-away, here, is that 8 years ago he could actually form a sentence.
Honey this is an Applebee's, shit wherever you want.
Most Hispanic people are highly balkanized and consider themselves to be "the good hispanics".
They are ripe to adopt fascism because their identity was forged by a system of Spanish-Catholic authoritarianism.
My GF is a pool cleaner and once got written up for sending a customer a picture of dead pigeons that were in their yard.
The customer called the office screaming that she sent the pictures "to be mean."
Turns out these people had pest control out on their property to "remove" all the frogs because the frogs were "keeping them awake at night", and the birds took the bait instead.
Yes, these folks were filthy rich and entitled.
Here's one for you: "an apron" used to be "a napron".
Linguists call this sort of change Rebracketing
"Works like email. Like how nobody owns email."
This is some hobbit-level shit.
Tom represents the incomplete knowledge of mankind and our pre-modern inability to firmly grasp the natural world we live in (and to some extent our continued struggle).
The fantasy world of Middle-Earth is in most ways supernatural to our own. So how much more incomplete would our understanding and knowledge of it been?
Tolkien was a professor of language and mythology and steeped in the ancient epics of the Anglo-saxons and Norse cultures. His career was putting together what these people knew and how they saw the world, but also what they couldn't understand and how they explained their ignorance.
Others here are hinting at what Tom is, but not why he is. He's a manifestation of ignorance. That's why pinning him down is so tricky. It's like pointing at a shadow with a flashlight.
It's a big ask, but Empathy.
It's a file.
Fine dining is so weird.