Is There a Difference Between Merry's Story and Everyone's?

The story becomes not so much merry's story as everyone's story, and the story of everyone's foiled yearnings. And we do go into, at least long john salmon's mind, as he's kind of thinking, why did i go to a party? I could be la swimming and doing my ablutions. The whole story is kind of about innocence coming back to mary, you know, and whether or not she wants to lose her innocence. Because there's a coarseness there to village life, ye?