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The One Ring Forums:
Tolkien Topics: Reading Room:
*** Shire Discussion: Bilbo's Shire, Frodo's Shire:
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oliphaunt
Lorien
May 9, 3:51pm
Views: 71003
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*** Shire Discussion: Bilbo's Shire, Frodo's Shire
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Bilbo's Shire in The Hobbit
Bilbo is quite stuck-in with his comfortable Shire life, although he remembers Gandalf's fireworks and his habit of sending quiet lads and lasses off on "mad adventures". When Gandalf intrudes into Bilbo's pastoral existence: something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking stick. - An Unexpected Party Presumably the Shire does not feature mountains, caves, or waterfalls, nor dangers that necessitate carrying a sword for protection.
Bilbo runs down to the inn at Bywater after mere two dozen pages, so there's not much room for descriptions of the Shire. Readers do learn the Shire has The Hill, The Water, and (very) green grass, flowers, roads, a postal service, underground homes, and businesses including a Mill and an Inn. The Shire is: a wide respectable country inhabited by decent folk, with good roads, an inn or two, and now and then a dwarf or a farmer ambling by on business -Roast Mutton
Leaving the Shire, Bilbo, along with Thorin and Company, passes into the Lone-lands. The weather turns foul, and for the first time Bilbo thinks: 'I wish I was at home in my nice hole by the fire...' It was not the last time that he wished that! - Roast Mutton
Reaching Rivendell, readers discover that Bilbo has seen elves before: He loved elves, though he seldom met them. - A Short Rest So presumably elves, along with the previously mentioned dwarves, are known in the Shire.
In the Misty Mountains, captured by goblins, Bilbo: wished again and again for his nice bright hobbit-hole. Not for the last time. - Over Hill and Under Hill
After finding a gold ring, escaping Gollum, and being rescued from goblins by the Eagles, Bilbo: dreamed of his own house, and wandered in his sleep into all his different rooms looking for something that he could not find nor remember what it looked like. - Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fire
Lost in Mirkwood, he: fell to thinking of his far-distant hobbit hole with it's beautiful pantries - Flies and Spiders
After his adventures in the halls of the Elevenking, in Dale, at the Lonely Mountain, during the Battle of the Five Armies, a second visit to Rivendell and a second stay with Beorn, Bilbo thinks again of home: I only wish to be in my own armchair! - The Return Journey
Bilbo dreams about Bag End, but his visions never include any part of the Shire outside Bag End, and never any other hobbits. He wishes for the comfort and security of his house. He never misses anything else about the Shire, not the green grass, not the Inn, nor the "decent folk". When Bilbo left with the dwarves, he'd been living alone at Bag End. He didn't tell anyone about his departure and never once wondered if he'd been missed. His solitary life ends while he's journeying with Thorin and Company. He makes friends with the Dwarves, and Beorn, and even the Elvenking.
Finally: a day came at last when they were in sight of the country where Bilbo and been born and bred, where the shapes of the land and of the trees were as well known to him as his hands and toes - The Last Stage
At the sight of home, Bilbo composes:
Road go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at lost to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills the long have known. - The Last Stage
Gandalf remarks on this change in Bilbo: My dear Bilbo!' he said. 'Something is the matter with you! You are not the hobbit that you were.- The Last Stage
1. What is the change in Bilbo? Is it just that he's creating verse? Has he come to have a new appreciation of the Shire itself outside of Bag End? Do friendships with the Dwarves, Beorn Gandalf, and the Elves indicate that Bilbo the solitary bachelor has learned to form relationships?
This new appreciation is tested immediately by the on-going auction of "the effects of the late Bilbo Baggins Esquire, of Bag-End, Underhill, Hobbiton."
Bilbo's return generates lots of gossip, but no-one greets him with affection. Not one hobbit says they are happy to see Bilbo back in the Shire.
Hobbits of the Shire display a mercenary streak as those "who had got specially good bargains at the Sale took a deal of convincing" to return Bilbo's property. This greediness is most pronounced in the Sackville-Bagginses who "wanted to live in his nice hobbit-hole."
Bilbo doesn't start new friendships with local hobbits: He was in fact held by all the hobbits of the neighborhood to be 'queer' - except by his nephews and nieces on the Took side And even within his family, it is Bilbo's financial generosity: which to a certain extent accounts for the affection of his nephews and his nieces - The Last Stage
2.Is Bilbo buying the affection of these mercenary youngsters? Do the Hobbiton hobbits resent Bilbo because he's "Tookish"? Are they jealous of his wealth?
3. How do you think about the Shire when viewed only through The Hobbit?
Bilbo's Shire and Frodo's Shire in The Fellowship of the Ring
In A Long Expected Party, Bilbo is planning a magnificent party for everyone in the neighborhood of Hobbiton, plus guests from further away.
Bilbo has been "the wonder of the Shire for sixty years" and since he's "generous with his money, most people were willing to forgive him his oddities and his good fortune." Apparently during the decades since events in The Hobbit, Bilbo has purchased some additional goodwill. Plus, he's adopted nephew Frodo as his heir.
Gaffer Gamgee and his son Sam handle Bag End landscaping and are "on very friendly terms with Bilbo and Frodo." The Gaffer likes and respects Bilbo and Frodo, but is also eager to gossip about them at the pub with local hobbits who enjoy picking on Bilbo and Frodo's peculiarities and speculating about their fortune.
Sandyman, the miller, is one of the gossips at the pub. He shows a that hobbits can have a darker beyond being nosy and a bit greedy. Sandyman is the sort who finds his own faults in others. He declares Frodo was orphaned when his parents killed each other, and that: Bag End's a queer place, and it's folk a queerer. - A Long Expected Party
Gandalf arrives for the festivities, and he and Bilbo discuss the hobbit's secret plans. Bilbo says: I am fond indeed of it (the Bag End garden), and of all the dear old Shire, but I think I need a holiday. - A Long Expected Party Apparently Bilbo is planning to leave the Shire again.
Events at Bilbo's party indicates that, in addition to being mercenary and gossipy, hobbits are also gluttons. Their greed for food and drink is treated as a minor fault, described with fond good humor.
Bilbo addresses his guests: I am immensely fond of you all...eleventy-one years is too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hobbits...I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less that half of you half as well as you deserve - A Long Expected Party
After puzzling the guests with this brilliant wit, Bilbo leaves the Shire for the second, and final time. His final conversation with Gandalf is overshadowed by the Ring, and doesn't even mention the Shire.
Nephew and heir Frodo is left with the necessity of managing the end of the Party and its aftermath at Bag End. A false rumour that the whole household was being distributed for free spread like wildfire; and before long the place was packed with people who had no business there, but could not be kept out. Labels got torn off an mixed, and quarrels broke out. Some people tried to do swaps and deals in the hall; and others tired to make off with minor items not addressed to them, or with anything that seemed unwanted of unwatched. - A Long Expected Party
Frodo lets his friend Merry Brandybuck supervise activities at Bag End. Frodo, unlike Bilbo, has real friends in the Shire.
When Gandalf shows up that evening, Frodo says he would give the Sacksville-Bagginses: Bag End and everything else, if I could get Bilbo back and go off tramping in the country with him. I love the Shire. But I begin to wish, somehow, that I had gone too. - A Long Expected Party
It appears Frodo, like Bilbo before him, may have wanderlust.
4. Do the Shire and its residents seem to have changed between Bilbo's return in The Hobbit and Bilbo's departure in A Long Expected Party? Has the opinion of the "narrator" changed?
After the tumult of Bilbo's departure, Frodo settles into a comfortable life as master of Bag End, as he: lives alone, as Bilbo had done; but he had a good many friends...Frodo went tramping over the Shire with them; but more often he wandered by himself, and to the amazement of sensible folk he is sometimes seen far from home walking in the hills and woods under the starlight. - The Shadow of the Past
Two forces seem to drive Bilbo's and Frodo's restlessness with Shire life:
- Tookishness - both Bilbo and Frodo are descendants of the Old Took, with a genetic predisposition for unseemly adventurous behavior. They are both bachelors, free from immediate family responsibilities.
- The Ring - Of course Bilbo didn't have the Ring when he left the Shire with Thorin and Company. But by the time of A Long Expected Party, it was gaining power over him and he struggled to leave it with Frodo. Frodo presumably heeds Gandalf's warning not to use the Ring. Still, like Bilbo, he doesn't age normally.
Frodo grows increasingly restless and "strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams."
The Shire itself is affected by changes in the wider world during Frodo's time at Bag End:
There were rumours of strange things happening in the world outside...Elves who seldom walked in the Shire, could now be seen passing westward through the woods in the evening, padding and not returning...There were, however, Dwarves on the road in unusual numbers...They were troubled, and some spoke in whispers of the Enemy and of the Land of Mordor. That name the hobbits only knew in legends of the dark past, like a shadow in the background of their memories; but it was ominous and disquieting. - Shadow of the Past
Shire hobbits have been isolated, and protected, in their home, but maintain legends of a darker past. Might their isolationism be defensive, their disdain of "Tookishness" arising from real if unspecific fear?
The Hobbit never hints that life for hobbits in the Shire had ever been anything but bucolic.
The Prologue in The Fellowship of the Ring, offers a history of hobbit migration across Middle Earth and settlement in Eriador. It outlines events that led to their isolation within the Shire's boundaries and explains how: They forgot or ignored what little they had ever known of the Guardians, and of the labours of those that made possible the long peace of the Shire. It describes the hobbits as: difficult to daunt or to kill...and they were, perhaps, so unwearyingly fond of good things not least because the could, when put to it, do without, and could survive rough handling by grief, foe, or weather in a way that astonished those who did not know them well and looked no further than their bellies and their well-fed faces.
Bilbo's surprising toughness during travels to the Lonely Mountain and the Battle of the Five Armies is revealed to be characteristic of hobbits. Hobbit-y foibles of greed and gluttony are treated lightly, but not dismissed . Gandalf's interest in the Shire has a backstory.
Into Bag End, Gandalf brings news that ends Frodo's comfortable Shire life: Bilbo's ring is more than a novelty, it is The One Ring. The Shire, and all of Middle Earth, is in terrible danger. Frodo responds to this shocking revelation:
I should like to save the Shire, if I could - though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and felt than an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them. But I don't feel like that now. I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable; I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again. - The Shadow of the Past
My, we have come a long way from Bilbo's "nice bright hobbit-hole" in the Hobbit!
5. Does The Prologue change how you perceive the Shire? How about narrative style of A Long Expected Party and The Shadow of the Past?
6. Does Bilbo and/or Bilbo's experience of the Shire change between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring?
7. Would Frodo, as a character, have fit into the Shire of The Hobbit? Is he a more nuanced character than Bilbo as the Shire is more nuanced in The Fellowship of the Ring?
8. Did the Shire "grow-up" because The Fellowship of the Ring is a different sort of story than The Hobbit? Did Tolkien "grow-up" as a writer?
9.Do you overlook the faults of gossip, gluttony and greed in Shire hobbits? Are they part of the charm of hobbits along with toughness, good cheer, and loyal friendships?
*** Middle Earth Inexpert ***
(This post was edited by oliphaunt on May 9, 3:57pm)
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Edit Log:
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Post edited by oliphaunt
(Lorien) on May 9, 3:57pm
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