{"id":70347,"date":"2013-04-03T18:48:06","date_gmt":"2013-04-03T23:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/?p=70347"},"modified":"2013-04-03T18:48:06","modified_gmt":"2013-04-03T23:48:06","slug":"no-restrooms-in-middle-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2013\/04\/03\/70347-no-restrooms-in-middle-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"No restrooms in Middle-earth?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"frodo-toilet-paper\"<\/a>There\u2019s a passage near the beginning of \u201cThe Fellowship of the Ring\u201d (the book, not the movie) that, on the surface, seems peculiarly innocuous \u2013 so innocuous that I\u2019m not sure why J.R.R. Tolkien bothered to include it.<\/p>\n

Frodo, Sam and Pippin had just woken up after the first night of their journey, the journey that would take the Ring from Bag End all the way to Mordor. Still in the Shire, they had slept under a tree. After Frodo got up, he…<\/p>\n

\u201c…stripped the blankets from Pippin and rolled him over, and then walked off to the edge of the wood. Away eastward the sun was rising red out of the mists that lay thick on the world. Touched with gold and red the autumn trees seemed to be sailing rootless in a shadowy sea. A little below him to the left the road ran down steeply into a hollow and disappeared.<\/em><\/p>\n

When he returned Sam and Pippin had got a good fire going. \u2018Water!\u2019 shouted Pippin. \u2018Where\u2019s the water?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018I don\u2019t keep water in my pockets,\u2019 said Frodo.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018We thought you had gone to find some,\u2019 said Pippin, busy setting out the food, and cups. \u2018You had better go now.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019ve never really understood the significance of that scene. Frodo wakes up, walks off, observes the sun, the trees and the road and walks back to the campsite. When questioned, he doesn\u2019t explain his actions \u2013 but we know he wasn\u2019t getting water.<\/p>\n

So what, exactly, was he doing?<\/p>\n

A few possibilities come to mind, though none seem definitive.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Frodo was scouting the road for enemies?<\/p>\n

Not likely. As far as the hobbits knew at that time, they had nothing to worry about: \u201ceven Frodo feared no danger yet, for they were still in the heart of the Shire.\u201d<\/p>\n

OK. So maybe Frodo was just admiring the view?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s possible, but what\u2019s the narrative function of Frodo admiring the view? What does that tell us, the readers? Was the author giving us the lay of the land?<\/p>\n

Maybe. There\u2019s a load of geographical description in \u201cThe Lord of the Rings.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another possibility, however, one that strikes me when I attempt to read between the lines of that passage. It\u2019s an interpretation based on my own camping experiences. Why, first thing in the morning, would I walk away from the campsite without a word of explanation?<\/p>\n

\"privacy-please\"<\/a>To relieve myself.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the thousand-plus pages of \u201cThe Lord of the Rings,\u201d in the midst of all the walking, running, riding, boating and sleeping out of doors done by the characters, never once, as far as I can tell, does Tolkien deal directly with that inescapable fact of biology: Human beings (and presumably hobbits, Elves and Dwarves) urinate and defecate.<\/p>\n

In fact, in all of Tolkien\u2019s voluminous writings about his invented world, the only specific mention of the topic I can find is at the beginning of \u201cThe Hobbit\u201d, when he lists \u201cbathrooms\u201d among the rooms in Bilbo\u2019s home.<\/p>\n

In \u201cThe Lord of the Rings\u201d, the closest we get to a character \u201cusing the bathroom\u201d, so to speak, is the passage above, when Frodo walks off for no apparent reason. And even that, I admit, requires a leap of the imagination.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s look for clues in another passage, this one from \u201cThe Two Towers\u201d. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli, the Three Hunters, are running through Rohan, chasing the Orcs that had captured Merry and Pippin.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs nightshade was closing about them Aragorn halted. Only twice in the day\u2019s march had they rested for a brief while, and twelve leagues now lay between them and the eastern wall where they had stood at dawn \u2026 He cast himself on the ground and fell at once into sleep \u2026 Before dawn was in the sky he woke and rose. Gimli was still deep in slumber, but Legolas was standing, gazing northwards into the darkness, thoughtful and silent as a young tree in a windless night \u2026 So the third day of their pursuit began. During all its long hours of cloud and fitful sun they hardly paused, now striding, now running, as if no weariness could quench the fire that burned them \u2026 At dusk they halted again. Now twice twelve leagues they had passed over the plains of Rohan and the wall of the Emyn Muil was lost in the shadows of the East \u2026 As before Legolas was first afoot, if indeed he had ever slept \u2026 The others sprang up, and almost at once they set off again.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to Karen Wynn Fonstad\u2019s \u201cThe Atlas of Middle-earth,\u201d the trio averaged 36 miles a day for three straight days \u2013 on foot. No wonder Eomer named Aragorn \u201cWingfoot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"taking-gimli-too-long\"<\/p>\n

Even more impressive? They didn\u2019t relieve themselves once.<\/p>\n

Now, I could argue that when the Three Hunters \u201crested for a brief while\u201d, it was implied that they took a pee break \u2013 but what I really need to do is address the question you\u2019re probably asking yourself (if you\u2019re still bothering to read this) right about now: Who cares?<\/p>\n

Good point. Why do we need to know about the bathroom habits of Middle-earth? Can\u2019t we just (quietly) assume the characters go whenever they get the chance? Discussing such a topic is unnecessary, not to mention gross.<\/p>\n

I certainly won\u2019t deny that it\u2019s gross. But unnecessary?<\/p>\n

Tolkien understood why his readers might be curious about even the most mundane details of his invented world: \u201cIt is, I suppose, a tribute to the curious effect that (a) story has, when based on very elaborate and detailed workings of geography, chronology, and language, that so many should clamour for sheer \u2018information\u2019, or \u2018lore\u2019,\u201d he wrote in 1955.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure if any of his readers asked him how hobbit bathrooms worked, or what the Elves used for toilet paper, but are those inquiries less legitimate than questions about Gondor\u2019s economy or Sindarin nomenclature? Lore is lore, right?<\/p>\n

Another thing: Tolkien went to great pains to portray the many discomforts of travel in a pre-technological age. His characters typically journeyed by foot, pony, horse or boat (or, occasionally, giant eagle). They were often hungry, thirsty and exhausted. He didn\u2019t shy away from describing those miseries \u2013 but he did shy away from describing one particular misery.<\/p>\n

So, why was Tolkien so silent on the matter? Given the dearth of information in his writings, there\u2019s no easy way to find a satisfactory answer, but I can think of a possibility: Prudishness. This trait of Tolkien\u2019s was perhaps best illustrated by his biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, when commenting on the following passage from Tolkien\u2019s \u201cThe Fall of Arthur\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u201cHis bed was barren; there black phantoms
\nOf desire unsated and savage fury
\nIn his brain had brooded till bleak morning\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to Carpenter, that passage is \u201cone of the few pieces of writing in which Tolkien deals explicitly with sexual passion, describing Mordred\u2019s unsated lust for Guinever.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSexual passion\u201d is a major part of the human experience, and in all his published writings, Tolkien barely touches on it. Of the (relatively few) romantic relationships in \u201cThe Lord of the Rings,\u201d that of Aragorn and Arwen is barely referred to (unless you\u2019re willing to wade through the appendices), and that of Faramir and Eowyn so courtly and dignified that any talk of sex would seem completely inappropriate. But we know people procreate in Tolkien\u2019s imaginary world. Sam Gamgee and his wife Rose, for example, have lots of kids.<\/p>\n

(Some of you might be thinking of the episode of incest in \u201cThe Children of Hurin\u201d and wondering: How can somebody who wrote about that be considered a prude? Well, Tolkien makes it quite clear that the incest was a mistake and an abomination brought about by an evil curse. And it\u2019s not like he described<\/i> the sex.)<\/p>\n

Whatever his reasons, Tolkien clearly decided that certain matters \u2013 like sex, urination and defecation \u2013 were best left to the imagination. Ultimately, I\u2019m in no position to argue with him. It was his world, not mine. I\u2019m just grateful he shared it with the rest of us.<\/p>\n

\"lorien-wehaveguests2\"<\/a>But I can\u2019t help thinking about the bathroom situation for the Elves of Lorien, which must have been tricky. Many of them lived on wooden platforms \u2013 the Elves called them flets, or talans \u2013 in the boughs of trees. Probably the biggest platform belonged to Celeborn and Galadriel, the Lord and Lady of Lorien.<\/p>\n

\u201cUpon the south side of the lawn there stood the mightiest of all the trees; its great smooth bole gleamed like grey silk, and up it towered, until its first branches, far above, opened their huge limbs under shadowy clouds of leaves. Beside it a broad white ladder stood, and at its foot three Elves were seated,\u201d according to \u201cThe Fellowship of the Ring.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs he climbed slowly up Frodo passed many flets: some on one side, some on another, and some set about the bole of the tree, so that the ladder passed through them. At a great height above the ground he came to a wide talan, like the deck of a great ship. On it was built a house, so large that almost it would have served for a hall of Men upon the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a fantastic image, but (to me) it begs the question: Where, exactly, were the privies in that house up in a tree? How did they work?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible the Elves did their business on the ground, but that seems like an awful lot of climbing. Maybe they cut a hole in the floor of the flet and let it drop?<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t seem very Elf-like. You never know if Lord Celeborn is taking a stroll at the bottom of the tree.<\/p>\n

Yet the waste had to be taken care of, somehow. I\u2019m afraid all we\u2019re left with is the image of some poor Elf hauling chamber pots down that long white ladder.<\/p>\n

But at least the chamber pots were well-made, right? There\u2019s no reason to think the Elves of Lorien weren\u2019t as skilled in the area of privy paraphernalia as they were in everything else they did. Indeed, judging by the quality of their rope (slender but \u201cstrong, silken to the touch\u201d), their boats (\u201clight-built \u2026 crafty \u2026 will not sink, lade them as you will\u201d) and their cloaks (\u201clight to wear, and warm enough or cool enough at need \u2026 a great aid in keeping out of the sight of unfriendly eyes\u201d), Elven toilet paper must have been marvelous.<\/p>\n

===================<\/p>\n

Maedhros is a guest writer and his views do not necessarily reflect those of TheOneRing.net.\u00a0Maedhros<\/em><\/em>\u00a0lives\u00a0in Grand Rapids, MI. He’s\u00a0been hooked on Tolkien since he was 11, when he opened the first page of \u201cThe Two Towers\u201d and read about Aragorn tracking a hobbit; and Boromir\u2019s death scene, of course.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a passage near the beginning of \u201cThe Fellowship of the Ring\u201d (the book, not the movie) that,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4288,"featured_media":70357,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[197,153,148,149,152],"tags":[1788],"class_list":["post-70347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fans","category-tolkien-life","category-hobbit","category-lotr","category-tolkien","tag-library"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/frodo-toilet-paper.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1tLoH-iiD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4288"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70347"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70470,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70347\/revisions\/70470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}