[Child of the 7th Age]

Mr Frodo -- thank you for resurrecting this earlier thread. It's very interesting to read, both the section on hobbits and the more general discussion.

Yes, like others I agree that hobbits can commit evil. One proof of this is actually what happened at Mount Doom. First of all, the author states several times in his personal writings that hobbits are related to man, sharing many characeristics of man in all but size. When explaining Frodo's failure to freely destroy the Ring, Tolkien also notes in his Letters that it was impossible for him to succeed in doing this of his own free will because he was flawed. Only a being who was perfect could have succeeded in this task. Now, any being who is flawed would certainly have the ability to fall into or commit evil. So if Frodo, who was arguably one of the most spiritually advanced of the hobbits, fell into this group, certainly all of his neighbors--who seem to have been much into gossip and other minor vices--would also have been corruptible in the right circumstances. For the most part, however, hobbit society did not seem to encourage or reward certain forms of evil such as the desire for power or dominion. And hobbit society seems to discourage the "killing" of their own kind in a way that was not true of Man (the one exception being Smeagol/Gollum).


As far as the nature of evil, the situation in Middle-earth was different than the situation today for one reason. Tolkien states that the Third Age was the last one in which all evil was incarnate in one person (i.e. Sauron) or thing (i.e. the Ring). It is for this reason, he explains, that beings in Middle-earth did not have a formal religion or means of worship. In a world where evil is incarnate, the best means of worship is to physically confront the evil. Today, we seemingly have a more difficult task. We are faced with multiple Sarumans, many of whom also have intriguing and seductive voices, and it is sometimes difficult to tell parts of the good from parts of the evil. There are situations where we can see clear evidence of evil that totally outweighs good, but in many other circumstances, the two are mixed and mingled to a greater degree, I think. By the end of the LOTR, I had actually grown to dislike Saruman as much or more than Sauron, since I feel we are still dealing with his ilk today. sharon, the 7th age hobbit