[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by mormegil

The Shire is repaired and is lovlier than ever thanks to Galadriel and Sam but what price did the Shire truly pay? Why not expose us to a bit of reality? Life always isn't happy and it's a great opportunity to teach those of us who read it that lesson.

Sam planted saplings in all the places where specially beautiful or beloved trees had been destroyed, and he put a grain of the precious dust in the soil at the root of each. He went up and down the Shire in this labour; but if he paid special attention to Hobbiton and Bywater no one blamed him. And at the end he found that he still had a little of the dust left; so he went to the Three-Farthing Stone, which is as near the centre of the Shire as no matter, and cast it in the air with his blessing. The little silver nut he planted in the Party Field where the tree had once been; and he wondered what would come of it. All through the winter he remained as patient as he could, and tried to restrain himself from going round constantly to see if anything was happening.
Spring surpassed his wildest hopes. His trees began to sprout and grow, as if time was in a hurry and wished to make one year do for twenty.

Or is it? We know 1420 was a good year, but could the Shire ever go back to what it had been? Even with Galadriel's dust and Mallorn seed, could they replace all that had been lost? On one level, Sam only has enough to treat places where his very favourite trees have been lost so we must guess that some other new trees did not grow quite so fast, if indeed there were new trees in all places anyway; on another level, The Shire has lost its innocence - how could it ever go back to the pre-Saruman days? The trust of the Hobbits was spoiled by his incursion.

Which brings me on to another incident where we think we have heard the last of someone, not a death but the 'downfall' of Saruman. We see Gandalf break his staff and the Ents imprison him, we then see him clad as a wanderer (I always think of mad tramps raving away when I think of Saruman like this), but would any of us have expected him to turn up as overlord of The Shire?

I think Tolkien's decision to not kill off his Hobbits was entirely intentional, not merely guided by affection, as he wanted to show that though they may have appeared small and insignificant, they were not delicate, but incredibly hardy beings. And powerful too, if they so chose to be. In this way Hobbits survived where many Men, Orcs and even Elves did not.

But while Tolkien did not kill off his Hobbits, he did inflict terrible injuries on The Shire. He could easily have had Sam restore it fully (i.e. right back to the original state, with all trees restored, and with the Elven 'soil' (where can I get some of that stuff by the way? Sounds like it would work a treat on my garden). But he did leave the hint that the recovery was not complete, and that this was a very different Shire than the one the four Hobbits first left behind. For me, it seems Tolkien treated his landscapes with as much (and at times more) affection as he treated his characters, so to have The Shire marred in this way very much mirrors what happens to Frodo. Survival, but not a full recovery?

In that sense, if Frodo/The Shire 'seem dead but aren't', then Tolkien created a wonderful, subtle comparison, and made a much more interesting point than he could have done had they simply been killed/annihilated.