I don’t know what got into me but suddenly I realised that I was reading the
Concerning Hobbits through something like the “lenses of social concern” and a “dangerous-romanticism-radar” on. It was not intended but I couldn’t help it. Maybe I’m just growing old?
I’d like to start with the latter as the former spills over to the first chapter as well…
The description of the Fallohides is the most telling one. They were the least numerous (the noble class which always is the minority… they must be… the majority can’t be celebrities or royalties anyway as it is conceptually impossible for all to be so) and what else?
The Fallohides were taller & slimmer, fair skinned & fair-haired, they loved the trees (like prof. himself) and were closest to the elves of all hobbits, they were the northerly branch of hobbits (
nordischen erbe?), had more skill in language and song, were hunters rather than farmers, bolder and more adventurous (without the adventurous hobbits the ME would have been plunged into the darkness) and they were often the leaders of different hobbit-clans after they mixed with the others.
So they were the “heroes”, the great hobbits – like the Tooks or the masters of Buckland.
What were the others? The Harfoots were browner of skin, smaller and shorter; friends of the dwarves. The Stoors were broader and heavier in build; more friends of men.
A neat triad where no one is but nice but yet one “breed” (Tolkien’s own word) is clearly greater than the others. And the qualities they possessed were clearly meant to be understood by the reading public as superior to the other two. It’s then not a surprise that those qualities that make the Fallohides so great are those of the educated & civilised people of the early 20th century. The way the Nazis and the Stalinists exploited those ideals is just a pain to witness… but they are more or less the same. And it is with an uneasy feeling I compare Tolkien’s description of the Fallohides with the ideals of intellectuals like Heidegger and Jünger – or with the nazis or fascists of Italy during the 30’s if one drops the serenity and non-violence of Tolkien aside.
So a common ground then? That’s what I have been wrestling with Heidegger a long time (I studied his philosophy quite extensively at the University) and I must say I face the same problem with Tolkien. I love them both but I feel insecure with the possible implications…
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Another thing concerns the “ordering of the Shire”. Tolkien describes it as place where there was hardly any government, families for the most part managed their own affairs and the system was unchanging (like in Plato’s Republic!). And even if they had no contacts with the Kingdom they did stick to the laws of the King as they were “The Rules”, both ancient and just.
Now think of a place where this would be reality today, 2008 AD. The Pakistani outskirts and Afganistan come to mind, or rural Somalia… Following the tradition without asking it’s justification just because it’s the “the rules” and these rules of old must be just if they are called the rules? And no government, no taxes, no welfare because the community will look after the drop-outs? But how about when the drop-out thinks differently than the community? What happened to the different hobbits? Were homosexual hobbits tolerated, not to ask accepted? Or what about if there were “Rules” of old that oppressed certain fractions of the community? Like the poor? Like women?
Bilbo just decided to take Frodo under his protective wing. Great, one says and with reason. Nice to see he was such a lovely character as to pick one person up who was going down and to bring him up to the surface again. But it could be seen as a random social inequality as well (How about the other cousins? Did anyone give them a good-life? Why weren’t Bilbo’s “non-cousins” eg. other poor justified for a good life?). How moral is a social organisation of a community that relies on a whim of eccentric millionaires?
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Okay here I go to my second topic… Tolkien paints a very rosy picture of the Hobbits. As rosy as you can get I’d say. And many people tend to think the hobbit-society is something like an ideal for us all today (what Tolkien thought about it is another thing). But he also writes, that “by no means all Hobbits were lettered” revealing the fact that the Shire was not an ideal place for everyone. Also some Hobbits were exceedingly wealthy and some were poor. Why don’t we have any tales of the poor or their suffering in the Shire? The LotR and the Silm are stories about the heroes and the upper-class. And many times someone's heroism is the downfall of the meek. Just think of Robin Hood... what happened to the peasants after his raids on the rich? They suffered even more.
In
A Long-Expected Party Tolkien writes in the very beginning about Bilbo having “many devoted admirers among the hobbits of poor and unimportant families”… Unimportant families? It is possible to interpret that as Tolkien just saying that some of the Bilbo-devoteés were not bold, beautiful and rich but from the class beneath those of the “hero-class”. And he might be just describing the situation in the fantasy world made by himself with no moral connotations. But somehow it feels like there’s a normative element in the text as well. That’s the way it should be? Some are born heroes others are born to mediocrity or losers (add here the things concerning the Fallohides)?
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Yes, I know I’m “accusing” Tolkien of sins that were thought of as sins only after he wrote his stories (or parallel to his writing them). And I do love the stories and I do love Tolkien.
But when you love something you must be ready to challenge your love as well to see the problems. Like a parent loves his children despite the defects of the child he sees – although the parallel fails in that it’s hard to figure oneself as a “father” of Tolkien.
PS. I will not post like this further on. It's just that the
Concerning Hobbits is a general description of a folk bringing forwards an social and political ideal and thence it requires a social-political thought to try and understand it - in my opinion.