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Originally Posted by skip spence
Well, it's hardly fair too call the Hobbits lax and slothful. By all accounts they worked hard with their respective trade and made the Shire into a rich and well-tended part of ME. Actually, whereas the development in other parts of ME seemed to go backwards, the Shire is the only place we read about where things seem to improve with the passing of the years. The Hobbits of old fex. lived in simple burrows while at the time of the War of the Ring most of them had nice, comfortable houses or holes. Of old they also had no written records, whereas most can read and write at the time of Bilbo and many own books and write letters.
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I admit I went a too far calling Hobbits slothful, but Tolkien dosen't give the impression that Hobbits are hard workers. We can see this in Bilbo's mentioning of Pipeweed and how the Hobbits have mastered it to a fine "art" (sounds like they have a lot of time on their hands
).
The Shire, is in my opinion, a traditionalists paradise. Bilbo says that change comes slowly in Shire, and I think that this represents Tolkien's traditionalist views. Wouldn't it be great to live in a place were things don't change!
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Originally Posted by Skip Spence
The fact that they had no army or police is hardly something they should be blamed for either.
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The fact that they had no army was because the Dunedein Rangers patrolled their borders and kept undfriendly things out. They might not have needed an army while they were still protected by the Rangers, but the peace that they had always experienced in the Shire was taken for granted. The scouring of the Shire might have been prevented if they did have some sort of army to prevent Saruman and his hordes from pouring in when the Dunedein when south to join Aragorn.
I'm done now, so we can move along whenever we feel like it, or we can keep on disscussing until then.