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Old 09-21-2022, 03:28 AM   #7
Legate of Amon Lanc
A Voice That Gainsayeth
 
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I think this is a very interesting thread and a good reminder in general about the nature of Tolkien's work - or Tolkien himself, as it were.

Even though the mention of anachronisms may not have been the primary intention of the thread, I'd like to pick up on what Morth said because it is an important.

To me one major issue - aside from all those already mentioned by others - one VERY important issue - is that having the starting point as familiar allows the entire trick of self-identifying the reader with the point A (the Shire) as the familiar home we all know (and it works - or at least it worked for me still even in late 20th century; I imagine the Shire as a basic rural - in my case Czech - countryside) and the point B, basically everything beyond the borders, the "wide world", with the unknown, unfamiliar, or to use Tolkien's own vocabulary, the land of Faerie.

It is of course the classic story trope - "a hero leaves their home" - moving out from the familiar into the unknown (and coming back to the known, changed by the experience outside). In this case it is capitalised by the fact that not only there are no Dragons in the Shire, but also that in the Shire you have the pipe-smoking jacket-wearing common folk you are familiar with from your surroundings.

Think about the Hobbit now outside everything you know about the geography of Middle-Earth. It could very well be on a different planet, or in the way of, say, Harry Potter, you step through a gate on platform 9¾ and you're outside the Shire in a world that suddenly has trolls, goblins and dragons.

I do not know to which point was this intentional, but I am fairly certain that it was at least subconsciously intentional (if you can say that) from Tolkien, but having the hero start in a world that has tobacco, golf and public post would certainly be a move to introduce his audience to the new unfamiliar world of Middle-Earth.

Nonetheless, even if this were originally just a way of expressing oneself in familiar terms for the modern reader (frightened Bilbo making a sound "like an express train" rather than, say, "like a fallen Vala in Lammoth", which would be more appropriate), it subsequently became part of Middle-Earth and it may be the one thing that visibly betrays the author's true nature and circumstances that he was writing in. All the other things - which I assume was the original idea behind this thread - may not be so obvious on first sight.

But I would be interested to think about what else besides the thousand-times-repeated echoes of WW I experiences in Dead Marshes etc. and the environmental topics or the industrialisation of the Shire are the themes where Tolkien's early 20th century setting shows.
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"Should the story say 'he ate bread,' the dramatic producer can only show 'a piece of bread' according to his taste or fancy, but the hearer of the story will think of bread in general and picture it in some form of his own." -On Fairy-Stories
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