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Originally Posted by Mithalwen
Pippin's style is to do first and think later if necessary, he chucks stones down wells just because there is a stone and a well and he is curious .. . This does not always casue harm - it is the same part of his nature that guides him to leave the traces that Aragorn will find.
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Pippin does remind me of Perceval in the Grail Quest. He is the innocent 'child' who acts before he thinks. Its almost as if he (have I said this before?) has a deep trust in the Universe, & that life is a 'game' to be enjoyed, so he doesn't have to worry too much & he can play happily. Even when he feels his life is over, in the battle before the Black Gates:
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Then Pippin stabbed upwards, and the written blade of Westernesse pierced through the hide and went deep into the vitals of the troll, and his black blood came gushing out. He toppled forward and came crashing down like a falling rock, burying those beneath him. Blackness and stench and crushing pain came upon Pippin, and his mind fell away into a great darkness. 'So it ends as I guessed it would,' his thought said, even as it fluttered away; and it laughed a little within him ere it fled, almost gay it seemed to be casting off at last all doubt and care and fear. And then even as it winged away into forgetfulness it heard voices, and they seemed to be crying in some forgotten world far above: 'The Eagles are coming! The Eagles are coming!' For one moment more Pippin's thought hovered. 'Bilbo!' It said. 'But no! That came in his tale, long long ago. This is my tale, and it is ended now. Good-bye!' And his thought fled far away and his eyes saw no more.
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He reminds me of no-one so much as the Fool on Tarot, stepping off the edge of a cliff without realising because he is distracted by a brightly coloured butterfly fluttering in front of him. He feels perfectly safe, no matter what happens to him because its all a jolly big adventure & nothing really unpleasant can happen to him after all.
But that said, he does a little growing up, becomes more serious, throughout the tale - yet he never grows up entirely. He never loses his childlike innocence. He grows up just enough to be useful to his fellow creatures, rather than remaining a nuisance who needs looking after & who keeps getting in the way.
Perhaps he was 'chosen' - by 'fate' or Eru - to look into the Palantir, but if that is the case it must be because he was the one who would take the least hurt in doing so. Pippin was the one who could be trusted to come face to face with Sauron & come away, if not unchanged by the experience, then certainly with the capacity to smile again.