davem -- You go to Oxonmoot
every year? I am positively green with envy.
You pose an excellent question about the different responses of English readers and readers from other countries -- it's one I've thought a lot about, but only being from one country (although I have lived all over the world in my life) I don't really feel qualified to answer it. Still, I rather suspect that American and (to a lesser extent) Canadian (such as myself) readers would not respond quite so instantly and familiarly to the subtle differences of class in the Shire. There is a class system on this side of the pond, but one that is defined in very different ways than is the one of the Shire/England (but I shall leave this now as I know there are threads aplenty about this already).
As for my impression, I always find the Shire to be very 'homey' -- not because I come from someplace like the Shire, but because it's a place where all the values (and trials) of home are the governing principles of day to day life. I daresay that there are many places and cultures in the world for whom the Shire would be as alien as Lorien (perhaps even more alien) but I rather suspect that most people would respond to the 'homey-virtue' of the world.
Saraphim
Quote:
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People belonged there, and I know that I belong here. (no matter how much I want to move to England)
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You do realise that you're a hobbit, don't you?
This understanding is precisely the one that Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin come to realise as their journeys go forward. They all long to go somewhere else, to see what it's like and to find out if it matches their imaginings. But in the end, while they all come to appreciate that while the people who live in those places "belong" there, they do not. Even though Pippin becomes a Tower Guard, and Merry a Rider, and Frodo and Sam the Friends of all the Free Peoples, in the end, they "belong" in the Shire just as you belong in the desert. Perhaps that is the most lasting effect of this chapter's emphasis on the Shire -- it demonstrates not just that the four hobbits who go off on adventures belong
in the Shire, but
to the Shire. The real focus and protagonist of this chapter is the Shire and the hobbits who live there, and not really an individual hobbit (although Bilbo is allowed to take centre stage for a bit, but only before disappearing from the Shire). I guess this makes sense given that the anatagonist of the chapter is not Sauron but the Ring itself. Another comparison -- Shire vs Ring: hmmm. . .that's kind of how the whole novel works, isn't it?