|
What a fascinating discussion! I have thought of it myself - just this morning, in fact! :-)
At fifty, Bilbo was a fat little middle-class man(okay, Hobbit) who needed something to bring out the qualities that were always there, so he's dragged off on the adventure kicking and screaming and - has it occurred to anyone that in some ways, despite his age, he really hadn't grown up? He'd never had to. As a Victorian-style gentleman he had a house and an income that meant he didn't have to work and would have been shocked at the notion. After the adventure he went back to his old life, more or less, but with a new perspective on life, and with contacts in the outside world. Notice all the times in THE HOBBIT that he's referred to as "only a little hobbit", not in reference to his height, but his maturity.
Frodo, I think, who had been brought up, more or less, by the changed Bilbo, was more mature when he left home and did it as a form of sacrifice, to protect the Shire from the danger coming after him. Yet he found that he could never go back. He had changed. Poor Frodo.
But Merry and Pippin "grow up" in many ways too, especially after they are separated. When they return, it's also with a new viewpoint on the world. They know, after all, what is beyond their borders and who has been protecting them. Sam, too, has grown from servant to a man who can manage quite nicely without Mr Frodo to look after, who has a wife and children and, eventually, the ability to run the Shire. It's a coming-of-age story for everyone and I agree here that the choice of fifty as Frodo's age as well as Bilbo's was deliberate, even to the parallel chapter titles "An Unexpected/Long Expected Party."
|