LotR -- Book 1 - Chapter 01 - A Long-Expected Party

[Bêthberry]

Here I arrive (fashionably ?) late and find you all have taken up so many of the interesting ideas in this chapter! I shall simply have to try harder to find something not considered and hope for the best.

I would agree very much with Squatter about the centrality of the humour in this chapter. Tolkien had a dry wit and was cleverly able to skewer where he felt bubbles of petty foibles could be burst without cruel damage. Imagine Bilbo's delight of being able to write those gift cards without being around to face the consequences!

It would appear that I belong to the smaller party here in that I do not deeply long to live in The Shire. This chapter has for me the kindly fond but wittily distanced memories of a quasi-comfortable past. Those memories to me suggest something incomplete, not wholly knowing. Although delightful, these memories of childhood, nonetheless represent something limited, maybe even naive, certainly not wise, as Gandalf is. This is the effect of the social humour for me: the wit distances the fondness.

The conversation at the Ivy Bush is spot on concerning the memories and preferences of many an elder I have known: the gossipy kind of small minded concerns and petty interests. Perhaps this is because, at the age of 10, I moved across a continent and left behind a polyglot, multi-cultural culture for one decided slow and back-looking. I have pained memories of sitting listening to elders speak as the Gaffer and Daddy Twofoot (two foot tall?) do, being politely trained to be seen and not heard. Contented, complacent ignorance frustrated me no end. Indeed, this chapter brings me back to my early adolescent frustration with what I, in my teenage wisdom, felt was the stifling complacency of a community which rarely looked beyond its own gardens. I still do not like people who try to know what is going on in everybody else's life and correct it; I would rather they look at their own. (myself included!)

davem raises an interesting point that The Shire reflects Tolkien's sense of 'home' from his childhood in Sarehood. Where I would differ is in thinking that World War II gave Tolkien this sense that such a world was always under threat.

It seems to me that for Europe World War I was more traumatic culturally. I think of all the war poets writing bitterly about the betrayal of the heroic ideal--Anthem for a Doomed Youth springs to mind most immediately. Owen and Sassoon in particular I guess. And when I recall how many of Tolkien's friends were killed at the Somme and elsewhere in the Great War, I would tend to think that the sense of nostalgic loss accrued not to WWII but to the WWI. There's that scene, too, in the move [i]Chariots of Fire[/b] where the giddy university lads are off to France at the train station and they see the crippled war veterans eeking out a meagrely living doing menial labour at the station. (of course, my memory of the movie could be faulty!)

One small point which intrigues me is that dwarves are around The Shire, for they help unload Gandalf's fireworks.

Well, quite enough rambling I should say. A summary of all this and a quick other point. It seems to me--and this was I think noted early on here by others--that the chapter begins not in the middle of bang 'em up action but just as that action begins to roll. Perhaps this, too, is the storyteller coming out in Tolkien. He chose here in the first chapter to begin to develop that inexorable sense of a world passing away. He did it by focussing attention upon a rural pastoral. But here we have Frodo wanting to give Bag End to Otho and Lobelia and run off with Bilbo. Oh, those very ominous words of Gandalf-- "Expect me when you see me" and "Look out for me, especially at unlikely times." Foreshadowing indeed.

The other point I shall quickly make refers to the reliability or authority of narrative. Frodo speaks with Gandalf about the ring:

'Do be careful of that ring, Frodo! In fact, it is partly about that that I have ocme to say a last word.'

'Well, what about it?'

'What do you know already?'

'Only what Bilbo told me. I have heard his story: how he found it, and how he used it: on his journey, I mean.'

'Which story, I wonder,' said Gandalf.

'On not what he told the dwarves and put in his book,' said Frodo. 'He told me the true story soon after I came to live here. ...'

...

'... Well, what did you think of it all?'

'If you mean, inventing all that about a 'present', well, I thought the true story much more likely, and I couldn't see the point of altering it at all...'

'So did I. But odd things happend to people that have such treasures.

A nod to the fiction of history, I suppose. But also a suggestion that readers must "think of it all" and keep their wits about them.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Well, there have certainly been some interesting points since yesterday. I'm with davem on the subject of class. I only started to notice Sam's deference on my third reading of the text, and Tolkien does such a good job of making him into an integral part of the Fellowship that we almost miss the master and servant (more accurately from Tolkien's point of view, officer and batman) relationship that he shares with Frodo. Still, there's more of that later in the book and I don't want to get ahead of myself. I'm not really aware of how the class system works in other countries, but it should be remembered that a lot has changed in Britain since Tolkien's day, largely as a result of the Second World War. People aren't so willing as they were in the past to be limited to a social group determined by birth, and we're no longer brought up to respect our betters and to let them determine our fate. I suppose that a lot of people are confused by the existence of an aristocracy over here, but these days they're really no more than rich people with titles added to their names, not a race apart.

Anyway, I don't want to get sidetracked by the class issue, which has, of course, been discussed elsewhere. Bêthberry brings up a very interesting point that I was close to making in the discussion of the Prologue: the Shire is not an absolutely ideal society, and it is based on Tolkien's memories of Sarehole and other rural communities that he lived in as a child. Certainly to the young Tolkien, torn away from what must have seemed an idyllic setting to the smoke and grime of industrial Birmingham, the countryside must have become a memory of happiness and security, which probably explains his antipathy towards modern cities. He was unfortunate in that his lifetime saw the final flowering of the industrial age, in which science and engineering drove uncontrolled and widespread industrial and urban expansion: the countryside of Tolkien's youth has gone forever, which is one of the reasons why Peter Jackson chose to make his films in New Zealand.

Tolkien was, however, aware of the small-mindedness of Hobbits. Although their talk amused him, he does admit in several letters to finding them annoying at times. In letter #246 (September 1963), he wrote:

Sam is meant to be lovable and laughable. Some readers he irritates and even infuriates. I can well understand it. All hobbits at times affect me in the same way, though I remain very fond of them. But Sam can be very 'trying'. He is a more representative hobbit than any others that we have to see much of; and he has consequently a stronger ingredient of that quality which even some hobbits found at times hard to bear: a vulgarity - by which I do not mean a mere 'down-to-earthiness' - a mental myopia which is proud of itself, a smugness (in varying degrees) and cocksureness, and a readiness to measure and sum up all things from a limited experience, largely enshrined in sententious traditional 'wisdom'. We only meet exceptional hobbits in close companionship - those who had a grace or gift: a vision of beauty, and a reverence for things nobler than themselves, at war with their rustic self-satisfaction. Imagine Sam without his education by Bilbo and his fascination with things Elvish! Not difficult. The Cotton family and the Gaffer, when the 'Travellers' return are a sufficient glimpse.

It is no accident that Tolkien makes Bilbo and Frodo adventurous academic dreamers, Sam an enthusiast of Elves, myth and far-away places, and Merry and Pippin reckless go-getters. None of these qualities are smiled upon in the Shire, and they were all qualities that the myth-loving, spiritual, former school rugby player Tolkien possessed in no small measure. I'm sure that his scene in the Ivy Bush was based on similar memories to those that Bêthberry has shared with us above.

Before I bring this post to a close, I'd like to explore another point that I hinted at very briefly in my last post: Bilbo's singing of The Road Goes Ever On at the door of Bag End. This passage seems to me to exemplify something in Tolkien's prose that is very visual. It is almost a moment that would work better on screen, because it says so much more by means of the character's small actions than by his speech:

I am being swept off my feet at last,' he added, and then in a low voice, as if to himself, he sang softly in the dark:

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

He paused, silent for a moment. Then without another word he turned away from the lights and voices in the fields and tents, and followed by his three companions went around into his garden, and trotted down the long sloping path.

Clearly Bilbo is remembering the danger of roads at first; but his silence after the song, his thoughful address and the significant capitalisation of 'road' speak of a deeper current of thought that turns the Road in Bilbo's mind into an allegory of life itself. It seems significant too that he has just given up his old life: his home and possessions, his family and friends, and most significantly of all the Ring that bestows longevity. He is beginning to feel his age, and at this very time he is venturing forth into he knows not what adventures. Small wonder that his mind turns to the uncertainty of the road ahead and its inevitable mortal ending. This is the first shadowing of a general theme of deathlessness and mortality that runs through the entire story: from Bilbo and Frodo to Gandalf and Saruman to Galadriel and Celeborn to, most strikingly of all, Aragorn and Arwen. But this theme can be explored in more depth later, particularly when, in a good many months' time, we reach Appendix A.

Incidentally, davem: I like to regard the Shire as an anarcho-syndicalist commune.

[Child of the 7th Age]

If Bethberry is "fashionably late", then I must be what the cat dragged in!

Davem, Bethberry, -

It's interesting how we all had such differing responses to the "class thing" in the first chapter. I was acutely aware of Sam's "place" within the Shire the first time I read the book and in fact identified some of his situation with my own. As the daughter of a factory worker and grand-daughter of a miner, I remember daydreaming about Sam as I trudged off to clean other folks' houses to earn money for tuition. When I told my parents that I had decided to continue on in medieval history past the master's, I clearly remember being lectured about the undesirability of chasing after "Elves and Dragons" and was advised to seek "cabbages and potatoes." Needless to say, I had different ideas!

Poor Sam! Always having to stretch between two worlds starting with the very first chapter. Yet Bethberry I do think there is beauty in both the situations that Tolkien presents for us: the chasing after and the coming back. I went racing out the door, turning my back on much I had been raised with, a world that was too small but one that had very firm values and where there were people who genuinely cared for each other. Instead, I chased after academia and later went roaring off to live in England, so I could see some of that scenery Tolkien described. (This was thirty-five years ago, so perhaps there was a bit more standing than today.)

Ironically, however, I find life has almost led me in a circle. With marriage and the birth of children, I am once again rooted in a community and stand much closer to something that, in its better moments, shows at least some resemblance to the Shire. Tolkien was very much a family man. My guess is that the goodness that shines through the Shire actually reflects two things. On the one hand, there were his memories of his boyhood, including the physical environment of the Midlands, something that's already been discussed on this thread. But there's something else as well. Tolkien was a husband and father. Shire life is essentially family life and I think he must have looked to the model of his own household for some of that. There would have been no Hobbits and, by implication, no Lord of the Rings unless Tolkien the father sat and told stories to his children. The "small" life that Tolkien describes, with both its good points and its shortcomings, was something that he found deep within his own heart. And, because it has a basis in personal reality, it is very compelling to many of us, even those who in our own time preferred to go chasing after Elves!

[Nurumaiel]

Child, and if you're what the cat dragged in, what am I?

"When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End..." Those are the first words I heard of the book when my father began reading it aloud to me when I was just barely seven years old. My brothers and I had already become faintly acquainted with this Mr. Bilbo of Bag End as well as his younger cousin Frodo Baggins through bits and pieces about them told by my father, and we were naturally interested to hear the whole tale. We had not yet heard The Hobbit nor read it ourselves, and so we were ignorant of Bilbo's history and exactly how he acquired this Ring; but goodness did we know what the Ring was! The Ring, Bilbo, and Frodo made many interesting games during the rainy days. I shan't even begin to say what stories we made up with those characters. All the worst of the worst fanfictions put together could not equal the horrors that our cheerful, childish minds came up with!

I was a little mite of seven, enjoying my new home in the woods immensely was we had just moved from living in a town, and I along with my brothers had been excited at the prospect of our father reading aloud to us every evening. That evening a fire had been built in the stone fireplace and four wide-eyed little children gathered at their father's feet. No electric lights were turned on, but he ride by the firelight alone. Not too far away the fifth child who was too young to really pay attention was contenting himself with playing toys. And my father began by reading... "Chapter One... A Long-expected Party." He started at the beginning of chapter one that evening and was not allowed to put the book down for the night until he firmly insisted about three-fourths through the second chapter. We were already eager to hear more about Frodo and Bilbo and the Ring, and hearing the words made us firm and life-long friends of the characters. I can recall how I wept at not being allowed to listen to the final chapter of the Fellowship because of my own stubborness and unoblinginess.

Oh dear, those were the good old days.

"...and as Mr. Baggins was generous with his money..." This was one of the first things that struck me while reading the book again many years later. This, I think, was why I had always loved Bilbo, even as a small child. As a small child I pretended he was real, as children are wont to do, and I always looked on this 'imaginary Bilbo friend' as a very kind old uncle. This sentence sizes up the way I thought him when I was young, and the way I still think of him... a charitable, kind, obliging person. One who wouldn't be caught being stingy with their butter for the bread! "'A very nice well-spoken gentlehobbit is Mr.Bilbo, as I've always said.'" So have I! I believed most fervently that what the Gaffer said about Mr. Bilbo was exactly true, and I haven't changed my mind since.

Tweens... "...the irresponsible twenties between childhood and coming of age at thirty-three." When I was a child it seemed fairly obvious that one was out of their tweens when they turned thirty-three, but I wondered when one first went into their twins. When, by Hobbit standard, was one no longer in their childhood? I had desperately wanted to celebrate the day I entered my tweens, but I never had the faintest idea when that day would be.

"'...they live on the wrong side of the Brandywine River.'" This I consider curious. In the discussion of the Prologue it was mentioned that perhaps the Shire Hobbits and Bree Hobbits had a rivalry. This might also be true with the Shire Hobbits and the Buckland Hobbits, if most other Shirefolk feel as Daddy Twofoot does. Undoubtedly by Hobbits of the Shire the Bucklanders were considered 'queer;' the Gaffer says as much. But Daddy Twofoot's statement also implies there might be a rivalry between them.

"'He's in and out of Bag End. Crazy about stories of the old days he is, and he listens to all Mr. Bilbo's tales.'" Sam has to be liked from the first, or at least he was so by me. I formed the mental image in my head of young Sam, creeping away from his duties in the garden every so often to sit at Bilbo's feet and gaze up in awe as he hears of those 'Elves and Dragons.'

My current impressions thus far, along with previous impressions as a child. I would continue, I suppose, as well as reply to observations of others, but like Sam I must be drawn away from the Elves and Dragons to go to the cabbages and potatoes... that is, the work that needs to be done after dinner!

Saraphim & Fingolfin II - Do you think it is possible that Tolkien was trying to show how normal the Hobbits were and how they could very well be us ? Except for the hairy feet and short stature. I think it is the overall normalness of this chapter that at once draws folks into the book. From any country in the world people can associate with a good gossip over a pint at their local, the family squabbles etc., There is that automatic sympathy that one gives to Frodo because he has been orphaned and an immediate recognition in Sam as a Hobbit of principle and integrity.
Another point that sticks out like a sore thumb is the lack of machinery in the Shire. It is, aside from the Mill, a place where people work with nature to produce their pleasures....be they food or pipeweed. We know that Tolkien aborred the march away from the natural to the mechanised world.
There is also the possibility, from his own experience with war, that he is showing us that it is the normal everyday person, the little person, who goes on these quests (wars). They are the ones who do the dirty work, put their lives at risk and endure things that no human/hobbit should have to endure in their lifetime.

davem

This has always struck me - the 'Englishness' of the world of the Shire - to the extent that I was deeply surprised that readers from other countries could relate to the story at all. I can't help asking the (probably unanswerable)question, whether English readers understand/experience the Shire & its inhabitants differently from readers in other countries (as, I'd assume, a Russian would understand/experience, say, War & Peace differently to a non Russian). Or, if you're not English, are there parts of your country that feel like the Shire

I was born in England and came to Australia when I was 15, that was 32 years ago, which makes me 21, that'll save you overworking your calculator. I can relate very much to the English countryside that Tolkien plans his Shire in, but there are also places where I live that could be a good backdrop for the Shire as well. Had I first read LotR in Australia I think that I could have still related a place in OZ to the Shire.......

Estelyn Telcontar Thankyou for the link, I will go and read the thread. I read an interesting article called 'Tolkien's Mother-less Heroes' it also brought in the Fatherless ones, but it was interesting to note that the majority of those who are major players in the Fellowship have lost either one or both of their parents. Gandalf excluded of course.

Just an out of place thing here. I find it more than amusing that for such a long time in Tolkien's story Frodo was called Bingo LOL I'm really glad he changed it

[Gorwingel]

As others have said, this chapter is very much about hobbits, and one of the things that really struck me while reading this last night was how Tolkien really defines Frodo as being different than the other hobbits. I know that this has probably been talked about other places but... I was just wondering, why do many of you think that Tolkien emphasizes Frodo being "his first and second cousin, once removed either way, as the saying is, if you follow me"?

This just struck me because this, and the entire history of Frodo could have been something that could have been skipped over, but instead it is brought up. I know that this is here just to tell about how Frodo is an orphan, and to give us history about why the Sackville-Bagginses are so intent on getting Bag End. But, I don't know, I think that is something that would be considered slightly weird in our society, so I find it interesting that he brings it up.

Now I consider this a slightly light-spirited chapter. Because it does have many very light moments, but then also the dark parts that become very important later in the story. We of course have the very interesting Bilbo and the parting of the ring section. Which is very important because if you read the Hobbit, you finally find out that the Ring is no mere trinket, which just makes people disappear. You find out that it is something quite dangerous, something that turns quite friendly characters like Bilbo into something they are not (which also on the subject of foreshadowing, is another foreshadowing of the effect the ring will eventually have on Frodo).

This chapter though has many memorable things. Like I have always remembered the Party Tree (maybe just because I have always wanted to have one myself). Even when I attempted a read of the trilogy (where I failed) years ago, I have always remembered the Party Tree and the Fireworks. This party though just reminds me of one very huge wedding (not a birthday, because with the giving of gifts to the guests, it very much reminds me of a wedding with the tradition of favor giving, and also for many you don't get all the relatives together for a birthday, but just for a wedding, or funeral) with a ton of relatives who don't quite get along.

[HerenIstarion]

Squatter, great posts up there, both of them!
I'd like especially to turn back to Bilbo's road-song and explore it a bit (even if I reach out of the chapter by chapter format):

As far as I am any judge, the song in question is the first instance of what poetry of LoTR is going to become throughout the narration to follow. For one thing, not one verse is out of place, and, on the surface of it, they always correspond to the current situation on hand. Bilbo is going away, so he [naturally(?)] sings a road-song. But, you are verily on the spot noting that it may be looked at like something over and beyond the mere ‘road-songishness’. If one surpasses our pace a bit, and compares all the instances of 'road-songs' to be recurred in the text, interesting conclusions may be drawn:

So, Instance 1 (Bilbo in “Long Expected Party”)

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

It is notable how Bilbo’s ‘feet’ are ‘eager’ at the moment. He is going to have fun, after all, he’s journey is no more a burden, for he has given up the Ring, and is going to have a holiday

Instance 2 (Frodo in “Three is Company”)
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

It is hard to notice, and, for the first reading, both songs seem one and the same. But there it is, the major difference – Frodo is going on with ‘weary feet’, journey of his is not to be ‘adventures in May’ as Bilbo’s were in the Hobbit, he, unlike Bilbo, just assumed a burden, which, in the end, will claim his life (i.e. the Road) altogether. And it is expression of Tolkien’s great skill, as I’ve mentioned, that in both cases the verses are very much applicable to the current situation, but one can not help always sensing something more to them than mere expression of the situation on hand. But there is more to follow, still:

Instance 3 (Bilbo in “Many Partings”)

The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
Let others follow it who can!
Let them a journey new begin,
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.’

Now again, this is very true on both levels – Bilbo is old, Ring is destroyed, so he does not have anything to support his unusual longevity already mentioned in posts up there, and is not going to have journeys any more (save one, that is, last journey to the Havens). But again, there is more to it than meets an eye. If road is again life, than Bilbo is stating his approaching death by it. And here is one of the much discussed and not easily spotted Christianity of the LoTR glimpsing through. What is ‘lighted inn’ and ‘evening-rest’, if ‘road’ be life and ‘sleep to meet’ be death? May it be it is slim hope of salvation, perchance?

Such a duality, I should say, is a characteristic of all Shire poetry, but not to outrun the format of chapter by chapter discussion, let us deal with verses to come as they turn up
Cheers

[Hilde Bracegirdle]

One thing that hits me, well like a train, is Tolkien’s choosing to mention express trains, clocks and carriages. He seems to gently ease us into that older world by degrees, first taking us to the Shire, and sprinkling his story with a few ‘more modern’ items before hinting at that there is more to this existence than we or the hobbits are fully aware of.

I agree that we, in a way, are like the hobbits. We are caught up in our own concerns; feeling like this is what life is all about, unaware or disinterested in the things not considered useful or pertinent to our mundane life. But we find there are things that influence life, and a history that we are blissfully unaware of. We along with and through Frodo begin to discover that something else, a difference life, lies beyond the realm of our experience.

As for hairy feet and short statue, perhaps hobbits are really men sprouting roots and growing ‘treeish’, their height merely an outward expression of a lack of desire to reach for those higher things, or to see beyond their own patch of land.