“Not all those who wander are lost.”

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Child

Overall, though, and in contrast to Bilbo, Frodo is someone who would rather have stayed home and enjoyed the benefits of Bag-end. Strange, but I don't get this same sense of reluctance from any of the other hobbits who set out from the Shire. Sam is excited about seeing Elves, and Merry and Pippin seem bound up in the whole idea of being with friends and going on an adventure. Of course, none of them realizes the seriousness of their path to the same extent that Frodo does.

I was thinking about this idea in relation to Hobbits today so this was interesting. What I came up with was that even though Hobbits as a people are not wanderers in the sense of travelling great distances to unknown lands, they do seem to enjoy wandering within The Shire. Even Frodo seems to enjoy this, and when he eventually sets out from Bag End he seeks to go by paths he has enjoyed. In this respect, they are like Tom Bombadil. They do not wander to explore, but to enjoy the familiar and maybe to look a little deeper at the small things they see around them.

But Hobbits in general are also said to be quite insular, suspicious of 'foreigners' from Bree, and even suspicious of those from other parts of The Shire. This too can be said of the Gondorians at the time of the War of the Ring, and they too are not an essentialy bad people, just a people in danger or in decline. So maybe being static is not in all cases necessarily a bad thing. It may lead to limited mental horizons, which in the case of Gondor is almost its downfall, but it is not a bad thing in essence. Interestingly, we see what happens when a culture does become too static - in Moria. The Dwarves here were static and their community was eventually destroyed.

So must it be a difference in the type of stasis? Or is it that stasis in itself not necessarily bad, but can nevertheless lead to disaster?