There and Back Again

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

I wonder if any of the hobbits who left and came back ever felt the same way about The Shire, as they felt before leaving it. Sam departs into the West after Rosie dies. In their later years Merry goes to rejoin Eomer and Pippin goes to Gondor and gets buried next to Aragorn. None of them died nor buried in The Shire.

I think the Shire had changed for Sam as a result of his journey with Frodo, his observation of the deep sacrifice Frodo had made to save it, and Sam's own struggle against the lure of the Ring.

With Merry and Pippin maybe, their own sense of 'growth' was so closely intertwined with the experiences they'd had in the service of Rohan and Gondor that they felt dying in the place of their greatest achievements was only right.

[Formendacil]

The difference in the treatment of "home" is an interesting point of comparison for the two tales. Certainly, the hero in each tale returns home a different person, but the effects upon home itself are different.

In The Hobbit, Bilbo returns to the Shire to find it virtually unchanged--yes, Messrs Grubb, Grubb, and Burrowes attempt to auction off his belongings aside, Bag End and Bilbo's place in it are left the same at the end of the story as the beginning. In keeping with the smaller ambitions of The Hobbit, Bilbo's self-change allows him to appreciate what he has (note all the moments of longing for the simple comforts of Bag End).

In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo returns to find the Shire different and one of the "morals of the story" (to use that hackneyed term) is that you can't go home. "I left to save the Shire, Sam, and it has been saved--but not for me" to paraphrase what Frodo says--is made explicit. After a series of denouements as Frodo returns from Gondor to Rivendell to Bree, a first time reader is gulled into thinking that the final return to the Shire will be one last stage in this drawn out process of "falling back asleep"--a true "Back Again"--only to abruptly encounter "The Scouring of the Shire." Everything about the Shire--about home--is different, because time hasn't stopped passing in the heroes' absences and even as the hobbits have been changing, the Shire has been changing.

In The Hobbit, home is the hope that sustains Bilbo; in The Lord of the Rings, Frodo discovers that home isn't enough to sustain him: unlike the visions of it that keep Bilbo going, Frodo discovers that the constancy of home is an illusion. But that constancy he sought in returning to the Shire isn't, despite that, presented by Tolkien as an impossibility. Instead of finding it in his real home, Frodo is able to find healing in Elvenhome. Put in more "theological" terms, one might say that the longing for earthly comfort and belonging is not enough, but it does point the way towards a true comfort and belonging that is satisfied beyond.

Good topic!