Pippin or Merry: Who is better?

[Daisy Brambleburr]

I can never decide when these type of questions are asked!<P>One way of putting it is that I see a lot of Pippin in myself, but I think that I'd get along better with Merry. At a first glance, the two hobbits seem pretty similar, but Pippin is somewhat sillier (right word?) than Merry. He puts his foot in it sometimes (throwing the stone down the well is a good example) and does things on impulse. You get the feeling that he doesn't think before he acts or speaks, whereas I feel that Merry is more thoughtful in that way. He tells jokes and is just as lighthearted as Pippin (for instance, when he asks Farmer Maggot if he found Frodo and co 'in his duckpond') but is perhaps more intelligent? When you seperate them, like in the Return of the King, they become more diverse characters, and more sides to them are shown.<P>I'd say that Pippin is the more entertaining of the two, but that's not to say that Merry is at all boring. He has a different sort of endearing quality. Maybe he's slightly more enigmatic than Pippin? I find that it can be easier to describe Pippin's personality than describing Merry's. <P>I hope that my little ramble made sense. But now I think that I should answer your question. After thinking hard for a while, I say Merry.