LotR - Prologue

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

galadriel'smaiden wrote in post # 77.

What I enjoyed about The Prologue was how Mr. Tolkein described humans. The Big People

This has unlocked for me much of what we have come to discuss in this particular thread. The Prologue introduces us to the Hobbits and walks us through their world, their way of existence, their history, their nature and their land. But wit this reference to "us" as 'outsiders' (we are "The Big People" to the Hobbits), he quite cunningly turns the whole thing around on us. We read the Prologue thinking that we are learning about Hobbits, when really what we are learning about is ourselves. The Prologue creates the world of the Hobbits and we enter into that world; at first, it is foreign and other, so we look at it and try to learn about it -- we try to be objective and so see the Hobbits 'as they really are'. But as we go further into this other world/reality it gives us a perspective back onto our own world. The more we learn about the Shire, the more we reflect on how it is and is not like the world we live in -- which gets us thinking about and evaluating our world.

I'm only just now connecting this to Tolkien's elaboration of the idea of "Recovery" from "On Fairy-Stories" when he argues that fantasy is able to re-present the 'real world' to us in such a way that we notice things that we've too long taken for granted.

This is why, I think, the Prologue comes at the beginning. It literally puts us into the right 'frame of mind' by getting us to think about not just the world he's created, but how that world is related to, reflects upon, comments upon our own world. As we learn more and more about Hobbits, and how they are like and unlike us, we learn more and more about ourselves. When the story gets underway, then, we are 'primed' to regard the rest of the world that the Hobbits move through in the same way.