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#1 |
Shade of Carn Dûm
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In rsponse to Davem, I do indeed feel as though I am in another world when I step into the Shire, or many other settings in Middle-Earth. My home is more akin to the wastland of Mordor, only populated by throny shrubs.
I have been to other, different climates, of course. But I have yet to visit one as beautiful as I the one I would love to see in the U.K. I think this is yet another example of Tolkien's genius. Before reading this book, my desire to travel there was irrelevant. But afterwards, I find myself wishing for forests, moors, downs, woodland paths, hills, streams, and pretty much everything one cannot find near my home. I connected with the Shire because it was so peaceful, so close to nature. Las Vegas, even in the suburbs, is not peaceful, by any means. But there is nature, if one looks hard enough. The hobbits love thier land, despite minor annoyances, and I love mine, even when the thermometer reaches high into triple digits. So, despite blatant differences, the Shire and the Las Vegas desert have something in common. People belonged there, and I know that I belong here. (no matter how much I want to move to England)
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#2 |
Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
Posts: 4,240
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Saraphim
Don't idealise this country too much! Its still very beautiful in parts, but its not the Shire! There are still places that are close to it, though. Every year I travel down to Oxford for the Oxonmoot weekend with the Tolkien Society (culminating in a visit to Tolkien's grave on the Sunday morning). The countryside around Oxford still retains what I feel to be an echo of the Shire. And the 'Bird & Baby' (The Eagle & Child pub) where the Inklings used to meet, is a typical English pub - perhaps lending some of its atmosphere to the Ivy Bush - apart from the photos of the Inklings & a framed letter from them on the wall. |
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#3 |
Princess of Skwerlz
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: where the Sea is eastwards (WtR: 6060 miles)
Posts: 7,500
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Some good points have come up in the discussion! Arkenstone, the connection between Frodo being orphaned at an early age, like Tolkien himself, is interesting! I remember a highly entertaining discussion on the fact that heroes are often orphans, and whether it is an ‘advantage’ for them, on the thread Tolkien the Matricide – you might enjoy reading it!
davem, the ‘homey’ feel of the Shire is evident to me, though I grew up in Midwest USA. I’m sure the familiar names and idiosyncrasies would feel even closer to English readers, but I wonder if it doesn’t strike a chord with most humans. Perhaps it’s an archetype of ‘Home’ for us all? Fordim, I too see much foreshadowing in this chapter and can’t help but wonder how much of it was there from the beginning and how much had to be added after the story developed the way it did. One thing that impresses me in this chapter is the introduction to many names in the Shire, whether in the Inn or at the birthday party. It seems to me that Tolkien is trying to make us care about the people there, so that the Scouring of the Shire at the end of the story is important to us. Considering that he had planned that ending early in the writing process, it could be a conscious choice. Yes, Saraphim, reading a book does make one want to see the places in it, doesn't it?! I'm hoping to make a trip to Oxford soon to see where Tolkien lived and worked. (Off-topic for the book, but relevant to that point, I must confess that I'd love to see New Zealand after seeing the movie!)
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'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth...' |
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#4 | |
Gibbering Gibbet
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Beyond cloud nine
Posts: 1,844
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davem -- You go to Oxonmoot every year? I am positively green with envy.
You pose an excellent question about the different responses of English readers and readers from other countries -- it's one I've thought a lot about, but only being from one country (although I have lived all over the world in my life) I don't really feel qualified to answer it. Still, I rather suspect that American and (to a lesser extent) Canadian (such as myself) readers would not respond quite so instantly and familiarly to the subtle differences of class in the Shire. There is a class system on this side of the pond, but one that is defined in very different ways than is the one of the Shire/England (but I shall leave this now as I know there are threads aplenty about this already). As for my impression, I always find the Shire to be very 'homey' -- not because I come from someplace like the Shire, but because it's a place where all the values (and trials) of home are the governing principles of day to day life. I daresay that there are many places and cultures in the world for whom the Shire would be as alien as Lorien (perhaps even more alien) but I rather suspect that most people would respond to the 'homey-virtue' of the world. Saraphim Quote:
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#5 | ||
Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
Posts: 4,240
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Estelyn & Fordim
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What I sense, for all that he presents the Hobbits as almost incurably parochial (& light-fingered - no wonder Gandalf chose a Hobbit when he needed a professional burglar! Some of them would take anything that wasn't nailed down!), I think they symbolise what he loved - 'the land of lost content', the England he grew up in & fought (& would have died) for. Perhaps its the depth of this love that he manages to communicate to us in the Prologue & first chapter, & its that love that comes through, & that his readers respond to, even if the actual place he describes is not similar to any place they've known. We certainly pick up on the sense of what we love being threatened, & want it to be saved. Its the ordinariness of the Shire & its inhabitants that makes me want Frodo to succeed - if Tolkien had set his stories in some typically outlandish fantasy world, would we care as deeply (or at all) whether it was saved or not? Quote:
(DENNIS: 'Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being repressed! ARTHUR: Bloody peasant! DENNIS: Oh, what a give-away. Did you hear that? Did you hear that, eh? That's what I'm on about. Did you see him repressing me? You saw it, didn't you?.... ('I mean, if I went 'round saying I was King of Gondor just because some Half-Elf had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!')) |
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#6 | |
Cryptic Aura
Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 6,003
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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: Quote:
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I’ll sing his roots off. I’ll sing a wind up and blow leaf and branch away. |
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#7 | ||
Spectre of Decay
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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: Quote:
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: Quote:
Incidentally, davem: I like to regard the Shire as an anarcho-syndicalist commune.
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Man kenuva métim' andúne? Last edited by The Squatter of Amon Rûdh; 06-22-2004 at 04:43 PM. |
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#8 |
Spirit of the Lonely Star
Join Date: Mar 2002
Posts: 5,133
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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!
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Multitasking women are never too busy to vote. Last edited by Child of the 7th Age; 06-22-2004 at 03:02 PM. |
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