LotR -- Book 1 - Chapter 01 - A Long-Expected Party

[davem]

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.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

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!)

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

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

People belonged there, and I know that I belong here. (no matter how much I want to move to England)

You do realise that you're a hobbit, don't you? This understanding is precisely the one that Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin come to realise as their journeys go forward. They all long to go somewhere else, to see what it's like and to find out if it matches their imaginings. But in the end, while they all come to appreciate that while the people who live in those places "belong" there, they do not. Even though Pippin becomes a Tower Guard, and Merry a Rider, and Frodo and Sam the Friends of all the Free Peoples, in the end, they "belong" in the Shire just as you belong in the desert. Perhaps that is the most lasting effect of this chapter's emphasis on the Shire -- it demonstrates not just that the four hobbits who go off on adventures belong in the Shire, but to the Shire. The real focus and protagonist of this chapter is the Shire and the hobbits who live there, and not really an individual hobbit (although Bilbo is allowed to take centre stage for a bit, but only before disappearing from the Shire). I guess this makes sense given that the anatagonist of the chapter is not Sauron but the Ring itself. Another comparison -- Shire vs Ring: hmmm. . .that's kind of how the whole novel works, isn't it?

[davem]

Estelyn & Fordim

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?

I suspect it was 'home' for Tolkien, & I suppose his memories of his childhood at Sarehole were at the basis of it. The interesting thing for me is, the 'Shire' of the Hobbit is also a reflection of the world of his childhood in a way - a time when there was 'less noise & more green', but that world was never under threat in the story. Bilbo came back to a Shire as beautiful, safe & permanent as the one he left. But in LotR we begin with the Shire under threat. This time there will be no going away for an adventure, with a safe, secure home waiting in the 'kindly West' for the adventurers to wish themselves back in. I can't help wondering if the attitude reflected in The Hobbit comes out of Tolkien's belief when he went off to fight in WW1, that England was waiting, & would always be as he remembered it - if he survived his own adventure, whereas LotR reflects his more mature thinking, as he lived through WW2 - 'Home' (Heimat) will always be under threat now, it will always need someone to make the sacrifice, give things up so that others may keep them.

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?

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.

I may be too typical of my culture, but I have to admit that when I first read LotR, the 'class thing' didn't register on me. I simply accepted the relationship - though I'm definitely in the same class as Sam, I didn't feel in any way that he was 'inferior' to the others. It was only when I started reading books on Tolkien (& latterly accessing posts on web sites) by Americans that I even started to think about the 'class thing'! Maybe I've been kept in my place too long!
(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!'))

[Bêthberry]

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:

'Do be careful of that ring, Frodo! In fact, it is partly about that that I have ocme to say a last word.'

'Well, what about it?'

'What do you know already?'

'Only what Bilbo told me. I have heard his story: how he found it, and how he used it: on his journey, I mean.'

'Which story, I wonder,' said Gandalf.

'On not what he told the dwarves and put in his book,' said Frodo. 'He told me the true story soon after I came to live here. ...'

...

'... Well, what did you think of it all?'

'If you mean, inventing all that about a 'present', well, I thought the true story much more likely, and I couldn't see the point of altering it at all...'

'So did I. But odd things happend to people that have such treasures.

A nod to the fiction of history, I suppose. But also a suggestion that readers must "think of it all" and keep their wits about them.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

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:

Sam is meant to be lovable and laughable. Some readers he irritates and even infuriates. I can well understand it. All hobbits at times affect me in the same way, though I remain very fond of them. But Sam can be very 'trying'. He is a more representative hobbit than any others that we have to see much of; and he has consequently a stronger ingredient of that quality which even some hobbits found at times hard to bear: a vulgarity - by which I do not mean a mere 'down-to-earthiness' - a mental myopia which is proud of itself, a smugness (in varying degrees) and cocksureness, and a readiness to measure and sum up all things from a limited experience, largely enshrined in sententious traditional 'wisdom'. We only meet exceptional hobbits in close companionship - those who had a grace or gift: a vision of beauty, and a reverence for things nobler than themselves, at war with their rustic self-satisfaction. Imagine Sam without his education by Bilbo and his fascination with things Elvish! Not difficult. The Cotton family and the Gaffer, when the 'Travellers' return are a sufficient glimpse.

It is no accident that Tolkien makes Bilbo and Frodo adventurous academic dreamers, Sam an enthusiast of Elves, myth and far-away places, and Merry and Pippin reckless go-getters. None of these qualities are smiled upon in the Shire, and they were all qualities that the myth-loving, spiritual, former school rugby player Tolkien possessed in no small measure. I'm sure that his scene in the Ivy Bush was based on similar memories to those that Bêthberry has shared with us above.

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:

I am being swept off my feet at last,' he added, and then in a low voice, as if to himself, he sang softly in the dark:

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

He paused, silent for a moment. Then without another word he turned away from the lights and voices in the fields and tents, and followed by his three companions went around into his garden, and trotted down the long sloping path.

Clearly Bilbo is remembering the danger of roads at first; but his silence after the song, his thoughful address and the significant capitalisation of 'road' speak of a deeper current of thought that turns the Road in Bilbo's mind into an allegory of life itself. It seems significant too that he has just given up his old life: his home and possessions, his family and friends, and most significantly of all the Ring that bestows longevity. He is beginning to feel his age, and at this very time he is venturing forth into he knows not what adventures. Small wonder that his mind turns to the uncertainty of the road ahead and its inevitable mortal ending. This is the first shadowing of a general theme of deathlessness and mortality that runs through the entire story: from Bilbo and Frodo to Gandalf and Saruman to Galadriel and Celeborn to, most strikingly of all, Aragorn and Arwen. But this theme can be explored in more depth later, particularly when, in a good many months' time, we reach Appendix A.

Incidentally, davem: I like to regard the Shire as an anarcho-syndicalist commune.

[Child of the 7th Age]

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!

[Nurumaiel]

Child, and if you're what the cat dragged in, what am I?

"When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End..." Those are the first words I heard of the book when my father began reading it aloud to me when I was just barely seven years old. My brothers and I had already become faintly acquainted with this Mr. Bilbo of Bag End as well as his younger cousin Frodo Baggins through bits and pieces about them told by my father, and we were naturally interested to hear the whole tale. We had not yet heard The Hobbit nor read it ourselves, and so we were ignorant of Bilbo's history and exactly how he acquired this Ring; but goodness did we know what the Ring was! The Ring, Bilbo, and Frodo made many interesting games during the rainy days. I shan't even begin to say what stories we made up with those characters. All the worst of the worst fanfictions put together could not equal the horrors that our cheerful, childish minds came up with!

I was a little mite of seven, enjoying my new home in the woods immensely was we had just moved from living in a town, and I along with my brothers had been excited at the prospect of our father reading aloud to us every evening. That evening a fire had been built in the stone fireplace and four wide-eyed little children gathered at their father's feet. No electric lights were turned on, but he ride by the firelight alone. Not too far away the fifth child who was too young to really pay attention was contenting himself with playing toys. And my father began by reading... "Chapter One... A Long-expected Party." He started at the beginning of chapter one that evening and was not allowed to put the book down for the night until he firmly insisted about three-fourths through the second chapter. We were already eager to hear more about Frodo and Bilbo and the Ring, and hearing the words made us firm and life-long friends of the characters. I can recall how I wept at not being allowed to listen to the final chapter of the Fellowship because of my own stubborness and unoblinginess.

Oh dear, those were the good old days.

"...and as Mr. Baggins was generous with his money..." This was one of the first things that struck me while reading the book again many years later. This, I think, was why I had always loved Bilbo, even as a small child. As a small child I pretended he was real, as children are wont to do, and I always looked on this 'imaginary Bilbo friend' as a very kind old uncle. This sentence sizes up the way I thought him when I was young, and the way I still think of him... a charitable, kind, obliging person. One who wouldn't be caught being stingy with their butter for the bread! "'A very nice well-spoken gentlehobbit is Mr.Bilbo, as I've always said.'" So have I! I believed most fervently that what the Gaffer said about Mr. Bilbo was exactly true, and I haven't changed my mind since.

Tweens... "...the irresponsible twenties between childhood and coming of age at thirty-three." When I was a child it seemed fairly obvious that one was out of their tweens when they turned thirty-three, but I wondered when one first went into their twins. When, by Hobbit standard, was one no longer in their childhood? I had desperately wanted to celebrate the day I entered my tweens, but I never had the faintest idea when that day would be.

"'...they live on the wrong side of the Brandywine River.'" This I consider curious. In the discussion of the Prologue it was mentioned that perhaps the Shire Hobbits and Bree Hobbits had a rivalry. This might also be true with the Shire Hobbits and the Buckland Hobbits, if most other Shirefolk feel as Daddy Twofoot does. Undoubtedly by Hobbits of the Shire the Bucklanders were considered 'queer;' the Gaffer says as much. But Daddy Twofoot's statement also implies there might be a rivalry between them.

"'He's in and out of Bag End. Crazy about stories of the old days he is, and he listens to all Mr. Bilbo's tales.'" Sam has to be liked from the first, or at least he was so by me. I formed the mental image in my head of young Sam, creeping away from his duties in the garden every so often to sit at Bilbo's feet and gaze up in awe as he hears of those 'Elves and Dragons.'

My current impressions thus far, along with previous impressions as a child. I would continue, I suppose, as well as reply to observations of others, but like Sam I must be drawn away from the Elves and Dragons to go to the cabbages and potatoes... that is, the work that needs to be done after dinner!