The Scouring of the Shire

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Originally Posted by The Might

I personally have one problem with it.
It's hard to read about some small fight in the Shire after you read about great battles in Beleriand and the rest of M-e against Melkor and Sauron.
It's also the reason why Tolkien stopped writing anything about new possible threats in Gondor during Eldarion's rule. It just wouldn't be the same.

Well, first of all, I don't really enjoy LotR or any works of M-E because of the fights or battles--they are wonderfully told, but the purpose of all of them is to reveal character and demonstrate something essential about the themes. There is no fighting without purpose in Tolkien's world, and on that score the Scouring is no exception.

But what I really take issue with in your post is this idea that there is such a thing as a "small fight" -- to anyone in a life and death battle there is nothing 'little' about it. Part of the purpose of the Scouring is, I think, to remind us of that: that taken from the point of view of the individual combatant war of any 'size' is immense and overwhelming. You could die. You might need to kill. Whether you die alongside 10 000 other people or 100 is immaterial--either way you are dead and everything you have and could have is gone. Likewise, whether you kill 2 or 3 of 10 000 or 2 or 3 of 100 you have murdered and taken life.

The more intimate and personal scale of the battle in the Shire reminds us of this fact. Thousands died in the Pelennor, but we really only 'feel' for or remember those individual characters we know by name (Theoden) the rest are just part of that big and incomprehensible number. Those who fell defending the Shire are remembered and mourned individually by their friends and community, reminding us that this is what war really is all about.