something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking stick. - An Unexpected Party

a wide respectable country inhabited by decent folk, with good roads, an inn or two, and now and then a dwarf or a farmer ambling by on business -Roast Mutton

'I wish I was at home in my nice hole by the fire...' It was not the last time that he wished that! - Roast Mutton

He loved elves, though he seldom met them. - A Short Rest

wished again and again for his nice bright hobbit-hole. Not for the last time. - Over Hill and Under Hill

dreamed of his own house, and wandered in his sleep into all his different rooms looking for something that he could not find nor remember what it looked like. - Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fire

fell to thinking of his far-distant hobbit hole with it's beautiful pantries - Flies and Spiders

I only wish to be in my own armchair! - The Return Journey

a day came at last when they were in sight of the country where Bilbo and been born and bred, where the shapes of the land and of the trees were as well known to him as his hands and toes - The Last Stage

Road go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at lost to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills the long have known. - The Last Stage

My dear Bilbo!' he said. 'Something is the matter with you! You are not the hobbit that you were.- The Last Stage

He was in fact held by all the hobbits of the neighborhood to be 'queer' - except by his nephews and nieces on the Took side

which to a certain extent accounts for the affection of his nephews and his nieces - The Last Stage

Bag End's a queer place, and it's folk a queerer. - A Long Expected Party

I am fond indeed of it (the Bag End garden), and of all the dear old Shire, but I think I need a holiday. - A Long Expected Party

I am immensely fond of you all...eleventy-one years is too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hobbits...I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less that half of you half as well as you deserve - A Long Expected Party

A false rumour that the whole household was being distributed for free spread like wildfire; and before long the place was packed with people who had no business there, but could not be kept out. Labels got torn off an mixed, and quarrels broke out. Some people tried to do swaps and deals in the hall; and others tired to make off with minor items not addressed to them, or with anything that seemed unwanted of unwatched. - A Long Expected Party

Bag End and everything else, if I could get Bilbo back and go off tramping in the country with him. I love the Shire. But I begin to wish, somehow, that I had gone too. - A Long Expected Party

lives alone, as Bilbo had done; but he had a good many friends...Frodo went tramping over the Shire with them; but more often he wandered by himself, and to the amazement of sensible folk he is sometimes seen far from home walking in the hills and woods under the starlight. - The Shadow of the Past

There were rumours of strange things happening in the world outside...Elves who seldom walked in the Shire, could now be seen passing westward through the woods in the evening, padding and not returning...There were, however, Dwarves on the road in unusual numbers...They were troubled, and some spoke in whispers of the Enemy and of the Land of Mordor. That name the hobbits only knew in legends of the dark past, like a shadow in the background of their memories; but it was ominous and disquieting. - Shadow of the Past

They forgot or ignored what little they had ever known of the Guardians, and of the labours of those that made possible the long peace of the Shire.

difficult to daunt or to kill...and they were, perhaps, so unwearyingly fond of good things not least because the could, when put to it, do without, and could survive rough handling by grief, foe, or weather in a way that astonished those who did not know them well and looked no further than their bellies and their well-fed faces.

I should like to save the Shire, if I could - though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and felt than an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them. But I don't feel like that now. I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable; I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again. - The Shadow of the Past

1. What is the change in Bilbo? Is it just that he's creating verse? Has he come to have a new appreciation of the Shire itself outside of Bag End? Do friendships with the Dwarves, Beorn Gandalf, and the Elves indicate that Bilbo the solitary bachelor has learned to form relationships?

2.Is Bilbo buying the affection of these mercenary youngsters? Do the Hobbiton hobbits resent Bilbo because he's "Tookish"? Are they jealous of his wealth?

3. How do you think about the Shire when viewed only through The Hobbit?

4. Do the Shire and its residents seem to have changed between Bilbo's return in The Hobbit and Bilbo's departure in A Long Expected Party? Has the opinion of the "narrator" changed?

5. Does The Prologue change how you perceive the Shire? How about narrative style of A Long Expected Party and The Shadow of the Past?

6. Does Bilbo and/or Bilbo's experience of the Shire change between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring?

7. Would Frodo, as a character, have fit into the Shire of The Hobbit? Is he a more nuanced character than Bilbo as the Shire is more nuanced in The Fellowship of the Ring?

8. Did the Shire "grow-up" because The Fellowship of the Ring is a different sort of story than The Hobbit? Did Tolkien "grow-up" as a writer?

9.Do you overlook the faults of gossip, gluttony and greed in Shire hobbits? Are they part of the charm of hobbits along with toughness, good cheer, and loyal friendships?

The world of The Hobbit feels deep down less like a separate fantasy world than the world of LotR and more like a historical version of our own world seen through a fairytale filter...The Prologue establishes the Shire as a separate place with a separate identity, not just an intentionally vague fairytale version of the English countryside.

It's interesting that Tolkein personally put down roots at Oxford yet writes about these wandering characters like Gandalf (no home) or 5 out of 5 principal hobbits who are destined to leave the Shire behind (M&P going off to Rohan & Gondor to die). Plus the Elves, of course. We can speculate if this was something left over from leaving South Africa behind as a child or not, and we're stuck speculating, but it sure stands out.

People became enthusiastic; and they began to tick off the days on the calendar; and they watched eagerly for the postman, hoping for invitations.

The sun got up, the clouds vanished, flags were unfurled and the fun began.

Practically everybody living near was invited. A very few were overlooked by accident, but as they turned up all the same, that did not matter.

The Prologue to The Lord of the Rings certainly provides a lot more information about the Shire and makes it feel real. It also gives away the happy ending, which may provide comfort if we remember it when the going gets tough.

Q. Has the opinion of the "narrator" changed?

A. The narrator of The Hobbit is Tolkien himself, as when he told the stories to his children. The narrator of The Lord of the Rings is much more reticent and hidden.

For the most part, instead of seeing the story from the point of view of a modern narrator who breaks the fourth wall by speaking to the reader, in The Lord of the Rings we see the story from the perspective of one of five hobbits, Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin. In one long stretch of the story we see the action from the perspective of Gimli, since hobbits are not present. Only very rarely do we see the action from the point of view of an objective narrator.

Of course, the fiction is that Frodo himself writes most of the story, consulting with his fellow hobbits for details he didn't witness. Sam finishes it off after Frodo leaves. But that fiction doesn't always hold up.

After all, how can Frodo report on his first sighting of Valinor on his journey to the West? How can anyone report on the perspective of Gollum when no one is awake to observe him, or of Shelob, or of the fox? Sometimes it's worth remembering that it's not really Frodo's memoir, despite the pleasant fiction that it is.

Readers are so invested in Tolkien’s fiction that Bilbo wrote The Hobbit and Frodo and friends wrote The Lord of the Rings that they often object to my comments that neither book is really written like a memoir.

For one thing, I think we see/sense/are at times explicitly told too much about the "insides" of some of the characters for it feel or read as if it's written largely from the personal point of view of other individuals from within the books. In fact, when I first read about the idea of Bilbo and Frodo doing much of the writing, it actually came as a shock, because I just couldn't make that fit into my experience of reading the story. (I read the books at least twice before giving the prologue or the appendices more than a brief glance).

I see and feel things from Treebeard's or Aragorn's or Gandalf's, or even Saruman's perspective; and not just from them personally, but with them operating from and steeped in the particular flavor of the culture or history belonging to that character, which for me at least just doesn't allow it to hold together as if it was from the point of view of an internal character.

Some of it of course does sound like that, but at points where (ahem) it was "meant to," like Sam in Mordor.

The Red Book of Westmarch fiction only holds up because it was cleverly constructed. And also because it's a very pleasant fiction and fans want it to hold up.

The Hobbit was never meant to be a wholly serious tale, nor his young audience to listen without laughing often. In contradistinction, The Lord of the Rings does on occasion evoke smiles, but most of the time its issues go too deep for laughter. In the interval between the two stories the children are sent off to bed and their places taken by grownups, young or young in heart, to hear of a graver sort of quest in which every human life is secretly engaged.

Master of Middle-earth Paul H Kocher 1972 [my italics]

I think fan wishes are an important factor here. If we are thinking about what Tolkien wrote, The Hobbit and LOTR are not straightforwardly book and sequel (or book and prequel). And nor are they straightforwardly related to the collections of postumously-published draft material edited by C Tolkien.

I think that is exactly right. But it is inconvenient to many folks in the fandom who would like to understand (or build upon) Middle-earth as a consistent place. What would suit much of the fandom better, I sometimes think, would be to have the narrator to come back and do an after-the-kids'-bedtime version of The Hobbit.

I wonder whether this is a long-standing thing. Mr Kocher gives a lot of his Hobbit chapter to a patient and excellent case for not taking LOTR as a sequel to The Hobbit (in any straightforward way). That does imply that the 1970s fandom was prone to doing this.

I just have to disagree with all your points.

I'm clear about the difference between empathy for characters and author's point of view, although, of course, the author himsef writes in such a way as to encourage empathy where appropriate to his purposes.

And "empathy" has nothing to do with the sense of and descriptions of deep culture Tolkien gives us so skillfully and naturally, such as with characters like Aragorn and Treebeard, which is very much part of their POV, and what gives the reader a fuller idea of and feel for their respective characters.

And I certainly don't have any empathy for Saruman--and Saruman's own personal point of view is ultimately very, very clear (and icy cold).

I've been reading these threads and thinking about that.

In terms that a modern reader might recognise, Bilbo might well be the 'most richest hobbit' who ever lived (as they woud say in Hobbiton if they knew). That's just from the gold and 'jools' under the The Hill -- nobody (except possibly Bilbo) knows about that curious coat of mail on display at the Mathom House and how he might buy 'the Shire and everything in it'.

But (as already mentioned by others) the Shire seems a prosperous place where it is hard to imagine, say, the Hardscrabble family in hovels in Brassfarthing. And perhaps the idea of buying or selling the Shire would just seem ridiculous to the Hobbits. Very sensible.

Take Lotho for contrast. The Shire is to be 'modernised', and opened up to international trade. One day when I have nothing to do, I might adopt a false name and put out something 'proving' that Lotho is a critique of Thatcherism. It's a reading that works perfectly well but of course can't possibly be right: when LOTR first published Mrs Thatcher was a recently-qualified young barrister with political ambitions that had not yet become her '-ism'.
Oooooh - or possibly she got it all from reading LOTR?

and I know about the difference in the use of these terms. And of course characters aren't bad or poorly written for lacking the POV type you mentioned (I never have thought so. Seems to me that would be a very odd reason).

But that isn't at all what I was talking about, except, of course, in referencing an "internal narrator" (Red Book of W. idea, among others). Other than that, I wasn't speaking in technical terms, or using POV in the formal sense you mention, but simply in terms of the actual character's personal, internal point of view from within the story. And my reason for this was to give one example of why an "internal" narrator, in the sense you mention where the story is told through the eyes of, say "Frodo," doesn't really hold water for every part of the book, although it certainly works for some portions. (Which is not a criticism of Tolkien's writing, but just an observation.) We're talking not about apples and oranges but something almost as different as, say, apples and sidewalks.

And of course empathy and sympathy are different. I'm not sure why you may think I've confused them, or of why you may think I'm unaware of the difference.

But I have neither for Saruman.

I think we feel sort of programmed to find one fault with a person, place, or thing, and then rain fire & brimstone on them and cancel them. So I say that for my own context: I love the Shire and always feel like it's a place I'd like to live (as a Baggins), but one detail does give me pause, which you cited:

That just plain sounds rotten, living in a dirt hole. As a boy in the countryside, my friends and I often dug into dirt banks to make little caves, always in pursuit of some type of fort or secret hideout, so I can say from experience that sitting in a dirt hole is unpleasant and not a place you'd want to live, and I wouldn't want it to be anyone's home.

That's not going to make me condemn the socioeconomic structure or culture of the Shire, nor condemn Tolkien as cold and heartless (did someone mention psychopath? kidding!). But it doesn't sit well with me, I must admit. The gossip, the xenophobia, etc: I can write that off as human nature.

At the same time, the Shire feels free of social suffering. Frodo doesn't pass beggars in the street, and Bilbo's party is a fun-fest, not a soup kitchen. So I've made a whole post about one line, and I don't want to rain on any "Praise the Shire with Great Praise!" parades, so I'll just say that one is best to skip over, at least for me.

Dear Mr Hastings,
Thank you very much for your long letter. I am sorry that I have not the time to answer it, as fully as it deserves. You have at any rate paid me the compliment of taking me seriously; though I cannot avoid wondering whether it is not ‘too seriously’, or in the wrong directions. The tale is after all in the ultimate analysis a tale, a piece of literature, intended to have literary effect, and not real history. That the device adopted, that of giving its setting an historical air or feeling, and (an illusion of ?) three dimensions, is successful, seems shown by the fact that several correspondents have treated it in the same way–according to their different points of interest or knowledge: i.e. as if it were a report of ‘real’ times and places, which my ignorance or carelessness had misrepresented in places or failed to describe properly in others. Its economics, science, artefacts, religion, and philosophy are defective, or at least sketchy.

[concerning what was presumably a mailbag that had become tedious about whether or not elves and Men could have chilren together according to a reader's understanding of genetics, Tolkien goes on to say...]
... I should actually answer: I do not care. This is a biological dictum in my imaginary world. It is only (as yet) an incompletely imagined world, a rudimentary ‘secondary’; but if it pleased the Creator to give it (in a corrected form) Reality on any plane, then you would just have to enter it and begin studying its different biology, that is all.
Tolkien, letter 153, 1954

Readers do learn the Shire has The Hill, The Water, and (very) green grass, flowers, roads, a postal service, underground homes, and businesses including a Mill and an Inn. The Shire is:

Quote

The Shire is on the edge of being too idyllic to be believable even in a story. But it (in my opinion) doesn't go over that edge,

I should like to save the Shire, if I could - though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and felt than an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them. But I don't feel like that now. I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable; I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again. - The Shadow of the Past

He had been taken when the ruffians smoked out a band of rebels that he led from their hidings up in the Brockenbores by the hills of Scary.

I suppose how much we can or should extrapolate into Middle-earth from reality? has no final answer. For one thing it depends on whether the critic has a taste for the best probability and a concern about creating a sort of Frankenshire by too freely inserting one's own suppositions (that's me). OR;

Please correct me if I misrepresent you, Silvered-glass, but I think you are more interested in possibilities - an intriguing idea you can run with for as far as you can take it-- rather than best probabilities. I find that approach exhilarating for all that it is alien (and, I'll confess, tiring at times). But there is nothing wrong with it, or you , or me - as I see it these are different ways to enjoy the text.

Maybe the story-equivalent her eis tropes. Other storytellers splashing along in the mainstream Tolkien created don't have to tell us much about Dwarves, say, because we (think we) know about dwarves:

I agree that artists can suggest, with the minimum of brushwork, details that the observer's eye fills in. Sometimes different observers do that differently (wings or shadows around the balrog, or are we supposed to be left in doubt?)

But those few lines on the skyline that are very hard to make out clearly - what are they? Rock outcrop or cityscape (as you suggest)? Or cloud of dust - perhaps being thrown up by an advancing army? ... or a critic geting carried away with themselves ? All of these are techincally possible (if the artist has neither painted a distinct answer of said what was intended). But it matters to me which is more probable.

My assumption is also that the artist would have been clearer if this little thing is key what the artist wanted the audience to understand. I'm sure that is demonstrably wrong in some paintings, but it would not be my first assumption.
And of course we don't kow whether we've found something that is intentionally vague through artistic intent, or is just a brush-stroke of no particular significance and th artist might be perplexed over teh fuss made about their mistake turned into a happy little cloud.


Now of course also it is true that there are 'trick' paintings -- for example I think there was a fashion for pictures that look all distorted and the 'game' is to realise you need to position a polished cylinar just so, and the reflection of the paining in it is shown in correct perspective. (I'm thinking of an old master that contains a skull, but wikipedia has a different example that works just as well). So we need to decide whether we think the artist (or writer, in Tolkien's case) is inviting us to play that sort of game. Again, that is an assumption I come to cautiously, and you, Silvered-glass, seem to me to be much more bold.

As I say, the different approaches are not wrong or right in some objective way. But I do notice that sometimes it causes confusion or discomfort in the forum if people are opertaing in these different ways but not understanding the differences.

It was a shock to think that ancient Hobbits seemed a little wilder and unstable, and it was especially a shock to think that one of them could be so evil without any particular provocation, ring or no ring.

The Hobbit saga is presented as vera historia, at great pains (which have proved very effective). In that frame the question 'Are you a hobbit?' can only be answered 'No' or 'Yes', according to one's birth. Nobody is a 'hobbit' because he likes a quiet life and abundant food; still less because he has a latent desire for adventure. Hobbits were a breed of which the chief physical mark was their stature; and the chief characteristic of their temper was the almost total eradication of any dormant 'spark', only about one per mil had any trace of it. Bilbo was specially selected by the authority and insight of Gandalf as abnormal: he had a good share of hobbit virtues: shrewd sense, generosity, patience and fortitude, and also a strong 'spark' yet unkindled. The story and its sequel are not about 'types' or the cure of bourgeois smugness by wider experience, but about the achievements of specially graced and gifted individuals

... and more often he wandered by himself, and to the amazement of sensible folk he was sometimes seen far from home walking in the hills and woods under the starlight. Merry and Pippin suspected that he visited the Elves at times, as Bilbo had done.

He [Bilbo] was getting talked about, it seemed. Both his parents had died early for Shire-folk, at about eighty, and he had never married. He was already growing a bit queer, they said, and went off for days by himself. He could be seen talking to strangers, even Dwarves.

They shook their heads in Hobbiton when I asked after him. "Off again," said one hobbit. It was Holman, the gardener, I believe. "Off again. He'll go right off one of these days, if he isn't careful. Why, I asked him where he was going, and when he would be back, and I don't know he says; and then he looks at me queerly. It depends if I meet any, Holman, he says. It's the Elves' New Year tomorrow!

... not only because most of them were rich, but also because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected: you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the bother of asking him.

1966 Ball and 1967-HM follow 1966-Longmans/Unwin but have the erroneous reading "wild respectable country" in the first sentence.

'wild' and 'respectable' are polar opposite themes in TH

Tolkien also refers to the hobbits as a "breed", "Bred by whom?" one might ask based on that word choice. Difficult circumstances that made hiding and stealth more conductive to survival than open combat? Someone wanting to rule over obedient minions, such as Sauron? The origins of the hobbits are shrouded in the mists of history, but it is known that their past contained something that they wanted to forget and that their tales mentioned Mordor in a dark light.

The origins of the hobbits are shrouded in the mists of history, but it is known that their past contained something that they wanted to forget and that their tales mentioned Mordor in a dark light.

So there is no indication Tolkien was making a reference to the Hobbits being bred for some malign purpose; in fact, the OE bredan indicates a far softer, motherly sense of the word. And Tolkien often chose words rooted in OE or ME rather than Latin or French variations.