1. Just before this chapter, Gandalf has dropped some hints about all not being well in the Shire, and then has absented himself on the grounds that our fab foursome are more than equal to sorting it out without his help.


1. Does this seem contrived (it does to me - a sort of relapse into The Hobbit Gandalf as a sort of Outward Bound instructor who has organized this adventure for your improvement)?


2. Are we to suppose that the descent of the Shire into its current sad state has been arranged for our heroes' benefit in some way? Is that a nice way for reality (or Eru or whoever) to behave? Does reality in Middle-earth behave like that whether I like it or not?


3. Or, does Gandalf reason politically - e.g. The Shire has been colonized by a wizard via a local puppet (I think it might have been squire last time around who pointed out that Saruman’s methods resemble how European colonial powers reached into many an African or Asian country. There are of course also other possible historical parallels, including the fascist and Stalinist powers that had emerged during Tolkien’s lifetime). Might Gandalf therefore be cautious about a different wizard coming along to affect regime change with what might look suspiciously like his puppets? I don’t see this explicitly in the text, but maybe it is clear enough to older or more attentive readers than I was on my first reading?


2. What hobbit behaviours did we see in ‘Long-expected party’ (last week’s discussion) that have enabled or contributed to the Shire’s current problems? (There is a direct quote to find if you want, but I didn’t make this a quiz question, because I’m interested in interpretations). Do hobbits behave in ways now that surprise you?


3. At what point in events do you guess that Lotho lost control? Could his plans ever been beneficial to the Shire? Was Benefitting The Shire ever his intention anyway?


4. One thing I noticed on my re-reading is that our awesome foursome benefit from refusing to take the Shire’s situation seriously. I don’t mean they think it’s funny that the Shire has got into its state, but they make a point of laughing at (and flouting) the Rules, and in general not believing that the situation ‘can’t be helped’ or is beyond repair. This, and some references to ‘needing to wake people up’ (not a direct quote), made me think about waking and dreaming. I’m not suggesting that this chapter is a dream sequence, but I’m wondering whether the waking/dreaming (about which there was an exchange just as the hobbits nearly arrived home) is something to do with the trope of returning to reality back from fairyland. What do you think?


5. I notice that there’s a fairy-tale trope of the hero returning home and everyone is delighted and things are much the same or better (pretty much the PJ film ending). Tolkien subverts this trope in The Hobbit (there’s a perhaps more realistic process of assuming Bilbo’s legal death and distributing his effects). I’d say that’s as far as he should have gone in a children’s story. Does he revisit this idea more extremely in this book, which is for an older audience? And is it because of thoughts about the problems of returning home from a life-changing experience that is incomprehensible to the people you now rejoin- from his own experience of the Great War, for example?


6. Speaking of themes, it’s been important in the story so far that nobody however heroic was safe from Sauron’s Ring. Is a similar point here that not even The Shire - the least Mordor-like of countries - is not safe from the risk of becoming Mordor?


7. Frodo seems to understand the orcish-derived name ‘Sharkey’ Have I missed a time when he’s heard that word before, or if not then how is this?


8. Does Saruman’s death resemble Sauron’s (assuming ‘death’ is the right word; but I think you know what I mean)? If it does, what does this mean?

1. Rules and breaking them:Who breaks Rule 4, and what is their offence?


2. What other offences do people say the returning foursome committed (I don’t think we are told what any other numbered rules are (unless you know different?), so we’ll need to include things that might be byelaws edicts pronouncements or other official requirements whatsoever without limitation)?


3. What other book, by an English author and roughly contemporaneous to LOTR, has a running gag about ever-lengthening lists of authoritarian Rules?


4. (Bonus question) Is this other book (4), or what it satirises, anything to do with this LOTR chapter and its themes?


5. Which pubs or inns are mentioned in the chapter? If you wish, compile a complete list of known pubs and inns in The Shire by adding any known from other chapters but not mentioned here.


6. Who travels fourteen miles, and to do what? (The full answer is more complicated than it looks.)


7. Who is a hagling?


8. Who is wall-propping?


9. How did Lotho end up being called the Chief? (I mean how the title came about, rather than how he became the notional dictator).


10. Horn calls: Count the horn calls (the answer will have to be ‘at least...’ since sometimes there are ‘answering calls’ whose number is unspecified and is presumably therefore unimportant).


11. (Bonus question from 10)Why might Pippin be getting through many pocket handkerchiefs (if there are any in The Shire’s current sad state).


12. How does The Gaffer summarise Sam’s adventures during his absence?


13. Who started the shooting, and why?


14. What have hobbits never done, according to Frodo, and how close do you think they come to doing it?


15. Who is living in Bag End when our heroes arrive? (This is something of a trick question BTW).

‘Not for long now,’ said Gandalf. ‘The Third Age was my age. I was the Enemy of Sauron; and my work is finished. I shall go soon. The burden must lie now upon you and your kindred.’ (LR VI.5)

‘I am with you at present,’ said Gandalf, ‘but soon I shall not be. I am not coming to the Shire. You must settle its affairs yourselves; that is what you have been trained for. Do you not yet understand? My time is over: it is no longer my task to set things to rights, nor to help folk to do so. ' (LR VI.7)