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Progress on The Fellowship of the Ring, Part 1
Much of it has to do with the critical and audience reaction to the series—discussion of its themes, assumed allusions and references to real life events (especially the world wars), criticisms of supposed messages and morals. I just really like that Tolkien refutes it. It’s a story, influenced by his life and history, but it’s still just fantasy and meant to be—you know—enjoyable. Many people have done great critiques and analysis of The Lord of the Rings but the author is, uh, still “alive” according to Tolkien. An interesting note is that he does draw the reader’s attention to the idea that he was influenced by the decay and erasure of his small, rural town in England. I’ll keep that in mind as I read. In any case, I won’t be doing as deep a dive into Fellowship as I did with Frankenstein. I’ll bring up points of interest here and there, connect a few dots, but I think I should keep in the spirit of the foreward and try not to recontextualize what actually happens. Onto the book proper!
There’s just something about hobbits that I really like. I just adore them—warts and all. If I could be any fantasy creature, I would be a hobbit. Sure they’re risk-adverse, kinda classist, more than a little xenophobic, maybe a bit socially stagnant, but I love them! There’s no malice in them (other than the Sackville Bagginses, an odd exception), and they’ve honestly found a way of life that works for them. The Shire is a little utopia, ready to be shattered by outside events but perfectly self-sustaining. The idea of a place where everyone more-or-less gets along, lives simply and comfortably, and nothing happens sounds great to me. I know I’d get bored of it eventually, but the Shire is my idea of fantasy—more so than any other presented in Tolkien or anything else I’ve read—and the prologue is just a big, beautiful info dump about it.
I think what makes me like this so much is that there’s hardly any names—of individuals, that is. Once we get into Fili and Kili and Bofur and Bombur and Thorin and Dopey and Sleepy territory, my eyes slide off the page and my brain grinds to a halt. I have a hard time remembering names in real life (faces too, incidentally), and there’s no chance that I’ll remember that Bambi is son of Dambi the son of Rambi the grandson of Thambi and ruler of the Great Forest of Thumperton. Place names, I can keep straight if there’s not too many and I have a map (helpfully provided in my copy) to reference. But when I get a bunch of information at once, I can’t process it all. I distinctly remember reading Fellowship in high school, getting to a description of a meadow or something, and then completely forgetting who the hell “Frodo” was. I only have so many brain cells, and they’re mostly busy finishing math problems I started on in the fifth grade.
Anyways, I can handle the history of the Shire, the hobbits, and their society when I can’t handle one fourth of the same information about Rohan or Gondor. I guess that’s because I’m invested in what happens to the hobbits because I grew up with The Hobbit; I want to know what it’s like to live there because I want to live there. It’s similar to how some people feel about something like Star Trek or Harry Potter, I think. All those little world building details are so cool because they make it that much more real and easier to imagine yourself being a part of it. (Never mind that Rowling told everyone that before toilets, wizards just pooped everywhere. Maybe that’s a little too real.) I know that’s why some people really like Tolkien—because he goes into that much detail about almost everything—and I understand that. Just… give me some time to start caring, will ya?
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But interpretation is as interpretation is. I'm never convinced that many of these great authors were drawing on some of the things we claim they were drawing on. They were just writing; some of that meaning is in the eye of the beholder.
Sure they’re risk-adverse, kinda classist, more than a little xenophobic, maybe a bit socially stagnant,
I mean... rural England? :D The Shire delights me though, in all it's simple complexity.
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