Tag: Merry

LotRFI Pt.58–The Scouring of the Shire

On By Luke SheltonIn First Impressions, TolkienLeave a comment

I was utterly unprepared for the Scouring in my first read of LotR. Almost every book I had ever read had an ultimate climax, and then a denouement to return the main characters to normalcy. I was shocked that there could be trouble after the Ring is destroyed.

sergei-lukhimov_orig
Image copyright Sergei Yukhimov

This event was pivotal to my interpretation of the hobbits in my first reading, though. This is where the hobbits display their new-found maturity. The quest has changed each of them, and those changes are displayed throughout their confrontations in the Shire. Merry, Pippin, and Sam all gained courage, confidence, and the ability to lead others.

Nowhere were these traits more apparent to me than in the preparations leading up to the Battle of Bywater. The hobbits of the Fellowship gather together disparate groups of hobbits and rally their spirits to out their oppressors.

For Sam, courage manifests itself on a personal level as he finds the strength to talk to Rosey Cotton, and ultimately marry her. Frodo, though, shows a different type of development. He has learned pity and mercy after these characteristics saved his life and all of Middle-earth. He demonstrates this several times in his interaction with Saruman and Wormtongue outside of Bag End. He offers them freedom and forgiveness several times.

As a child, I detected the changes in Pippin and Merry much more readily than those in Frodo and Sam. Their actions and outward appearance changes drastically after the quest. Even Sam was easier to understand because he seeks out more responsibility and involvement in the community. While Frodo partakes in many of these same responsibilities, this is not as noticeable a change for him.

Unlike the other hobbits, though, Frodo carries wounds that never heal. While Frodo was my least favorite hobbit, I still pitied his pain and I wondered if he would ever find healing.

Where Do We Go From Here?

To the Grey Havens, then on to the final words of the story.

What Do You Think?

How did you react to the change in the hobbits?
What did you think of Frodo’s pain?
​Did I miss anything? Let me know!

LotRFI Pt.42–Merry

On By Luke SheltonIn First Impressions, Tolkien2 Comments

While I saw Pippin’s lightheartedness as a very relatable trait, I was also able to identify with Merry during certain points of the epic. Unlike my adulation of Pippin’s jovial nature and individual growth, my identification with Merry was from a negative perspective.

 

Merry’s time alone in Rohan was perhaps the most affective part of his story for me. His time with Théoden begins in happiness. He is honored and sits next to the king and regales him with stories (RK, V, iii, 796). When word comes that the Rohirrim must go aid Gondor, Théoden telld Merry that he cannot go with them.

‘You shall abide here, and if you will, you shall serve the Lady Éowyn, who will govern the folk in my stead’ (RK, V, iii, 803).

Merry becomes indignant because he does not wish to be left out:

‘But, but, lord,’ Merry stammered, ‘I offered you my sword. I do not want to be parted from you like this, Théoden King. And as all of my friends have gone to battle, I should be ashamed to stay behind…tie me to the back of [a horse], or let me hang on a stirrup, or something.’

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Image copyright John Howe

This kind of useless bargaining and pleading between someone lower in position and a figure in authority reminded me very much of interactions I had had with my parent not many years before reading LotR (and perhaps some interactions even at the time of reading, if I am honest with myself). In a sense, Merry’s subordinate role in Rohan as a figure of entertainment one moment and as a burden the next mirrors a lot of the childhood experience.

The next chapter set in Rohan (RK, V, v) opens with Merry reflecting on his isolation. To make matters worse, the first interaction Merry has is with Elfhelm the Marshal who trips over him and curses him as a tree root. Merry stands up for himself, saying:

‘I am not a tree-root Sir…nor a bag, but a bruised hobbit’ (RK, V, v, 831).

Although his daring is not rewarded very kindly, as Elfhelm still calls him ‘Master Bag’ at the close of their conversation (RK, V, v, 831). Then Merry is overlooked as he ‘crept’ close enough to the conversation between Théoden and Ghân-buri-Ghân to narrate the scene for the reader (RK, V, v, 832).

The Rohirrim constantly ignore and/or disregard Merry. Perhaps this is a kind of othering. While it can, of course, be interpreted in many ways, this othering always reminded me of those times when adults would tell me to settle down, be quiet, and stop getting in the way. This really resonated with me as a child. Though I had what I would consider a happy childhood, I certainly experienced this kind of reprimand on occasion. The kind of loneliness and isolation that can accompany such an encounter feels on-par with what Merry experiences in Rohan. I could easily relate to the feeling of dejection that Merry feels.

My reflection on Merry’s part at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields and the Scouring of the Shire will come later.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Onward, to battle!

What Do You Think?

How did you read Merry’s experience in these chapters?
Do you think this reading is feasible or insane?
​Did I miss anything? Let me know!

LotRFI Pt. 5–Farmer Maggot

On By Luke SheltonIn First Impressions, Tolkien2 Comments

I feel like my first impression of Farmer Maggot was typical. At first, I did not like Maggot because I took Frodo’s account as accurate. I believed that he and Maggot had a history of clashing and were at odds with one another. This made Frodo’s reaction to being on his land seem logical.

“One trouble after another!” said Frodo, looking nearly as much alarmed as if Pippin had declared the lane was the slot leading to a dragon’s den. (FR, I, iv, 91)

It was not until Maggot offered food and shelter to the young hobbits that I began to trust him. So far, I think that most readers would agree with this impression, though some of them may have tempered their opinion of Maggot earlier, when Pippin began to push back against Frodo’s characterization.

Interestingly, I was recently listening to a podcast (Corey Olsen’s Exploring The Lord of the Rings, episode seventeen) which highlighted a disagreement that my perspective may have with others. In this podcast, Corey Olsen presents his belief that Maggot’s account of his interaction with the Black Rider is a rather objective recounting. Here is the passage in question:

“Good-day to you!” I says, going out to him. “This lane don’t lead anywhere, and wherever you may be going, your quickest way will be back to the road.” I didn’t like the looks of him; and when Grip came out, he took one sniff and let out a yelp as if he had been stung: he put down his tail and bolted off howling. The black fellow sat quite still.

‘“I come from yonder,” he said, slow and stiff-like, pointing back west, over my fields, if you please. “Have you seen Baggins?” he asked in a queer voice, and bent down towards me. I could not see any face, for his hood fell down so low; and I felt a sort of shiver down my back. But I did not see why he should come writing over my land so bold.” (FR, I, iv, 94)

Olson contends that, because Maggot’s account is objective, the Rider’s use of “yonder” is an attempt for him to blend in to the local dialect to collect information. My interpretation, however, has always been to treat this passage as reported speech. That is, Maggot is conveying the general sense of the interaction using his own idiomatic way of speaking. I never considered, then, that the Rider actually uses “yonder.” Instead, I always thought, and still believe, that Maggot is putting that word into the Rider’s mouth instead of trying to recount the interaction verbatim. This approach to the dialogue seems probable to me because it is a way of retaining the established characterization of both the Black Rider and Maggot. In that the Black Rider is not going to demean himself to try and fit into the dialect of the hobbits, and Maggot has no qualms about paraphrasing other people in his own dialect when it suits him. Also, I think that had Tolkien meant for readers to treat this scene has objective dialogue then he would have embedded the interaction into the text in a different way. As it stands in the published text, however, the entire episode is intended to be reported speech from Maggot’s perspective.

A second manner in which my approach to Maggot was very different from the norm is that he served as a proto-Bombadil encounter to me. My experience of Bombadil was very similar to the pattern that most people adopt with Maggot. It began with distrust but gradually evolved into respect and amiability. I know that this is very different from the opinion of others (as I recounted in my first post), but the pattern established by the Maggot encounter served as a template for many of the meetings that followed it in LOTR.

Where do we Go From Here?

Next we will visit the Barrow Downs, and then on to Bree!

What Do You Think?

How do you approach this passage which recounts dialogue between Maggot and the Black Rider?
Did the Maggot episode serve as a template of encounter for you as a reader?

 

LotRFI Pt. 3–Shire Trees and Old Man Willow

On By Luke SheltonIn First Impressions, TolkienLeave a comment

Landscape

Since I read the books as a child, I had no real concept of what different kinds of trees looked like. Growing up in Southern United States, the most common trees around me were birch, maple, oak, and ash. Tolkien only uses two of these species in his descriptions (oak and ash), but I undoubtedly pictured The Shire with the same trees that I encountered every day.

Tolkien Included:

Oak Trees

Ash Trees

I added:

Birch Trees

Maple Trees

At first, this may seem like a trivial matter, but it can have a very large impact on the visual landscape in the reader’s mind. For example, in Chapter three, the travelers (Frodo, Sam, and Pippin) stop in a “fir-wood” and make camp for the night:

“Just over the top of the hill they cam on the patch of fir-wood. Leaving the road they went into the deep resin-scented darkness of the trees, and gathered dead sticks and cones to make a fire” (FR, I, iii, 72).

Tolkien describes the hobbits setting up camp under a group of trees similar to this:

However, I had never seen fir trees. Using the context clues, I assumed that it had to be a kind of tree that had “cones.” Well, I was certainly familiar with one of those, we had dozens of pine trees in my back yard! So I pictured the three hobbits sitting in a group of trees that looked something like this:

Now I know that many readers are saying, “They are all evergreen conifer trees, this really isn’t a big deal!” But I would ask you to look closer. Here is a close comparison of branches from each (images from http://www.finegardening.com/fir-vs-spruce-vs-pine-how-tell-them-apart):

Fir Needles

Pine Needles

This view shows you the very different appearance of each tree. Also, if you grew up with pine trees (or used one for your Christmas/Yule celebration) then you know that they have two very unique characteristics: they shed their needles and their sap is very sticky and odoriferous. This means that in order to start a fire under the pine trees, the hobbits would likely have had to clear a space among the fallen, dead needles of a pine so as not to start a larger fire than they intended! So while this distinction of trees is very small, it makes a very large difference in the impression it leaves on the reader.

In the end, The Shire that I pictured as a child had a few more birch and maple trees than Tolkien probably envisioned, and all of the fir trees were replaced with pine. This leads to a very different mental image and also changes the associations that the reader has with the trees. These differences of experience lead to different individual interpretations and responses to the text.

Old Man Willow

This actually explains why many of the artists who have portrayed Old Man Willow have made the dangling limbs shorter than I always imagined them. I had always thought that it was largely artistic license, since a curtain of dangling limbs is less appealing than a clear view of the action,. Perhaps this latter consideration still plays a role, but the fact that the types of willow in England ​and that many of them have characteristically shorter limbs than a Black Willow certainly reaffirms their decision.

Where Do We Go From Here?

I intend to have the first reflection on the character of a hobbit soon. I also want to look at the events with Farmer Maggot and the Barrow Downs before we head on to Bree.

What Do You Think?

What trees have you always pictured in the Shire?
Do you think that the kind of trees you imagine change the way you think about the setting?
How have you always pictured Old Man Willow?

LotRFI Pt.1–Intro and Tom Bombadil

On By Luke SheltonIn First Impressions, Tolkien1 Comment

Introduction to the Project

My first read of The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) was similar to many in my generation, but distinctly different from the first readers of the text and those after my generation who likely watched the movies before they approached the books. I was introduced to the series as a child who was just beginning to read independently, not as an adult who had prior knowledge about the fantasy genre. Therefore, I formed my first impressions of the text in a vacuum and they were uninfluenced by larger discussion or criticism surrounding the primary work until the next year, when I wrote a school report on Tolkien’s biography. With the rapidity that only insecure children are capable of, I realigned my own to reflect the established interpretations after exposure to other’s thoughts on LOTR. It was not until recently, that I decided to revisit and write about this earlier “misreading” of Tolkien in order to flesh out these first impressions and perhaps give a glimpse into the mind of an underrepresented reader in discussions of Tolkien: children.

Initially, I should note that I read The Hobbit before I read LOTR, so this invariably impacted the way that I read the work. I was preconditioned, so to speak, to view the hobbits as children and to see their acts of adventure as juveniles traversing into the adult world. This being said, I always approached the hobbits in LOTR as if they were adolescents. This interpretation loomed large in my first read-through of the book, and greatly influenced my interpretation. The main aspects in which this influenced my reading were that I saw the quest of the hobbits as a quest for maturity, and I saw many of the episodes outside of the Shire as far more threatening than my subsequent conversations with others lead me to believe was the general consensus. For this analysis, then, I will focus on the character arcs of the hobbits as I first interpreted them, focusing primarily on Frodo and Pippin. Then I will use two early episodes outside of the Shire, the encounter with Tom Bombadil and the events in the Prancing Pony, to attempt to convey the perspective with which I approached the majority of the text and discuss how this changes important aspects of the text.

fullsizerenderOne of the most significant aspects of my first exposure to the work was that I saw each of the hobbits as undergoing a process of maturing. This lens highlighted the fact that Frodo was just “coming of age” in the reckoning of the shire-folk (as a youth, I often equated this age with becoming a teenager).

Perhaps the most interesting impact of this vantage point is the fact that I most closely identified with the story arc of Pippin. This is probably because he most clearly undergoes the kind of bildungsroman that I was looking for in these characters.

Tom Bombadil

One of the most unique aspects of my initial approach to the text that I had to revise almost immediately was my fear of Tom Bombadil. As a child, I took very literally the warnings that there are dangers outside the Shire and that no one was to be trusted. Adults tend to express immediately trust for Tom. It is as if they recognize him as an elemental or good fairie spirit from their past experiences of fantasy. I had no such prior knowledge as a child. At the very least, adults trust Tom as soon he frees the hobbits from the clutches of Old Man Willow. As a child, though, I was still very wary of Tom. How did I know for sure that he and Old Man Willow were not in league?

If you take a moment to carefully reread the Tom Bombadil passages, you can surely see the evidence that a distrustful reader could find to support the case of a dishonest Bombadil. My initial observation was that he lives in the Old Forest. He is undoubtedly associated with the characteristics of those woods; especially if, as Goldberry claims, he is the “master” of the woods. Doesn’t that mean that this area would take on somewhat of his personality? Next, there were the terrifying dreams that each of the hobbits have. Tom promises them they they are safe, yet each hobbit except Sam awakens in fear in the night. While they are ultimately soothed, these incursion with the realm of nightmares leads a distrustful reader to one of two conclusions: either Tom is not the complete master of these woods or Tom intentionally allows these dreams to infiltrate his home in order to terrify the hobbits.

Combine this with the fact that Tom exhibits power over the One Ring while he is conversing with the hobbits in his front room and it is easy to see how a child could believe that Tom represents a very scary and powerful evil.

Where we go from here

In future posts, I will be exploring how this approach shaped my understanding of Frodo and the other hobbits, as well as how it impacted my experience of the Prancing Pony, and the interactions with elves!

What do you think?

How old were you when you first read The Lord of the Rings?
Could you see Tom as an intimidating character?​​