Concerning Hobbits
Still in a mood to be sentimental about Middle Earth, I came across this neat take on Bilbo’s and Frodo’s first „real“ (i.e. not among masses of relations) encounter:
By the Brandywine
Noteworthy for a) keeping Tolkien’s take for how old Frodo was when Bilbo got interested in him and decided to adopt him, and b) letting Frodo show a sense of humor and spirit. Seriously, if you look for Bilbo & Frodo stories, you have to wade through Dickens pastiches where Frodo is a waif barely able to talk and prone to bursting into tears all the time, complete with the writers ignoring he was quite happily raised chez Brandybuck after his parents‘ death before Bilbo adopted him, not with the Sackville-Baggineses. This, incidentally, is not something you can blame the movies for, much as Peter Jackson makes the most of the angst potential of Elijah Wood’s blue eyes once the quest has started. Frodo when he’s introduced is very much a cheerful Hobbit, whose reaction to Bilbo trying to express his fondness is to say „Bilbo, have you been at the Gaffer’s home brew?“, and who parties with the best of them at the birthday gathering. (Which of course makes the later Ring and quest-caused changes all the more effective.)
Speaking of the birthday party, Bilbo’s farewell speech with the glorious trolling in the non-Middle Earth sense („I don’t know half of you half as well as I would like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve“) basically sums up his relationship with the Shire post-quest: both fondness and exasparation. In a way, both The Hobbit and LotR make the point that you can’t go home again, not to the home you remember, because either you or it or both have changed. It’s true for Thorin, for Bilbo, for Frodo. Incidentally, rewatching the birthday sequence has reminded me again what a superb job Ian Holm did, who with little screen time for Bilbo gets across a lot about the character, his relationships with Frodo and Gandalf, the effect the Ring has had on him, the crankiness mixed with the whimsy, the undiminished capacity for wonder and that old longing which gets him on the road again as it did decades earlier, against all Hobbit traditions. The Doylist reason why Bilbo leaves the tale early on and then has only cameos is obvious, once Tolkien had decided that he couldn’t be the ringbearer in this new tale, but on a Watsonian level, I think Bilbo deciding not to end his days in the Shire (where he lives in comfort and with a companion he’s fond of) after all but to hit the road again (until old age catches up with him once the life prolonging effect of the Ring is gone, and makes him retire in Rivendell) is a remarkable statement about just how powerful that inner restlessness must have been. And at the very end, in the Grey Havens, when he’s on the boat to the West, the very last thing he says is an expression of joy that there is at yet another adventure to go to. Here’s the birthday sequence for you all to enjoy and be sentimental about with me:
And the extended edition version, which has the Bilbo-Frodo moment I mentioned earlier:
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1323848.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
By the Brandywine
Noteworthy for a) keeping Tolkien’s take for how old Frodo was when Bilbo got interested in him and decided to adopt him, and b) letting Frodo show a sense of humor and spirit. Seriously, if you look for Bilbo & Frodo stories, you have to wade through Dickens pastiches where Frodo is a waif barely able to talk and prone to bursting into tears all the time, complete with the writers ignoring he was quite happily raised chez Brandybuck after his parents‘ death before Bilbo adopted him, not with the Sackville-Baggineses. This, incidentally, is not something you can blame the movies for, much as Peter Jackson makes the most of the angst potential of Elijah Wood’s blue eyes once the quest has started. Frodo when he’s introduced is very much a cheerful Hobbit, whose reaction to Bilbo trying to express his fondness is to say „Bilbo, have you been at the Gaffer’s home brew?“, and who parties with the best of them at the birthday gathering. (Which of course makes the later Ring and quest-caused changes all the more effective.)
Speaking of the birthday party, Bilbo’s farewell speech with the glorious trolling in the non-Middle Earth sense („I don’t know half of you half as well as I would like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve“) basically sums up his relationship with the Shire post-quest: both fondness and exasparation. In a way, both The Hobbit and LotR make the point that you can’t go home again, not to the home you remember, because either you or it or both have changed. It’s true for Thorin, for Bilbo, for Frodo. Incidentally, rewatching the birthday sequence has reminded me again what a superb job Ian Holm did, who with little screen time for Bilbo gets across a lot about the character, his relationships with Frodo and Gandalf, the effect the Ring has had on him, the crankiness mixed with the whimsy, the undiminished capacity for wonder and that old longing which gets him on the road again as it did decades earlier, against all Hobbit traditions. The Doylist reason why Bilbo leaves the tale early on and then has only cameos is obvious, once Tolkien had decided that he couldn’t be the ringbearer in this new tale, but on a Watsonian level, I think Bilbo deciding not to end his days in the Shire (where he lives in comfort and with a companion he’s fond of) after all but to hit the road again (until old age catches up with him once the life prolonging effect of the Ring is gone, and makes him retire in Rivendell) is a remarkable statement about just how powerful that inner restlessness must have been. And at the very end, in the Grey Havens, when he’s on the boat to the West, the very last thing he says is an expression of joy that there is at yet another adventure to go to. Here’s the birthday sequence for you all to enjoy and be sentimental about with me:
Click to viewAnd the extended edition version, which has the Bilbo-Frodo moment I mentioned earlier:
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1323848.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.