Lincoln Alpern
Active Member
This, to me, is one of the most moving passages in the trilogy. I'm sure I'm not the only reader who interprets hobbits as a stand-in for people like myself and the folks I know. Little people who don't lead larger-than-life lives, and aren't named in the history books.
Much of our culture is awash with narratives whose implicit message is that heroism is reserved for a tiny minority of larger than life personalities - the equivalent of an Aragorn or a Gandalf - upon whom everyone else is totally dependent when desperate danger comes. This story could've easily been one of those narratives, presenting Frodo and company as exceptional hobbits - which of course they are, but lines like this, and Gandalf's comment back in chapter 2 that Frodo wasn't chosen to be the Ring-bearer due to "any merit that others do not possess: not for power or wisdom," highlight the point that this potential for great heroism exists within all of us, not a specially chosen few.
It also meshes well with the philosophy of essayist Rebecca Solnit, who in 2009 wrote a book about natural disasters, times of desperate danger if ever there were any; and their tendency to bring out the courage, generosity, and fellow spirit of the majority of ordinary people - hobbits, if you will - who live through them. Pretty neat, I thought.