Hobbits the "ultimate" Nazgul kryptonite?

Jollster

New Member
Hi Corey,
I've been re-listening to the classes concerning the attack on Weathertop, and I want to pose a theory of mine and would love yours, and our classmates thoughts. I believe that Illuvatar brought Hobbits into existence as a foil to the Ringwraiths, and ultimately, Sauron. The qualities of Hobbits which are most quoted are tough, cheerful, love simple pleasures (pipe, beer), love the company of others, good natured teasing, full of pluck, and take no nonsense. They are close to earthly things and nature etc etc. These qualities carry our Hobbits through the toughest of situations, that Men, Dwarves and even Elves may not cope with. Now, when the Sauron and Ringwraith situation crossed Illuvatar's desk, he would have looked at the available races and saw they were all lacking in that unique combination required for the task. Could Illuvatar have tweaked a branch of men to produce Hobbits? There has never been an explanation on where Hobbits came from. This is born out by them suddenly appearing near the Anduin, Sméagol finding the ring, Bilbo finding the ring again, and one of Gandalf's areas of study being Hobbit lore. Therefore, I contend, Illuvatar, somehow brought Hobbits into existence, to once and for all deal with the Sauron issue.

Thoughts?
 
Thanks Pontiff. The image Corey created of the WitchKing going before Sauron, saying
“they have this ring bearer, and he doesn’t look like much...but holy cow! Unbelievable!”
Made me laugh out loud. Out of all the enemies he’s faced, he fails against a Hobbit?
 
I have often wondered to what extent JRRTs depiction of Hobbits was influenced by G. K. Chesterton's poem, "The Secret People"?

I suspect it played some part.

Here is one stanza of the poem:

Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget,
For we are the people of England, that never has spoken yet.
There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully,
There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we.
There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise.
There is hunger in our bellies, there is laughter in our eyes;
You laugh at us and love us, both mugs and eyes are wet:
Only you do not know us. For we have not spoken yet.


Pretty sure that Hobbits are representative of a view of 'the People of England'. Also pretty sure that JRRT was familiar with all of G. K. Chesterton's works (the most famous Catholic fictionalist in the period preceding JRRT and C. S. Lewis).

I think it likely that there was some influence there.
 
Oh wow, I haven't seen that. Surely, even if there isn't an influence in a cause-effect sort of way, at the very least they were both influenced by the same factors and came to a similar place in the end.
 
Chesterton's Ethics of Elfland has always struck me as another likely source of influence for Tolkien.

I agree Beech27,

A compare and contrast of G. K. Chesterton's 'Ethics of Elfland' (a chapter in his book 'Orthodoxy') with JRRTs, 'On Fairy-Stories', would be an interesting paper. They are covering much the same ground, albeit in two different styles.

Here is a quote from Chesterton, which might just as well have come from JRRT, "The vision is always solid and reliable. The vision is always a fact. It is the reality that is often a fraud."

Of course, Chesterton starts the chapter with a number of paragraphs on politics (most unlike Tolkien), but then he launches into fairy tales: "The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales."

I think that Tolkien would certainly agree.
 
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A compare and contrast of G. K. Chesterton's 'Ethics of Elfland' (a chapter in his book 'Orthodoxy') with JRRTs, 'On Fairy-Stories', would be an interesting
Oh, wow; thanks for the citation. Downloaded. Will read. Already noted the first sentence of the chapter's last paragraph: "Thus ends, in unavoidable inadequacy, the attempt to utter the unutterable things."

Loved GKC's "The Man Who Was Thursday", but petered out halfway through "The Napoleon of Notting Hill" (too many contemporary references I failed to get?).
 
Hi Jim,

I liked both those books, but my favorite G. K. Chesterton work is his poem 'Lepanto'. Check it out for a treat, if you have not already.
 
There is room for a rather large book on the intersection of Newman, Chesterton and Tolkien -- 2 converts and the son of a convert
 
This is an interesting conjecture, Jollster. I don't think we could prove it one way or the other.

While I'm amused to picture Illuvatar as some middle manager scrambling to plug a hole in the company's market strategy, I expect it would have shaken out somewhat differently. After all, Illuvatar is the founder-CEO, not mid-tier. He knew all the events of *The Lord of the Rings*, those leading up to it, and those after it, before Arda was ever created. (He allowed the Ainur some glimpses of events to come during the original Music, but he saw the whole thing, as it was ultimately his doing.)

So a more apt metaphor might be Illuvatar as playwright, applying the inverse of Chekov's Law: he knows a gun (Hobbits) will be needed to shoot the villain (Sauron) in the last act, so he made sure to place that gun on the mantelpiece in the first act. Or in other words, he could have arranged for Hobbits to appear as an offshoot of humanity centuries or even millennia before anyone without perfect foreknowledge could have predicted their necessity.

This doesn't explain Hobbits' sudden appearance near the Anduin, but it seems more in keeping with Illuvatar's MO in the rest of the Legendarium, and it means they could have broken off from the mainline species sometime before Sauron created the One Ring (a relatively recent development in evolutionary terms). Of course, he could have just snapped his fingers and brought Hobbits into being *ex nihilo* but again, that kind of flashy intervention doesn't fit Illuvatar's character, and wouldn't be necessary for someone who possesses 100% accurate knowledge of all future events and could easily plan ahead for such contingencies.
 
"So a more apt metaphor might be Illuvatar as playwright, applying the inverse of Chekov's Law: he knows a gun (Hobbits) will be needed to shoot the villain (Sauron) in the last act, so he made sure to place that gun on the mantelpiece in the first act. Or in other words, he could have arranged for Hobbits to appear as an offshoot of humanity centuries or even millennia before anyone without perfect foreknowledge could have predicted their necessity."

As a student of theatre, I heartily endorse this theory. And. in fact, I shall now picture Merry on the Pelennor Field as a quasi Indiana Jones facing the thug with a scimitar -- he sighs, pulls his gun/sword, and shoots/stabs.

And Sam is definitely a shotgun.
 
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