not your Shire

[Wes]

Seems like an important phrase we keep coming back to. Here are some of the ways I have been turning it over, possible perspectives on it. See if you think they are interesting/valid at all:

- Something in the world has changed, objectively; this Shire infiltrated by rings and -wraiths is not the Shire which was yours. That Shire existed, but is now gone.

- That Shire you conceived of was never a thing. Your Shire only seemed safe and comfortable to you in your own ignorance of the truth. Thank goodness for an outbreak of obvious strangeness to set you straight.

- You have a misunderstanding of ownership which leads you to apply a possessive where it doesn't belong. This Shire is not your Shire, for all your maps and walking songs, sort of like the light of the Silmarils was not Feanor's, for all his craft and lore; or again like those mushrooms were not your mushrooms, just like those pears weren't Augustine's pears.

- Not only does the Shire not belong to you, but you don't even belong to the Shire; your home is elsewhere, and you must give up the Shire you love not once but repeatedly, now and after the scouring, and leave Middle-Earth entirely. We Elves can feel you on that.

 

[amysrevenge]

Regarding the point "the Shire you conceived of..."

This one, while valid, shows one of the blind spots of the Elves. True, the Shire only seemed safe because of ignorance, but it actually *was* safe, almost without exception, for hundreds of years. For an Elf that is so transitory as to be not worth mentioning. For Hobbits that's dozens of generations.

Can you imagine how safe we'd feel if we had been part of a stable contiguous society since the fall of the Roman Empire? And for everyone right up until it ended, that would have been an entirely justifiable feeling of safety. How illusory is your sense of safety if it is true for your whole life and your whole family line for a dozen generations up and down?

 

[NotACat]

Regarding the point "the Shire you conceived of..."

This one, while valid, shows one of the blind spots of the Elves. True, the Shire only seemed safe because of ignorance, but it actually *was* safe, almost without exception, for hundreds of years. For an Elf that is so transitory as to be not worth mentioning. For Hobbits that's dozens of generations.

Can you imagine how safe we'd feel if we had been part of a stable contiguous society since the fall of the Roman Empire? And for everyone right up until it ended, that would have been an entirely justifiable feeling of safety. How illusory is your sense of safety if it is true for your whole life and your whole family line for a dozen generations up and down?

To be fair, this is almost the same thing Frodo meant when he said that the Shire could be doing with an invasion of dragons, so I can't think you can really castigate the Elves for a mere possible interpretation of something one of them said in passing