Tolkien founds the source of Hobbit valor not in their rational faculties or the essential vitality that unites all of us, but in their specific ancestry.
Of course, they are also more adventurous.
He described northerly Fallohides like them as tall, rare, artistic, close to the Elves, and apt to rule over clans of other branches of the Hobbit family tree. (Even Bilbo, after being tempted by the Ring in Rivendell, elicits pity.)īut Tolkien went further in his ethnic taxonomy to elevate Frodo, Bilbo, Merry, and Pippin above other Hobbits, preparing them to do greater things than their countrymen. Unlike the Dwarves, the central Hobbits are never ridiculed, and, except for a few of Frodo’s most miserable moments, the central Hobbits are never pitied. In Tolkien’s work, Dwarves are meant to be different, not fully alien but not fully human, while Hobbits, despite their fuzzy feet, are the good-ol’ boys. Tolkien has also been described by his biographer as holding an active disgust with Wagner and with attempts to interpret Norse myths as Nazi propaganda, and once excoriated a prospective German publisher of The Hobbit that wanted to know if he was pure Aryan descent, writing in a 1938 letter, “If I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.” It’s complicated, in short, but the othering quality of how Tolkien dealt with these differences tip the sympathies towards Hobbits above all others. The Hobbits are just rustic English people.” It’s hard not to see this as another parallel between Lord of the Rings and Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung its Dwarf characters have long been noted as tacitly reflecting Wagner’s intellectualized anti-Semitism. “The dwarves of course are quite obviously, wouldn’t you say that in many ways they remind you of the Jews?” he once said in a 1971 interview, “Their words are Semitic, obviously, constructed to be Semitic. Tolkien connected Dwarves explicitly to Jews. In terms of looks, Hobbits are regularly contrasted with Dwarves - less “stout and stocky,” less bearded, and more closely related to humans. (As on Earth, so it is in Middle-Earth.) Elves are astonishingly beautiful, and humans can go either way. On the other hand, I have not seen John Ronald Reuel’s feet, but something tells me they are not leathery and covered in thick, curly head-hair.īeauty is strongly racialized in Tolkien’s universe. He even identified himself as “a Hobbit in all but size.” He had the same homebody mindset, enjoyment of life’s small comforts, and physical portliness that he attributed to Hobbits. “Their faces were as a rule good-natured rather than beautiful,” he wrote in the prologue of The Lord of the Rings. The fact is that, for the majority of the time they’ve been on the page, hobbits have been unremarkable, looks-wise, and Tolkien delighted in it. So each Wednesday throughout the year, we'll go there and back again, examining how and why the films have endured as modern classics. 2021 marks The Lord of the Rings movies' 20th anniversary, and we couldn't imagine exploring the trilogy in just one story.