Apologies. I know how to write it…I just don’t know when to stop. It doesn’t change the outcome, despite your assertion–it only changes how much Bilbo is saying he undervalues them.
When’s breakfast?
This. Bilbo was not really either complimenting nor insulting the hobbits of the Shire; he was messing with their minds, being both mildly complimentary (most of you are worthy) and mildly insulting (but I’m not all that fond of most of you). Entirely in keeping with the gift notes.
Now, Bilbo was the best scholar of any of the hobbits, absolutely agreed. But was he the best hobbit? Who was greater? Bilbo, with his adventures in The Hobbit, his finding of the Ring and more importantly his voluntary surrendering of it, and his many translations and scholarly works? Frodo, who defied the Nazgul at the Ford of the Bruinen, stabbed a cave troll’s foot in Moria, resisted Boromir’s attempt to take the Ring, made the courageous decision to continue alone to Mordor, tamed (at least temporarily) and protected (to the best of his ability) Smeagol, carried on the slog when almost anyone else would have lain down to die, and utimately carried the ring to Oroduin, organized and refined Bilbo’s work and added his own work to it? Sam, who did most of the work and got little of the credit, who battled orcs in Moria, looked into Galadriel’s Mirror and saw what he feared most, yet continued on, who figured out Frodo’s intent at Amon Hen and followed Frodo with pretty much everything they subsequently relied upon for survival, who impressed Faramir, injured and drove off Shelob and took the Ring when necessary, rescued Frodo (and voluntarily returned the Ring to him), and half-dragged/carried Frodo across Mordor (marshalling resources and finding water along the way at great risk) and to the fires of Mount Doom, then got the injured Frodo to the highest point around so that they could be rescued, and put the final touches on Bilbo’s and Frodo’s accounts of the War of the Ring and the Return of the King (while serving seven terms as Mayor of Hobbiton and raising numerous children) before building a ship and sailing from the Grey Havens? Or Merry, who led the hobbits from the Shire, with Pippin roused the Ents, unknit the sinews of the Witch King of Angmar, making it possible for Eowyn to slay him, who led the Scouring of the Shire and became Master of Buckland, and also contributed to Bilbo and Frodo’s historical work?
So which was the greatest hobbit? Bilbo’s acts in The Hobbit are pretty darned impressive, including his rescue of the Dwarves from the Spiders of Mirkwood and the dungeons of the Elf-King, his finding of the door at the Lonely Mountain, and his theft of the Arkenstone to give it to Bard’s people in order to resolve the stand-off at the Lonely Mountain. And his many scholarly works, both translations and original histories and poetry, especially if you include the tales that ultimately became the Silmarrilion, are unparalleled. But he’s not really a major player in the affair of the Ring once he surrenders it to Frodo, although his gifts of the mithril coat and Sting were two of many factors that allowed Frodo to make it to Oroduin.
Frodo is, of course, the primary figure in the destruction of the Ring, despite his succumbing to it at the end. He’s pretty scholarly in his own right, due to Bilbo’s influence. I doubt if alone he could have made it a week after the breaking of the Fellowship; Gollum would have killed him, or he would have become permanently lost in Emyn Muil, or fallen off of a cliff or into a bog. But he kept on going. He had no hopes for himself, no belief in his ultimate success, he was exhausted and in pain, but he kept on going. He played almost no role in the Scouring, other than to keep a lid on the vengeance extracted by the hobbits and showing mercy to Saruman (although these were non-trivial things). Plus, without him, most of Bilbo’s scholarship would have been lost in the mass of papers he had in his room at Rivendell. It was Frodo who went through them, oranized them and added the stuff he knew.
Sam was, first and foremost, a servant. He would never have been given the Ring to carry, had Frodo fallen at Weathertop or Moria, because he was a servant, and in that culture, that meant he was a lesser order of being. It wouldn’t ever have occurred to him or to anyone else to give it to him. Only when he was the only one left with Frodo did it occur to him that he was the one left to carry on if Frodo fell; only then did he become a companion rather than just a servant in his own mind. And even then, he decided he wasn’t capable of doing it without Frodo and turned back to find him and die defending his body rather than carry on to Mount Doom. What would have happened if Frodo had died and Sam had somehow evaded capture in Cirith Ungol is hard to know. He had the resources to make it, but it’s questionable as to whether or not he would have had the resolve. He would have been broken by Frodo’s death; he was broken by Frodo’s apparent death. His ability to refrain from putting the Ring on for the sake of invisibility was limited, even though the Ring couldn’t corrupt him as it would have liked. So it’s questionable as to whether or not Sam could have completed the quest without Frodo. It’s unquestionable that Frodo could not have completed the quest without Sam.
Merry, of course, had little to do with the Ring, but arguably his actions saved Minas Tirith and the lives of many of its citizens. And if Minas Tirith had fallen, Mordor might not have been emptied and Frodo might well have been caught. Merry was also the co-leader of the Scouring of the Shire, and more of a scholar than Sam.
So who was the greatest of the hobbits?
Bilbo was the greatest little hobbit of them all according to Mr Nimoy, although the qualifier “little” is worrisome. Who was smaller, Frodo or Bilbo?
Oh, I think you’re reading it right. I still say that saying they are good people whom he nevertheless dislikes is a criticism of himself, not of them.
I thought the song said “bravest” little hobbit of them all.
Restricting ourselves to Hobbits whose stories we know well (in other words, I’m excepting both Bullroarer and Belladonna Took), I think Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, and Merry all have a claim to the title.
In terms of pure brains and balls, definitely Bilbo. I can’t help but think the Quest of the Ring would have gone a lot better if Gandalf had discovered the provenance of the Ring early enough for him to be relatively pure/young enough to be Ringbearer.
In terms of purity of heart and bravery, probably Sam.
In terms of significance to the fate of Middle-earth, and giving points for unmerited suffering, and judging that his ultimate failure should not be charged against him because willing oneself to destroy the ring was impossible for any mortal, Frodo.
In the judgment of the Shire-folk, I think Merry probably takes it.
We’ve already had breakfast. Or did you mean second breakfast?
I’d say the greatest hero of the hobbits was Frodo. One of the things I dislike about the movies is that I don’t see the hardening of Frodo from frightened naive with support from his friends to tough-minded hero as I perceive him at the end of the books.
But all of them were utter failures as Hobbits, per se. A “great Hobbit” would be one who seldom left home, never left the Shire, grew really good mushrooms and brewed good home ale. . .
As for the OP, I think it’s a “If the shoe fits . . .” thing. The great thing about Bilbo was never so much what he did, as what he brought out in others. Those who deserved to be insulted, would know it, and use the words to insult themselves. That’s the whole genius of it.
Yes, I’ve been wondering what would have happened had Bilbo been young and fit enough to undertake the quest. Bilbo demonstrates keen intellect and high courage in The Hobbit.
We see a much reduced Bilbo in The Lord of the Rings. He’s much more egotistical, at least on the surface, and much less oriented about current events. Gollum seems to have remained fully functional after losing the Ring (well, except for the schizophrenia thing, and that seems to largely predate his loss of the Ring), even almost eighty years later. But Bilbo seems to have deteriorated significantly after giving the Ring to Frodo, perhaps because he didn’t have the obsessive goal of getting it back to sustain him.
But on the whole, Frodo seems to have been a much more humble character than the Bilbo we see in LotR. I wonder if the Ring might not have overcome Bilbo sooner than it did Frodo. Also, would Sam have accompanied Bilbo with the devotion he did Frodo? He was extremely admiring of and fond of Bilbo, but it was a more distant relationship. Sam demanded to go with Frodo; would he have felt he could do so for Bilbo, and would Bilbo have accepted him?
Also, had the Council of Elrond decided on a different Ring Bearer, what would Frodo’s reaction have been? Would he have become another Gollum, following the new Ring Bearer trying to recover it? Or would he have been like Bilbo, letting it go and slowly fading?
As for greatness in the eyes of the rest of the Shirefolk, I suspect Pippin figured as highly as Merry. They wouldn’t have known or cared much about the Witch King, even though they had sent a team of archers to support a war against him some centuries before. But the Shire had become more insular since, and once King Elessar declared the Shire off-limits to Big Folk, I’m thinking this would only have increased.
I don’t think Frodo would have become another Gollum. He had the advantage of knowing the ring was dangerous to him from almost the time that he took possessionof it, and not wanting it. He knew he needed to get away from it, which made the decision to do so conceivable for him.
This is similar to why Boromir fell prey to the Ring while Faramir did not. It’s not that the younger son of Denethor was a much better man than his brother; it’s that he KNEW more, having been the pupil of Gandalf.
I agree that Frodo was weaker in the movies than in the books, and that this was a flaw in the movies.
But the Shire viewed Merry and Pippin with enormous admiration. Quoting from memory (and thus likely inaccurately) here, “Lordly, folks called them, meaning nothing but good.” What you’ve described is a good hobbit, a pillar of society. But hobbits had some heroic traditions, and Merry and Pippin fit into their concept of greatness very well.
Seen most clearly in having Arwen face down the Nazgul rather than Frodo doing it his ownself. That is where the movies begin to go off the rails, frankly, though the suck does not bloom until the third.
But according to Gandalf, Faramir was the better man. The strain of Numenor ran more strongly through Denethor and Faramir than in Boromir, who struck people as more like a great man of Rohan. I don’t think it was knowledge alone that caused Faramir to succeed where Boromir failed. Boromir had more knowledge from the Council of Elrond and his time with the Fellowship than ever Faramir had from Gandalf, which was before Gandalf knew about the Ring (I doubt Gandalf shared the results of his final research into Isildur’s writings with Faramir)
Boromir actively sought power, both by personal prowess of arms and by rank. Faramir did not. Boromir wanted his line to be named King, not understanding the pride in humility that Denethor took.
And, I’m sorry, Skald. I admire the heck out of you, but for all the wrong things it did, I still think the Return of the King is a great movie. No movie with the Lighting of the Beacons and the Charge of the Rohirrim could be less in my mind.
Well, acccording to Gandalf in the Rankin-Bass ROTK, Frodo was taller than Bilbo, and Merry & Pippin were taller than Frodo- thus it would be that hobbits would eventually merge in with humans.
Uh yeah, that’s canon- right? L
Oh, my hatred of RotK has cooled. It mostly suffers in comparison to the first two movies. The Siege of Gondor suffers because the Siege of Helm’s Deep is much better, for instance.
One good thing about RotK is that, unlike Fellowship, it is a great DVD movie. By that I mean it chops up into small pieces in a way that Fellowship does not. Fellowship pretty much demands a three-hour commitment.
And the only reason the Charge of the Rohirrim is not the greatest goddamn cinematic moment ever is that the Sacrifice of Boromir already holds that title.
Thanks, everybody, for your thoughts. The Professor would be proud.
:: throws an apple which hits BMalion in the noggin ::
It’s a comment on Bilbo’s capacity, not their merit. It’s not insulting for someone to not like you.
I always simply chalked it up to a more eloquent version of “with all due respect.”
“I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve” implies “I like more than half of you exactly as much as you deserve.” You can take that any number of ways. The less clever just hear “I like you” and are satisfied. The more clever realize that “as much as you deserve” could mean just about anything, same as “with all due respect.”