According to Tolkien, were hobbit feet really unusually big? And no, this isn’t a sex question–get your minds out of the gutter, you pervs! I’m just curious. I recall numerous descriptions of hirsute feet with well-padded soles, but nothing about size. Have various artists’ renditions made the oversize feet we associate with hobbits almost canon, or is it something Tolkien actually said or alluded to?
I’m at work with no current access to the books, and for some reason this is on my mind.
And while I’m on the subject, how about hobbit ears? Did Tolkien ever say anything about them being pointy?
Was Sam really chubbier than the other hobbits in the Fellowship?
The only description of any hobbit that I can recall offhand–other than the generic descriptions–was when Gandalf described Frodo as “taller than some and fairer than most.” Did this refer to Frodo’s Fallohide background, or that he was more attractive than other hobbits–more “fair”?
And getting starved, tortured and almost killed by “Sharky”.
I’ve always felt sorry for poor Fatty. He put his life on the line for Frodo just as much as Merry and Pippin did, but does he get any props? Noooooo … .
I checked that link and I wouldn’t rule out either pointed ears or large feet by that drawing. Nothing is to scale. Bilbo, for instance, is much too short to open that door. So the scale of the feet might just be a little off. I mean, it doesn’t show the hair on the feet either.
And the top of the ears look to be covered by his hair. Maybe you can zoom in tighter than I can, but it looks to me like there could be points there.
I am very glad to have seen the picture, though. Thanks for posting it Pochacco.
AFAICR(ecall) the only instance in which Tolkien implied that a hobbit had overly large was when he cited Odo Proudfoot at Bilbo’s and Frodo’s birthday Party. One is free to presume that members of the Proudfoot clan were more likely than not to have exceptionally large feet (for hobbits). However, one might with as much justification presume that hobbits of that name have a ancestral tradition of exceptionally meticulous grooming of the pedal extremities.
If you’re a Fatty fan, go read “Return of the Shadow”, JRRT’s early drafts of LOTR. The proto-Fatty character gets, dragged off by Gandalf, goes camping on Weathertop with Gandalf, gets kidnapped and slain by Ringwraiths, gets kidnapped by Ringwraiths and somehow rescued, ends up in Rivendell, gets sent home from Rivendell to carry on the “good fight” in the Shire, and eventually gets edited down to his final role.
JRRT sucked at drawing people, and despaired of ever getting the details that he envisioned about them down correctly on paper.
…And speaking of the Return of the Shadow Peregrin Boffin aka Trotter (my favourite Hobbit character) had no feet at all (possibly). With his characteristic disregard for these important details Tolkien neglects to tell us his wooden shoe size. He does however tell us that he is “lean” i.e. not fat.
:( How I wish Trotter had not been swept aside by the upstart Strider, but that is another thread entirely...
In Tolkien’s mind, hobbits evidently did have pointed ears. When the Houghton Mifflin Co. asked him to provide some promotional drawings for The Hobbit, he wrote back that he didn’t feel artistically competent enough to do so, but he did provide a capsule description as a guide for artists:
The above passage is taken from Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter, as quoted in J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator, by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull. This last book is especially interesting, as it clearly demonstrates that Tolkien was actually quite a talented artist, particularly with landscapes and calligraphy. At some point he seems to have convinced himself that he was simply incapable of drawing people, and so he rarely ever made the attempt. On the one hand this is kind of a shame, but on the other hand it’s perhaps best that there’s no real ‘definitive’ version of any of the characters to prevent readers from imagining their own versions–or at least there weren’t until the Peter Jackson movies came out.
Interestingly, the above quote also provides some insight on another question about Middle-Earth that is left surprisingly obscure in the texts: did Tolkien’s Elves have pointed ears? He never actually says that they do, although pretty much all the illustrators have taken it as a given. Evidently Tolkien would have agreed.
As far as the size of hobbit feet is concerned, I don’t recall that he ever explicitly states they are abnormally large in general, but he does certainly emphasize their prominence by mention of their thick leathery soles and fur covering, and that always made me imagine that they were somewhat large in comparison to, say, the feet of human children. The one specific mention I can think of here is perhaps not entirely kosher, but Tolkien does go out of his way to describe Gollum as having large feet, and Gollum was supposedly “of hobbit-kind.” On the other hand, the long years owning the Ring seems to have caused all sorts of weird somatic problems for the little bugger, which may also have entered into it. And of course, maybe he just had real big feet for a hobbit.
I always thought that Gollum’s accusations of Sam being fat were probably somewhat overstated, perhaps partly out of envy since Gollum himself was apparently broomstick-thin. Clearly, Sam liked his vittles, but I imagined him to be more stocky than fat, fond of a pint or three after a hard days’ work in the garden, posessed of a robust working-class stoutness rather than being overtly obese.
