:rolleyes:
As I was addressing a post complaining about the 4 main hobbits, I think it would have been a fair assumption that I left Bilbo out of the list of hobbits I identified as 33.
But IIRC, there’s a particularly annoying scene where Bilbo hugs Gandalf and actually whimpers!.
At the beginning of the book Fellowship of the Ring, Bilbo and Frodo have a joint birthday celebration. It’s Bilbo’s 111th birthday (“eleventy-first,” he says jokingly), and Frodo’s 33rd. Almong hobbits, 33 seems to be equivlent to 21 for humans; a “reaching official adulthood” age, following the irresponsible “tweens” between childhood and age 33. In other words, one’s twenties.
But, after Bilbo’s birthday, Frodo hangs around in the Shire for another 17 years. He’s 50 years old when he sets out for Rivendale with the ring. (Same age Frodo was when he set out with the dwarves and Gandalf years before.) My guess would be that, for hobbits, 50 is about like being in one’s mid-thirties.
Merry & Pippen are younger kinsmen of Frodo’s. It’s established that Pippen is the youngest, and his age is stated to be 29, which, IMO, would be about equivlent to 18 for a human. I get the impression that Merry is only a little older then Pippen. Sam’s age is never really pinned down as far as I can remember.
Just had a thought re Sam crying. Among the four hobbits, Sam is from the “sturdy yeomanry” while the other three are “landed gentry”. Tolkien would naturally have written the landed gentry hobbits to be more reserved and self controlled then the sturdy yeoman.