More thoughts on The Hobbit

I am at one of those junctions where I find my brain running in several different directions, and I am not sure which one to follow. Several of them could get very involved, and they are interrelated, so what order do I go in? So, I’m just going to talk about movies for a couple of posts, and then do my Thursday and Friday music reviews, and then we will see. Punt!

Going back to that night we went to see the movie, one thing our friend was asking about was to try and figure out who were the good guys and the bad guys. It’s not completely cut and dried. You are identifying with the dwarves, and the one set of elves will be adversarial to them, even if Elrond is helpful. I was explaining about how in the end you are going to have the Battle of the Five Armies, and different groups uniting together.

As I told her that, I remembered something my father had said back when I first read the book. This is going back many decades ago, and is about disputed information, so I may not convey this exactly correctly. I guess there was a school of thought that the books, and I was thinking about The Hobbit specifically, but maybe it was more about The Lord of the Rings, were an allegory for WWII.

As far as I know, Tolkien specifically chose not to confirm that, but I guess he didn’t deny it vehemently enough for some people. Anyway, my father specifically said the hobbits were the English, all about being cozy and keeping their meals regular. There was more to it. Apparently the elves were going to Ireland, and yet I don’t think they were the Irish, and the men were the Americans, who were more admirable and heroic.  

So, even if the basic allegory works, about groups who would not normally join together cooperating to fight dark forces, going into that level of interpretation is probably overreaching, I would think, but I have had a couple of thoughts related to that.

One is that for a long time the Americans as the heroes made sense, because both world wars ended after we got involved. I sometimes wondered if it was irresponsible of us not to join in sooner. When we would get to reading about the Holocaust and Anne Frank, it seems like so many people died shortly before their camps were liberated, that you wonder how many could have been saved.

At the same time, perhaps it was not that the US addition was miraculous. Maybe by coming in later, when everyone else has been wearing each other down, you get the better deal. There would probably be more American dead, a lot more, if we had gone in earlier.

And you know, I’m not really going to get anywhere there. War should not be entered into lightly, but sometimes it is necessary, and trying to make good decisions just based on what is right, let alone all of the things that leaders really have to end up thinking about, seems like a losing proposition.

More recently though, I have been thinking about what is heroic. Another thing my father was fond of saying was that Italians fight with their feet –meaning they are cowards who run away. (In case anyone isn’t clear, the Italian is on my mother’s side.)

One of the most beautiful places I have been to in Italy is Bassano. It is physically pretty, but the reason it was so beautiful to me is that it felt so peaceful. I remember standing on the old bridge and watching trout in the water, and it felt very serene. Its history has not been that.

There is a plaque on one of the churches that maps out all of the places where they were hit. There were many. There are some well-maintained trees up on the hill; people who were caught working for the resistance were hung from those trees. The bridge is an important symbol of the town, but it has been destroyed and rebuilt many times. If the Italians prefer peace to war, they’ve got some good reasons.

So I was thinking about all of that and hobbits. One of the lines in the movie, which I believe was added, was Gandalf explaining to Galadriel that he recruited Bilbo because Bilbo gives Gandalf courage. That scene was definitely not in the book, but the sentiment kind of was.

Yes, hobbits like cozy homes and six meals a day, but they are pretty good about rising to challenges. Doing the right thing, is very hobbit-like. I don’t remember Bilbo in the book wanting to go home, but deciding to stick with the dwarves so they could have their own home, but yes, I can imagine hobbits relating to the plight of someone else and accepting some personal sacrifice to help.

My older sister said the real point of the trilogy was friendship, and you can make arguments for that too. I think what Tolkien does say, regardless of whether there is complex or simple allegory, is that those are the people you count on. They aren’t going after riches and glory, but they care about fairness, and loyalty, and good. Those are the heroes.

And for what it’s worth, England did produce plenty of strength and courage at the time.