"It's a trap!".
I knew a comment like that would draw the LOTR geeks out of the woodwork. It worked!
Posted on 09/22/2010 11:20:02 AM PDT by NYer
On September 22, 1290 Bilbo Baggins was born. The year given for his birth, of course, is in Shire Reckoning: The Shire being that happy part of Middle-Earth inhabited by those sensible and unpretentious folk called “Hobbits.”
To that salt-of-the-earth Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, there comes one day an amazing summons. The call to participate in an adventure. And thereby hangs a tale and indeed a trilogy.
In the course of his adventure, Bilbo will come into possession of the “One Ring” of power. On September 22, 1401, his eleventy-first birthday, Bilbo will bequeath the ring to his nephew Frodo, who will bear the ring into places of forbidding evil in order to free the peoples of Middle Earth from its bondage.
Groaning under his burden, with the weight of the world on his small shoulders, Frodo cannot help but ask why such evil has come to his time. Why did his uncle find the ring? Why is he, conscious to the depths of his being of his inadequacy, the one who must bear the burden of it? The one who must undertake the perilous mission to destroy it? And the answer is given to him by Gandalf: “I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the ring…. In which case you were also meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought.”
Bilbo was meant to be born, meant to find the ring. Frodo was meant to be and to be the ring-bearer. They were meant to engage the challenges of their time.
But meant by whom?
We might glibly answer that it was all meant by the author of the story, J.R.R. Tolkien, but in the context of the story itself, there is certainly another answer. There is a Providence, there is an unseen Benevolence. To be sure there is an unseen malevolence too — for even the dark Lord Sauron is himself a mere servant. But it is Goodness that is the source of all and hence the source of being and of meaning.
Tolkien considered himself to be a “sub-creator” and the act of myth-making to be sub-creation. If telling a story is sub-creation, then Creation itself must be a kind of story. And so it is. It is a story with an Author, and it is a story with meaning.
When we wonder why such evils have come to our time and why we are the ones who must bear the particular burdens of our world. When we feel keenly our inadequacy and smallness — then we should remember that we are meant to be.
And that is certainly an encouraging thought.
Nooo!!
Middle Earth wasn’t a different planet. It’s a fantasy EARTH. In fact, much of what passes for fantasy literature today, marks its beginning with LOTR. Tolkien was a GENIUS!
No, our world, in a different age. Not long after it had been made round.
wimp
You’re welcome.
One can see Tolkien’s war experience in the battle scenes of the book. I’ve always been struck by his focus on the men, their code of honor, their willingness to die for their freedom and their comrades, rather than focusing on the details of battle.
He’d been there. He knew what mattered was the way you met your fate.
For me, Sam is the true hero of LOTR and Eomer is a close second. Theoden is my third favorite hero. I cry every time I read the passage when Eomer and Aragorn meet on the battle field and pledge their lives to their friendship and honor.
I didn’t know that! Interesting!
*snort*
"It's a trap!".
I knew a comment like that would draw the LOTR geeks out of the woodwork. It worked!
So then their year 1400 WAS different than ours. And hence, the premise of there being some kind of birthday makes no sense.
So then their year 1400 WAS different than ours. And hence, the premise of there being some kind of birthday makes no sense.
No sense?
It's fiction. There doesn't need to be any connection with the real world calendar. It's a birthday, taking place in a particular point in Tolkein's imaginary prehistory.
In the year 1400, there was no middle earth and the planet had been round for a long time.
In the year 1400, there was no middle earth and the planet had been round for a long time. Even if you accept the premise that these things happened on our planet, they didn't happen when Constantinople was still holding off Muslim invaders.
I've read the Trilogy through 16 times. Spent nearly a year learning the feanorian letters and writings following Tolkien’s letters and commentaries. Absolutely fascinating. This man was a literary genius. Too many heart touching moments in the book to point out just one. The Hobbit is a cute prequel to the trilogy. I love when he first meets the dwarfs.
1290 of the Third Age of Middle Earth.
...of course that’s “Shire Reckoning”...Otherwise 2890.
I'm impressed! I have both The Hobbit and LOTR in leather bound and boxed editions. Not surprisingly, I also have the film version.
Did you watch the beatification mass on Sunday? Raymond Arroyo showed a clip from his visit earlier this year, to Birmingham. Tolkien spent a lot of time as a child at the Oratory which may well have inspired him. Behind Arroyo, were two towers, quite visible from that site.
I didn’t get the chance to watch on Sunday. My busy day with church and family. Hopefully will get to see a repeat if they show it. Tolkien was a very devout man. It showed in his life and in his writings.
Have you read the Silmarillion?
I have the book but (embarrassingly) have never read it.
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