Chapter 1: A Long-Expected Party
The title harkens back to the first chapter of the Hobbit, An Unexpected Party, of course. But the chapters couldn’t be more different in tone.
Still the style of this chapter does seem descended from the style that the Hobbit was written: there is the same comic tone (at least at first), with everything sort of framed in light-heartedness, as if it is all something that is not particularly to be taken seriously. The beginning of a story about those silly Hobbits who eat too much.
The front end of this is a busy little chapter, filled with tertiary characters; and the language is fast-paced (though there is virtually no action whatsoever); in the general bustle we get a pretty good picture of the Hobbits as rural folk…and really their society is more complex than one might think.
Though we can say that Hobbits are basically good, they have some grey characters mixed in too. The Sackville-Bagginses in particular struck me as nasty on this reread. Can you imagine behaving like the way Lobelia and Otho behave towards Frodo in such a situation where he has lost his foster father? And it seems they think they are in the right.
They are unbelievably greedy and grasping and almost incredibly rude. Lobelia even tries to rob Bag End! Right before I read this chapter I had an unpleasant experience at a bureaucratic office, where I was humiliated and screamed at by a blonde middle-aged woman for not having the proper documentation on me. So I rather imagined Lobelia as looking like this woman…who looked a little like Ivana Trump.
Indeed, this chapter did not offer me nearly the escape I thought it would: I ended up thinking that many of these Hobbits are kind of annoying and incredibly small minded. I found it curious that Gaffer Gamgee has a sort of pride in the fact that Bilbo has taught his son Sam to read, but he adds to that tidbit the following: meaning no harm, mind you, and I hope no harm will come of it!
There seems to be a very anti-intellectual streak among the Hobbits, at least among the working class; and their practicality precludes dreams and stories: "Elves and Dragons: Cabbages and potatoes are better for the likes of you!" The Gaffer seems to think that people like Sam (and the rest of the Gaffer’s drinking buddies) should know their place: there is no room for dreams and tales in their world. Sam should focus on growing vegetables, as that information is ultimately what will bring him his livelihood. It’s all kind of sad, I suppose, for Sam is, of course, a fledgling poet, something greater than just a gardener; and, actually, the Gaffer is wrong. For while Sam does endure great hardship, he also eventually rises far above the station he was born, becoming Mayor of the Shire and sitting on the King’s advisory counsel, which is tantamount to becoming a Member of Parliament, I reckon.
But I do kind of long for the bucolic country pub atmosphere of the Green Dragon where the Gaffer “holds forth.” I’ve always loved thse sort of homey pubs in Europe where one can go and enjoy a pint and gossip about the neighbors…even though I have social anxiety and don’t really drink much in my middle age. I am rather a homebody. I am actually a lot like Bilbo and always have been save for a swinging period in my late twenties and early thirties when I was a hard-drinking sexual conquistador. But I digress.
But even “down t’pub”, Tolkien doesn’t paint it all idyllically: some of the gossip is quite nasty, actually, with Sandyman the Miller intimating that Primula and Drogo Baggins murdered each other. Most of the Hobbits seem all right, but some of them are just jerks and it’s not only the rich Sackville-Bagginses, either. And the two-facedness of all the characters (including Bilbo himself and even Frodo) kind of strikes me.
And Bilbo’s joke gifts are both funny to me and yet leave me thinking Bilbo is a bit of a dick. This is a high-context culture (compared to my own Midwestern American culture) and Bilbo manages to communicate contempt for most of his well-off relations with his gifts and with his shocking disappearance, which, actually, I can understand being read as rude by some of them. In America all this would not be taken as any way but rude, I think.
Still, I think when Tolkien slightly highlights the Hobbits petty selfishness, mean-spiritedness, and greed (for food, for trinkets, for property) he does it in a strangely loving way…these are very much ordinary people; mainly good but with some bad points. Again, like all of us. We are meant to laugh at all and think of them as like ourselves: we are not meant to take ourselves so seriously. But it does give a glimpse into a darker, bitchier, more mysanthropic side of Tolkien than his affable pipe-smoking grandfather image might attest to.
Of course in the very first section of this chapter (Tolkien tends to write in these little bite-sized sections, which actually contributes to the book’s readability) there is mention of the strange phenomenon of Bilbo’s arrested aging…at 111, he is physically the same as he was at 50, in the prime of his life, when he went traipsing across the continent. It’s not just that he is youthful-looking. He is, essentially, still 50. “Trouble will come of it” say the wags and gossips and they are quite right.
Later he claims to Gandalf that he feels “thin and sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”
Is it fair to see Bilbo’s neverending youth as a sort of Faustian bargain that dooms all around him to suffering while letting Bilbo himself get off scot-free? Well, perhaps not, but nevertheless, the Ring, which very much aided Bilbo and the Dwarves during the Quest for Erebor in the Hobbit and brought mad riches to all of the surviving members of that company, does bring pain and suffering onto many, including the Shire: and had the Ring not been found by Bilbo, it is likely that the War might have passed over the Shire and Saruman might never have become interested in it. It is striking that literally the ONLY person in history who actually seems to benefit from the Ring is Bilbo Baggins. It brings woe and destruction to everyone else. And only Bilbo has the strength to actually give it away and walk away from its vast power with a smile on his face and a song on his lips.
But Bilbo is lucky. That is his whole deal. Having his nephew bear his burden is a stroke of genius. I want Bilbo to be eternally as he is: the poem-spouting adventurer on a hike, with a magic sword and a quick wit, whose luck never runs out and who finds a way out of every situation…even as his actions dump on his heir.
By the way, what does Bilbo do? Here, it seems that Bilbo’s father “laid down” the Old Vinyards, a choice hobbit vinyard. Given that this seems to be the only hint of the Baggins family business, I can only assume that the Baggins’ fortune is in agriculture(other than the remnants of his Smaug horde, of course). Like Pippin’s father who “farms the lands around Tuckborough,” I imagine that Bilbo basically has a lot of agricultural property, which I assume he rents out to farmers who get a share of the profit.
This is perhaps supported by the fact that Lotho Sackville-Baggins seems to be involved in exporting tobacco to Isengard, and immediately Frodo and the other Hobbits suspect him of being connected to Isengard. The Bagginses may indeed have their fingers in many pies, but I assume that their main business is as gentlemen farmers…although they probably mainly handle the accounts and the logistics. It’s such an incomplete picture though; and the implications of class are hard to ignore: it is worth noting that Bilbo, a gentleman, possibly as close to an aristocrat as Hobbit-society gets, does treat the poor well: his gifts to the Gaffer and the other old folks of Hobbitton are generous and decidedly non-ironic…he is really only a jerk to the members of his own station and he takes care of his servants like the Gaffer and Sam.
Once Bilbo “disappears”” the tone of the chapter turns a little more sombre, even slightly sad. The sadness of young Frodo (33 years old, a young man but not the teenage child of the films) at the departure of his mentor. Bilbo’s melancholy Road Goes Ever on and On is so lovely…even if I can’t get the soft-rock melody of the song from that old Rankin Bass cartoon out of my head…
Really, Tolkien is really underrated as a lyric verse writer. This song has always particularly resonated with me; even more so as a wandering adult who has left many friends, family members and loved ones behind me on my own road.
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