Since
2014 marks the centenary of World War One it seemed only appropriate to
dedicate one of our sessions to the influence of the conflict on Tolkien’s
fiction. This week we asked ourselves: To what extent did the Great War
influence Tolkien’s depictions of the Hobbits?
The first aspect we looked at was Hobbit-holes and how
they compare to WW1 dug-outs. After looking at some images of dug-outs, the
group generally concluded that they did not seem to be an immediate source for
Hobbit-holes. One student cited the opening of The Hobbit and the narrator’s remark that Bilbo’s hole was not a ‘dirty,
wet hole full of worms’. I raised the point that Tolkien had described how ‘comfortable’
and well-furnished the German dug-outs were, but this did not seem to persuade
the group.
Having dispatched pretty quickly with this topic, we
moved on to think about the relationship between Frodo and Sam. We discussed
the article ‘Frodo’s Batman’ by Mark T. Hooker and the group seemed generally
convinced by Hooker’s reading of the WW1 batman as an inspiration for Tolkien’s
Sam.[1]
Like Hooker, we looked at some passages from Biography of a Batman and drew out some similarities between
Pearson and Samwise. This passage seemed particularly apposite:
He would . . . prepare a varied menu from interminable bread, plum-and-apple jam, and the sickly meat and vegetable ration. He would clean my limited wardrobe, wash and mend the socks and shirts, keep me supplied with tobacco, dry my boots and stockings. The batman was omnipresent, yet ubiquitous. . . . And he would run when his officer went over the top, and fight by his side. When the officer dropped, the batman was beside him.[2]
One
group member commented that out of all the influences of WW1 on Tolkien’s
fiction, this influence seemed the most likely. We thought about the domestic
tasks that Sam undertakes, as well as his bravery and his unwavering loyalty where Frodo
is concerned. At Rivendell, it is Sam who goes over in his mind all the things
he has packed – from saucepans to salt – and it is Sam who takes on most of the
domestic duties.
From
this, we went on to think about the nature of male Hobbits in general and the absence
of women in The Hobbit and The Fellowship
of the Ring. I suggested that Tolkien may have been inspired by the
all-male world of the trenches and the inversion of gender roles that the Great
War brought about. I asked whether the Hobbits’ domestic duties in the early scenes
of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings may have been
influenced by changing attitudes to gender roles during and after World War
One. The group tended to agree, although some questioned how much the Great War
changed attitudes to gender roles over all.
The
group also talked about the male bonds in Tolkien’s fiction, in particular that
between Frodo and Sam. The group was in agreement with Anna Smol that ‘the bond
between Frodo and Sam is represented in ways that are markedly similar to the
male friendships described by many British soldiers in the First World War’.[3] We
generally agreed with Smol’s comment that
The paradigm of World War I literature allows us to see more fully how Tolkien is reflecting not the heroic pieties or sexual immaturity of Victorian and Edwardian medieval boys' stories, but the experiences of someone who has known the "animal horror" of trenchlife (Letters 72) and whose views of male bonding reflect many of the desires and complexities of living through that crucial moment in the formation of the modern outlook.[4]
We
thought about how modern readers may misinterpret or be surprised by Tolkien’s
representation of the relationship between Frodo and Sam, particularly Sam’s
declaration of love. The group did not see any more to the intimacy of their
relationship than a strong male bond influenced by Tolkien’s experiences of the
hardships of war and the relationships that developed in the all-male
environment of the trenches.
Finally,
we moved on to discuss an article by Michael Livingstone which argues that Frodo
‘appears [to be] suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, more
commonly known as "shell-shock”’.[5]
This notion was met with some scepticism, with some members wondering if this
reading was “going too far”. We considered the effects of shell-shock, not just
on the mind but on the body, and how they differed from the trauma Frodo seemed
to be suffering from. We talked about the fact that Tolkien does not offer
readers much insight into Frodo’s mind and that this might be an aspect that
would work against Livingstone’s argument. We thought about the following
assertion, too:
Frodo is very reluctant to wear a sword, even an ornamental one. Such behavior would be familiar to Tolkien from his war experiences, as an aversion to violence is a common post-traumatic symptom of combat veterans in particular. This is not to say that Frodo was a violent, hardened warrior before his journey to Mordor - just as one cannot say the same for the generation of young men who went to the trenches of northern France - but Frodo had previously worn (and used) blades with pride. His unwillingness to wear one in Ithilien seems to be the result of a change in his character: he is simply no longer comfortable with bearing a weapon.[6]
The
main contention we had with this assertion is that Frodo had ‘previously worn
blades with pride’. We were unsure of the extent to which this was true and
would have liked some evidence to support this assertion. Frodo rarely fights
or sees battle, so his behaviour does not seem to correspond with someone who
has seen enough of war. We did, however, agree that Frodo’s return home to the
Shire could be read in light of the WWW1 solider returning home and being
unable to resume, or pick up the pieces of, a ‘normal’ life.
- Corinne
[1] Mark
T. Hooker, ‘Frodo's Batman’, Tolkien
Studies, 1 (2004), 125-136 (p. 131).
[2] Graham
Seton Hutchison, Biography of a Batman
(London: Eyre and Spottiswoode. 1929).
[3] Anna
Smol, ‘"Oh. . . oh. . . Frodo!": Readings of Male Intimacy in The
Lord of the Rings’, Modern Fiction
Studies, 50 (2004), 949-979
[4] Ibid.
[5] Michael
Livingston, ‘The Shell-Shocked Hobbit: The First World War and Tolkien's Trauma
of the Ring’, Mythlore, 25 (2006),
77‐93
[6] Ibid.
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