Tolkien’s Hobbits and the Love of Home

In 1997, a poll conducted by Britain’s Channel 4 and Waterstone’s Bookstore asked the British public to choose the best twentieth-century work of fiction. The winner was The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, published as three volumes in 1954 and 1955. An American poll in 1999 rendered the same result. Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of the book have only increased the renown of the beloved story by introducing millions to the world of Middle-earth. At the heart of The Lord of the Rings, and a significant factor in why the story has remained compelling, are the rustic hobbits and their beautiful Shire dwelling. 

Tolkien’s descriptions of hobbits’ deep affection for their Shire home –which undergirds the sacrificial journey of Frodo, Sam, Pippin, and Merry to destroy Sauron’s evil Ring– demonstrates the blessings of the love of home, a sentiment which was the cornerstone of Tolkien’s worldview and which has been a poignant theme of human history. 

An Unobtrusive People 

The origin of hobbits in Tolkien’s vast imagination was, incidentally, quite unexpected. As a professor of Old English language and literature at Oxford University in the 1930s, Tolkien spent long hours grading student papers, even during the summer months. “Marking school examinations in the summertime,” Tolkien humorously recalled, was “very laborious … and, unfortunately, also boring.” So, when one student left a page of his exam paper blank, a pleasantly surprised and overjoyed Tolkien nearly gave the student five bonus points and, for no apparent reason, scribbled “in a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” Eventually, as Tolkien said later, “I thought I’d better figure out what hobbits were like.”

So what are hobbits like? Tolkien described them in The Hobbit as “a little people, about half our height … they are inclined to be fat in the stomach; they dress in bright colours (chiefly green and yellow); wear no shoes, because their feet grow natural leathery soles and thick warm brown hair.” Hobbits, Tolkien continued in the prologue of The Lord of the Rings, are an “unobtrusive people” who “love peace and quiet and good tilled earth,” specifically a “well-ordered and well-farmed countryside.” Ignorant of the outside world, most hobbits knew only a small radius around the places of their births. “Hobbits liked to have books filled with things they already knew set out fair and square with no contradictions.” As such, hobbits “were a merry folk … their faces were as a rule good-natured rather than beautiful, broad, bright-eyed, red-cheeked, with mouths apt to laughter, and to eating and drinking.” In short, hobbits are a simple people devoted to life’s basic comforts and their local traditions.

A Quiet Warwickshire Village

While his discovery of hobbits was indeed quite accidental, Tolkien’s descriptions of Shire life reflect his most cherished values. “Hobbits,” he noted in a 1964 interview, “are just rustic English people,” a people with which Tolkien was familiar. “I am in fact a hobbit (in all but size),” Tolkien wrote, “I like gardens, trees and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food.” 

The Shire, in other words, expresses Tolkien’s childhood heart. Tolkien was born in South Africa in 1892, where his earliest experiences, he recalled, were of “heat and sand.” His imagination blossomed, however, in the “quiet Warwickshire village” of Sarehole, where he grew up with his mother and brother. Indeed, Tolkien wrote in 1958 that he “lived for my early years in ‘the Shire’ in a pre-mechanical age.” Tolkien’s childhood experiences in England’s West Midlands, where his mother’s relations had dwelt for generations, influenced his depictions of the Shire. “I am indeed,” he wrote, “a West-midlander at home only in the counties upon the Welsh Marches.” As a result, Tolkien described the Shire in a 1955 letter as “more or less a Warwickshire village of about the period of [Queen Victoria’s] Diamond Jubilee.” 

Naturally, the Shire’s geography and culture reflect that of England’s countryside. One such place is the Three-Farthing Stone, a landmark that stood at the intersection point of the Shire’s Southfarthing, Eastfarthing, and Westfarthing. This stone was undoubtedly based on England’s Four Shire Stone, which marked the historical boundaries of Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire. The hobbits’ favorite inns, such as the Ivy Bush, the Green Dragon, the Golden Perch, and the Prancing Pony at Bree also reflect traditional English pubs. Hobbit surnames such as Baggins, Gamgee, Goodbody, Bracegirdle are also clearly English (although one of Tolkien’s students maintained that these names originated in his own native Kentucky, where he believed hobbit Englishry was seen “oftener” than in England). Also English is Sam’s love of “fried fish and chips,” an appreciation lost upon Gollum, whose possession of the noxious Ring has prevented him from enjoying good Shire food.

The Shire’s social order also reflects Tolkien’s staunchly English localism. As the book’s prologue notes, the Shire “had hardly any ‘government.’ Families for the most part managed their own affairs.” Though once the nominal subjects of the King in Arnor, from whom they received their common law, hobbits retained local autonomy. In a passing reference in a 1955 writing, Tolkien referred to the Shire as “half republic half aristocracy.” The latter element was embodied by the Thain of the Took family, who headed the rarely used Shire militia, and the former by the Mayor at Michel Delving, elected every seven years, whose chief duty was “presiding at banquets.” The Shire’s twelve Shirriffs were “concerned more with the straying of beasts than of people.” In accordance with Catholic distributism, private property, family life, the environment, and stable small businesses are cherished in the Shire. 

Tolkien himself said that “if we could get back to personal names” in the governing process, “it would do a lot of good.” His words echo Edmund Burke’s observation that “to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle … of public affections.” Alexis de Tocqueville similarly noted that the “township is the only association which is … perfectly natural” because, at the local level, a citizen can “practice the art of government in the small square within his reach.” Hobbits possessed such “clannish” loyalties. Humorously, the hobbits of Hobbiton and Bywater, such as Hamfast Gamgee, find the hobbits of the Marish and Buckland “queer” and “outlandish,” even as the hobbits of the Marish, such as farmer Maggot, and the Bucklanders feel the same about their Hobbiton and Bywater brethren. Likewise, Tolkien’s provincial affection was for the Midlands and for England, not for abstract entities such as “Great Britain and certainly not [for] the British Commonwealth (grr!).”

In contrast to the claims of some of his critics, who have mistakenly maintained that he subtly promoted an ideology of racial superiority, Tolkien loved England simply because it was his home. The affection for the rural Midlands which Tolkien expressed in the Shire proceeded from affection and gratitude, not intolerant triumphalism. Indeed, Tolkien despised the domination of other people. Tolkien wrote in a 1945 letter that he knew “nothing about British or American imperialism … that does not fill me with regret and disgust.” He was also a disparager of Nazi racial propaganda. In 1938, during the production of a German edition of The Hobbit, Tolkien rejected Nazi publishers’ absurd request that he clarify his “Aryan descent” before the book be published. Though he possessed a German surname, he told the publishers that if “such impertinent and irrelevant inquiries” continue, “the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.” In a 1941 letter to his son Christopher, a Royal Air Force pilot, he called Hitler a “ruddy little ignoramus.”

Neither was the Shire a paradisiacal image of Tolkien’s societal ideal, as some critics have emphasized. “Hobbits are not a Utopian vision,” Tolkien wrote in a 1954 letter to novelist Naomi Mitchison, “or recommended as an ideal in their own or any age.” Indeed, Tolkien wrote that the hobbits ignorantly believed that “peace and plenty were the rule in Middle-earth and the right of all sensible folk” because “they forgot or ignored” the labors of the Rangers whose labors “made possible the long peace of the Shire.” 

A Firm Foothold

Despite their ignorance of the outside world, Tolkien’s hobbits possess a love of home so great that it motivates Frodo and his friends to attempt the destruction of the Ring, lest the totalitarian domination of Mordor destroy Middle-earth. “It would be a grievous blow to the world,” Gandalf the Wizard warned Frodo, “if all your kind, jolly, stupid Bolgers, Hornblowers, Boffins, Bracegirdles, and the rest, not to mention the ridiculous Bagginses, became enslaved” to Sauron. Although Frodo admits that “there have been times when I thought the inhabitants [of the Shire] too stupid and dull for words,” he recognized “that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable: I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again.” Frodo’s simple love of his Shire home and his readiness to sacrifice all for it is the only way the Ring can be destroyed because Sauron could never even begin to imagine these rustic affections. “Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world,” said Lord Elrond Half-elven said at the Rivendell council, “small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”

The four hobbits’ “firm foothold” in the Shire helps them throughout their perilous quest in faraway lands, even as they leave the only country they had ever known. “These hobbits will sit on the edge of ruin and discuss the pleasures of the table, or the small doings of their fathers,” said Gandalf after Merry and Pippin celebrate the destruction of Isengard by indulging in the hobbit delights of feasting and pipe-smoking. Sam’s “plain hobbit-sense” prevents him from succumbing to the Ring’s temptation in the Tower of Cirith Ungol after Frodo has been captured by Orcs. He saw “wild fantasies” of “Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age.” He could make Mordor “became a garden of flowers and trees and brought forth fruit. He had only to put on the Ring and claim it for his own.” Sam’s rootedness in the common sense of the Shire, however, makes him realize that “the one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command.” As a result, Samwise rejects this temptation and continues searching for Frodo. “And anyway,” Sam says, “all these notions are only a trick.”

As Sam and Frodo trek across Mordor towards Mount Doom, the only place where the Ring can be destroyed, Frodo tries to comfort himself by remembering “the Brandywine, and Woody End, and The Water running through the mill at Hobbiton.” The burden of the Ring, however, prevents him from recalling these simple pleasures. Yet Sam is able to help Frodo shoulder this burden by remembering his own affection for Rosie Cotton, a “simple ‘rustic’ love” which Tolkien said “was absolutely essential” to Sam’s character development. As a result of this love for the simple pleasures of their Shire home, and the hobbits’ willingness to show Gollum mercy, the Ring is destroyed and Sauron finally defeated.

In addition, the hobbits’ encounter with the outside world helps Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin to better appreciate the Shire. One of the book’s key themes is an idea rooted in the words of the Virgin Mary that God “has … exalted the lowly.” Tolkien wrote in a 1956 letter that he loved “the vulgar and simple as dearly as the noble.” He continued that “nothing moves my heart … so much as ‘ennoblement’ (from the Ugly Duckling to Frodo).” In other words, the bucolic hobbits become “ennobled” by their encounter with mystical Elves and ancient kingdoms of Men quite unfamiliar to them. As Merry and Pippin reflect upon their experiences in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, Merry notes that “it is best to love first what you are fitted to love, I suppose: you must start somewhere and have some roots, and the soil of the Shire is deep.” Merry continued that he has now learned that “there are things deeper and higher [than the Shire]; and not a gaffer could tend his garden in what he calls peace but for them, whether he knows about them or not. I am glad that I know about them, a little.” This process of Merry’s “ennoblement” does not cause him to cease loving the simple – in fact, his appreciation of the Shire’s blessings has increased all the more. 

When the four “ennobled” hobbits return home to their Shire, Gandalf reminds them that they “must settle its affairs yourselves; that is what you have been trained for.” Tragically, the hobbits find a far different country from the one they left. Saruman, an evil Wizard who had hoped to take the Ring for himself, had replaced the once pastoral Shire with the industrialism which Tolkien detested. Trees have been cut down, grotesque houses have replaced the hospitable hobbit homes, and Bag End is littered with filth. Hobbiton’s idyllic corn mill has been transformed into “a great brick building straddling the stream, which it fouled with a steaming and stinking outflow.” When Frodo and Sam see the destruction wrought upon “their own country,” they “realized that they cared about it more than any other place in the world.” The changed Hobbiton mill reflects Tolkien’s fond memories about the mill in Warwickshire, and his perception that it had been lost to mechanization. In a 1966 interview, he fondly remembered that Sarehole had “an old mill that really did grind corn with two millers, a great big pond with swans on it, a sandpit, a wonderful dell with flowers, a few old-fashioned village houses and, further away, a stream with another mill.” Tolkien lamented that he “always knew [the mill] would go - and it did.”  

Worse still, most of the hobbits have submitted to the absurd rules of the Chief, Saruman’s hobbit puppet: Lotho Sackville-Baggins. These rules prohibit hobbit customs such as the enjoyment of beer, pipe-smoking, and fireplaces. Only because of their encounter with the outside world are Pippin, Merry, Sam, and Frodo able to give the hobbits the courage they need to lead a resistance against Saruman’s tyranny. When the self-important hobbit Shirriffs reprimand Frodo for breaking the new rules, Sam de-legitimizes their absurdity by mockingly adding that he knew of more rules which Frodo had broken: “calling your Chief names, wishing to punch his pimply face, and thinking you Shirriffs look a lot of Tom-fools.” 

Under the leadership of Pippin, Merry, Sam, and Frodo, the vast majority of hobbits turn from obeying these illegitimate rules and join in scouring the Shire’s countryside of Saruman and his outlandish ilk. The Battle of Bywater saw the death of nineteen hobbits, whose names were “learned by heart by Shire-historians.” In the year following the battle, the hobbits worked diligently to restore the environmental beauty of their pastoral home. Sam marries Rosie, has thirteen children, and serves seven terms as the Shire’s Mayor. Frodo, however, because of his task as a Ring-bearer must leave Middle-earth for the distant shores of Valinor, where he will find healing with the Elves before his death. “It must often be so,” Frodo tells a weeping Sam, “when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.” He gives Sam the vocation of keeping “alive the memory of the age that is gone, so that people will remember the Great Danger and so love their beloved land all the more.” Frodo’s willingness to sacrifice his own enjoyment of the Shire so that future generations of hobbits might continue to enjoy it is the moral heart of The Lord of the Rings. 

In Closing

The Shire’s English values stand as anachronisms in Middle-earth, which Tolkien insisted was not an alternate universe but planet earth about six millennia in the mythological past. At that imagined time, there would have been no potatoes in England (hence no fish and chips), no post offices, libraries, or other elements of the Shire’s favorite pleasures. These anachronisms, as scholar Tom Shippey noted, make Middle-earth accessible to ordinary readers around the world who, like the hobbits, share a love of home and hearth.

The late philosopher Roger Scruton, like Tolkien a native of the English countryside, wrote that love of one’s home, what he terms “oikophilia,” is a fundamental human emotion. “The evidence of history,” Scruton noted, reveals “that human beings are creatures of limited and local affections, the best of which is the territorial loyalty that leads them to live at peace with strangers.” In The Odyssey, after wanton suitors ransack Ithaca in a vain attempt to wed his mother, Penelope, a young Telemachus laments that they have all but destroyed his home. Ithaca, he says, “means the world to me … Ithaca, best of islands, crowns them all.” Similarly, when threatened by the United States government to abandon his tribal lands in northern Illinois, Sauk warrior Black Hawk refused “to quit my village” because “here lie the bones of friends and relations” and “for this spot I felt a sacred reverence.” A Union soldier from Kenosha, encountering the hardships of war in a culturally foreign South, lamented the “loss of home influences,” writing that a soldier’s life was “naught compared with the value of Home.” He only endured this deprivation, as he wrote, in order “to rescue my native land.” When Nehemiah, a Jewish exile in the Persian court, heard that the walls of his Jerusalem home had been “broken down,” he “wept and mourned for days.” He returned to Jerusalem where, much like the hobbit’s scouring of the Shire, he led God’s people Israel in rebuilding the gates of Zion.  

Love of “the firm foothold” of one’s home is a much-needed virtue because it motivates citizens to care for their neighbors and strengthen their local communities, as it did for Frodo and his friends. It is this element that has made The Lord of the Rings so appealing. Although the Shire is clearly English in its sentiments, many readers have applied hobbitism to their own cultural settings. One political dissident in the darkness of Communist Czechoslovakia found hope in the Shire, “which served to remind us that even ordinary Czech citizens may stand against the evil of totalitarianism without tanks or artillery.” The hobbits and their Shire will always have such continued applicability because the love of home transcends time and place.