Volume 9 Number 4 Article 2 12-15-1983 The Childlike Hobbit Tisa Ho University of Hong Kong Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Ho, Tisa (1983) "The Childlike Hobbit," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 9 : No. 4 , Article 2. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol9/iss4/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Considers aspects of the depiction of hobbits in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings that emphasize their childlike qualities, and considers questions of the significance of this depiction and of the intended audience for these works. Additional Keywords Children in fantasy; Tolkien, J.R.R.—Characters—Hobbits—As children; Stephen Peregrine This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol9/iss4/2 MYTHLORE 34: W inter 1983 page 3 The Childlike Hobbit T is a H o The question of whether The Lord of the Rings is moment, it is the dimunitive stature, rather than any more suited to an adult or a juvenile readership has been other feature, that is apparently regarded as the defining the object of no little attention ever since the story was characteristic by the unspecified "others" of Tolkien's first published. The problem of whether it is related to definition, since this is the feature referred to in their children in any other way, however, seems to have been naming of the hobbits. largely neglected. Thus, two relevent points arise from this definition. I believe that the association of the book with The hobbits are small, and they are human. The first of children, particularly in the minds of unsympathetic these may be accepted simply as a given fact, together critics, is largely due to childlike qualities of the with the habit of living in hole-like homes. The second, principal protagonists — the hobbits. I would go further since the hobbit is an imaginary creature, requires and propose that the hobbits can be regarded as one elaboration. literary version of children; and that the world of childhood, as it is portrayed in literature written for an The fact that the hobbit was basically human in adult readership provides a useful perspective for an conception was repeatedly stressed by its creator on a understanding of the book. number of occasions. In the early fifties, when Tolkien was trying to interest Collins, a publishing company, in In order to maintain this view, it will be necessary bringingout The Lord of the Rings and The SilmariHion to examine and define both "hobbit(s)" and "child(ren)." together, he wrote a long letter of more than a thousand An authoritative definition of "hobbit" at least, is readily words explaining the cosmology of his created world, and available. In 1970, when the Oxford English Dictionary the interdependent nature of the two works. In a staff was compiling an entry for "hobbit" in the Second footnote on the hobbits, we find: Supplement, Tolkien's help was sought. He offered the following definition: The -Hobbits (2) are, of course, really meant to be a branch of the specifically human race (not Elves One of an imaginary people, a small variety of the or Dwarves) — hence the two kinds can dwell human race, that gave themselves this name together (as at Bree), and are called just the Big (meaning 'hole-dweller') but were called by others Folk and the Little Folk. They are entirely 'halflings' since they were half the height of without non-human powers, but are represented as normal men. (1) being more in touch with 'nature' (the soil and other living things, plants and animals) and This seems to take us some way toward establishing abnormally, for humans, free from ambition or the likeness between hobbit and child already, since they greed of wealth. ... (author's italics) both share the attributes of smallness, and membership in the human race. Limiting attention to the hobbit for the Here again, the operative description is: diminutive page 4 MYTHLORE 34: Winter 1983 human. In addition, the hobbits are "more in touch with uninteresting these children were — the relationship is 'nature,' and unconcerned with worldly ambition; rather changed to one of friendship, of dealing on equal terms, like Wordsworth's idealized rustics, or his "growing boy" when the Elves see that Frodo is a well-tutored hobbit. who "still is Nature's priest," and whose vision has yet to The Elf Gildor now hails Frodo formally as "Elf-friend," "fade into the light of common day." (Ode, Intimations and bows in his turn. (1.3 p.84) of Imortality) Frodo's demonstration of his good manners, of his The point that Tolkien's hobbits were human in ability to conduct himself with propriety, seems to set inspiration and intention was even more emphatically him slightly apart from the rest of the company. After stated in a conversation with Denys Gueroult, first the other (younger) hobbits have fallen asleep, he is broadcast on BBC's Radio 4, in December 1970. The pictured as remaining with Gildor, talking of many things, following is taken from a transcript of that conversation: far into the night. It may be remembered that the place, assigned by G: Did you intend, in The Lord of the Rings, that neo-classic society to children who cannot be dealt with certain races should embody certain principles; the on adult terms, is situated somewhere between the human elves wisdom, the dwarves craftsmanship; men and animal realms. This seems to be precisely the area husbandry and battle, and so forth? occupied by the race of hobbits. Though in all other T: I didn't intend it; but when you've got these respects human in appearance and behavior, the hobbits people on your hands, you've got to make them have furry feet like animals, which gives them the ability different ... but of course, as we all know, to move about very quietly on natural terrain* Like ultimately, we've only got humanity to work with. little animals, they are also: ...the hobbits are just rustic English people made smaller.... ...quick of hearing and sharp-eyed, and...are nimble and deft in their movements___ They also Having thus arrived at an operational definition of possessed from the first the art of disappearing "hobbits" as rustic little folk, it is now necessary to when large folk whom they do not wish to meet examine some versions of "children." come blundering by. (7) The word "child" seems to be a relative term, This part-animal, part-human nature of the hobbit is susceptible of precise definition only when employed in partly due to its genesis. The hobbit started life as the the context of systems which themselves provide the central character in a book intended for a juvenile (often apparently arbitrary) definition; as in a legal, or readership; and was, in all likelihood conceived of in the medical bureaucratic frame of reference, in which a child tradition of the humanized animals that frequent the would be defined respectively (at the present time, in pages of English children's literature. Indeed, the hobbit most Western or Western influenced societies) as under- has been compared to Mole and Pooh.(8) But while these eighteen and under-twelve. two characters belong in the category of "one of a kind" and are completely identifiable as the named animals in In literary terms, the "child" has been portrayed in their appearance, the hobbit is one of an imaginary race, so many fundamentally different ways that exceptions will and realized very much as a variety of the race of be found to any definition more exact than the rather humans, thus imaginatively occupying the middle ground uninformative one of juvenile human. Even here, the between the human and animal worlds, inhabited also by minature adults of the sixteenth century, ideally "models young children in the classic and neo-classic versions of of gracious eloquence, youngsters with the finesse and the great chain of being. intellectual development of educated adults" (3) can be invoked against the concept of juvenility. Particularly as Although the hobbit can thus be seen to resemble in sixteenth century humanists seemed to have adopted, in a different ways, the sixteenth century humanists' concept general way, the classical view of regarding: of "child," this is only a partial picture. Other versions children too young to follow the dictates of reason of the "child," in particular, the one that occupies a [as] not yet classifiable as human.... Children position of considerable importance in the body of inhabited a no man's land in the great chain of literature which generally goes under the label of "Ro­ being, joining the realm of animals to that of mantic," remains to be examined.