[Belin]

Very true. I think the specific type of community matters as well.

Tolkien’s portrayal of the Shire provides important background information for the characters of the four hobbits that we do need get to know. If we had no sense of their past, we might see all four of them simply as blank and rather inadequate slates for the Aragorn and Gandalf and others to write on. We definitely get to see them as part of a culture, and when they wish they were home, we know exactly what they mean by it. Because we identify with the hobbits for most of the story, it is important that their backstory be sketched with a certain amount of detail. They’re grounded in the Shire throughout; the little moments that call us back to it, particularly the prediction of storytelling that Sam and Frodo do as they’re heading for Mount Doom, are meaningful to us because we’ve been there and we’ve had the opportunity to see the kind of people that do this storytelling and the kind of children that grow from it. It has to feel like home, and home is populated.

It also provides a nice contrast with the other places that we see. Pippin’s experience in Minas Tirith has both great differences from and odd similarities to his life in the Shire. The strict regimentation seems rather oppressive to him, and the completely different tone of the feeling of community makes him very lonely, and we react in similar ways, because we too have come a long way from a place that, as I have said, feels like home. On the other hand, for a brief moment we get the sense that Bergil would fit right in, and that also adds something sad to the encounter.

Furthermore, at least some knowledge the inhabitants of the Shire is necessary for the Scouring to have any effect at all. As I’ve pointed out a few times already, it would be far less important to us to find that the hobbits can’t go home again if we didn’t have some kind of connection with their home. The fading of Lothlorien, which we don’t know very well, is very sad, but it is sad in terms of the greater fading of the elves and the loss of its beauty—an awed and distanced feeling that’s very different from the painful and more personal sadness of the scouring or of Frodo’s departure.

So the particular inhabitants all contribute to an idea of the Shire that it would perhaps be possible to create without them, but that seems so much more meaningful when you throw some actual individuals into the mix. They also give Tolkien a chance to show off his ability to give us a whole story with just a line. Angelica’s mirror, in this way, works in a similar way to the fleeting mentions of Amarie and Eilinel in the Silmarillion. You see the history, you see the kind of relationships they had, and to some degree you actually see a character, but it’s just a tiny sketch when you look at it. He’s very good at this, and this is one way of using it to his advantage.

--Belin Ibaimendi