Really, I’m tired of hearing this. Pippin is an extraordinarily clever hobbit; the many stratagems he uses in his escape from the orcs are truly remarkable and rival Bilbo’s quick thinking in many parts of
The Hobbit. (like Man of the Wold, I see many similarities between the two.) He is
foolish –impulsive and likely to act, well, hastily rather than thinking through all the possible consequences, and he’s also inexperienced and doesn’t know how to behave on an epic quest (after all, he’s never been on one before), but this isn’t the same thing; he’s quite capable of having very good ideas.
As to the topic at hand, I wonder if it may have to do with another thing I’ve noticed about Pippin—his betweenness. He is often the one to bridge the gap between the many polarities that Tolkien sets up in the story. Frodo and Gollum are obviously contrasted, and Pippin imitates both of them at the same moment when fooling Grishnįkh into thinking he has the Ring. So are Frodo and Sauron, the opposite Ringbearers, and Pippin collapses them into one entity as well when he calls Frodo “the Lord of the Ring.” Gandalf tells Pippin that he is “caught between two such terrible old men,” himself and Denethor, inviting us to think about the differences between the two of them. A comparison to Theoden is also made here; Pippin is the one who gets to stand before each of them (interestingly, Merry never meets Denethor). Outside world vs. the Shire? Sure, he finds himself almost asked to sing at Denethor’s table and is only prepared for Shire-songs (although Frodo has a moment like this too, with Faramir), and after all, he is the one that comes back to be Thain of the Shire, though he lives out his days in Gondor. War and peace? Yeah, he’s the one that tries to salvage what’s left of Denethor’s family in the midst of war. Boromir vs. Faramir? Pippin helps bring out the death/life dichotomy between them by volunteering for Denethor’s army for Boromir’s sake (death) and naming his son after Faramir (life). And, intriguingly enough, he is in his “tweens.”
So where am I going with this? Well, that’s a good question. I’m not sure. But it occurs to me that the veil between
lots of different things seems to be thinner for Pippin. This may have something to do with the fact that he finds himself so often and so thoroughly out of place (he doesn’t adapt as well as others, I think, and this may have to do with ahktene’s point about him being just himself), so that he is either more used to or more sensitive to ways of moving between.
Does this make sense to anybody?
--Belin Ibaimendi