Thread: LotR - Prologue
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Old 06-14-2004, 05:20 AM   #7
Firefoot
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One of my favorite things about the prologue is that it gives us insights to the "ordinary" hobbit. Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin (and Bilbo) are rather "extra-ordinary" in that they go on adventures and they very much grow from what they were to who they become, and they are not the simple hobbits any more. But the prologue shows us who the average hobbits are.
Quote:
How, in the name of Eru, can Hobbits keep the “laws of free will” because they are “The Rules”? This would appear to be a contradiction in terms: “free will” would appear to mean freedom, and a lack of constraint – the ability to do as one chooses; but “The Rules” (capitalised no less) would appear to be the precise opposite – one follows rules and does what they say.
It is in the nature of hobbits to be peaceful. Frodo says later on that no hobbit has ever killed another. I have to think that this would be more than because there is a rule saying don't do it. In this world, if a person really wants to kill someone, they do it whether there is a rule or not. But hobbits don't really need the rules for living - is seems like they are just there.
Quote:
[The Shirriffs] were in practice rather haywards than policemen, more concerned with the strayings of beasts than of people.
So it sounds like even the Shirriffs weren't very concerned about making people follow the rules: it wasn't necessary. I think that this tells us a couple things about hobbits. 1. They are peaceful, and do not like violence. 2. Hobbits like things that make sense - they kept the rules because they were "ancient and just", meaning that if they hadn't been just in the hobbits' eyes, they wouldn't have kept them. This would be why the hobbits have a problem with all of Sharkey's rulses - they don't make sense and they weren't necessary before. In conclusion to this, of their own free-will hobbits did what was right because that is their nature, and in doing so they followed "The Rules".

On the topic of magic, I have only one thing to add, and that is something Galadriel said: "For this is what your folk would call magic, I believe; though I do not understand clearlywhat they mean; and they seem to use the same word of the deceits of the Enemy." Like pipe-weed, the "magic" of disappearing is also more like an Art than anything else.

Quote:
Hobbits delighted in such things if they were accurate: they liked to have books filled with things that they already knew, set out fair and square with no contradictions.
This is my favorite line in the prologue, and in my opinion a very good summary of hobbits opinions on books in general, at least before LotR. As an afterthought, the tone of this line seems very much like that of The Hobbit, as does much of the prologue.
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