There and Back Again

[Marlowe221]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

I wonder if any of the hobbits who left and came back ever felt the same way about The Shire, as they felt before leaving it. Sam departs into the West after Rosie dies. In their later years Merry goes to rejoin Eomer and Pippin goes to Gondor and gets buried next to Aragorn. None of them died nor buried in The Shire.

I arise from my chronic lurking once more!

I have not read this entire thread yet (I will!) but I wanted to comment on this particular point while the thought was fresh in my mind.

To paraphrase the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, "No man ever steps in the same river twice. It is not the same river and he is not the same man." From what little of his writings have survived it appears that Heraclitus's philosophy was based on the idea that everything is changing all the time - that all is in flux - in both the spiritual and the physical sense.

With that in mind, one could argue that the Hobbits are changing too, just like everything else. So is the Shire. When a Hobbit stays in the Shire, he changes along with it; the changes are not as noticeable. But when a Hobbit spends significant time outside of the Shire and having a lot of non-typical (for a Hobbit) experiences/adventures, the course of his changing diverges from that of the home he left behind. The Shire will not be the same when he gets back. And neither will he.

It is much like being a kid and your grandmother making a big fuss over how much you've grown since she saw you last summer. You have been growing the whole time, of course, but have not noticed it since the change was so gradual and slow. Your grandmother does not perceive the change in quite the same way...

Great thread.