Phl 361K

Fall 2003

Prof. Koons

Questions for the Return to the Shire (Nov. 25, Dec. 2)

ROTK, Book VI, ch. 6-8

1. Why is Saruman given so many “last chances” to reform? Why does he fail to do so? (Compare the effect of Frodo’s kindness on Gollum and on Saruman.)

2. In what ways does the ending deviate from “everyone lived happily ever after”? Why does it deviate?

3. Why must the hobbits settle the Shire’s affairs on their own? What does Gandalf mean by saying that they have been “trained for” this?

4. What was the political and economic system of the Shire in the beginning? (Feudal? Capitalist? Democratic? Anarchic?) What sort of regime does Saruman establish there? (Communist? Fascist? Late-Capitalist?) How does he effect the change? What is the role of economics, technology, individual free will (Lotho, Ted Sandyman), propaganda, social psychology? Is there any parallel between the change in the Shire and the destruction of the “distributive state” that Belloc hypothesizes in The Servile State?

5. Why is the fallen Shire “worse than Mordor”?

6. What explains the contrast between Frodo’s pacifism and quietism and Merry and Pippin’s readiness to resort to force? Why is Frodo so apparently marginalized? Is Frodo in command, in any sense?

7. Does the raising of the Shire have any applicability to the modern world?

8. What does the mist rising from Saruman’s body represent? Why does it look West?

9. Why must Frodo give up the Shire? What does Frodo mean by, “It is gone foreoever, and now all is dark and empty.” Shouldn’t the destruction of the Ring mean the end of darkness and emptiness? Why can Frodo expect more comfort and healing in the West than in the Shire?

10. How egalitarian is the Shire? Are the social inequalities that endure there natural and right? How close to an ideal society is the Shire supposed to come? Is Tolkien in effect rejecting the pursuit of “an absurd equality” (as Pope Leo XIII put it in Rerum Novarum)? Is property represented as natural and just? Do any of the practices or institutions of the Shire reflect the kind of “special preference for the poor” that Pope Pius XI recommended (in Quadragesimo Anno)?

11. Does the story of the Shire’s fall illustrate the dangers of technology, or of the excessive concentration of private wealth?

12. Does the Shire represent the superiority of agrarian over cosmopolitan civilization? Does the Shire reflect Chesterton’s claim that the peasantry is the only truly conservative class?

13. Is there evidence that Tolkien accepted the idea that farming is the ideal profession? (Compare Chesterton’s citation of Virgil -- it is the farmer who “knows the causes of things.”)

14. Is the principle of subsidiarity (that “it is an injustice and a great evil to assign to a greater and higher association what a lesser and subordinate organization can do”, according to Pius XI) valid in Tolkien’s world?

15. What are the similarities and differences between the emergence of totalitarianism in LOTR and in Animal Farm? Is Animal Farm “allegorical”, in Tolkien’s sense? Does it succeed in transcending at all the limitations of allegory? Are Orwell’s characters “realistic”, in the sub-creative sense?

16. What theory about the relation between the sexes, if any, is incorporated in Tolkien’s legends? Are the female characters marginalized? Are Luthien, Galadriel and Eowyn proto-feminist heroes, or are they cautionary tales? Are patriarchy and the place of women in the home idealized and falsified (consider Arwen and Rose Cotton)? Is it significant that Ungoliant and Shelob are females, Morgoth and Sauron masculine? What similarities and differences are there on these questions among Chesterton, Tolkien and Lewis?