Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Book I, Chapter 1 “A Long-Expected Party”

My discussion of each chapter will begin with a summary essay highlighting three to five key features presented in the text, while subsequent essays will dive deeper into additional topics. In contrast to the authoritative and comprehensive work, The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, which lends insight to the “literary and historical influences” on the text with special focus on European history, linguistics, and events in Tolkien’s own life, I will compare the cultures of Middle-earth to those in the Real World as I have done throughout this series. Of course, that impressive textbook and other Tolkien-focused works will be excellent resources in understanding Tolkien’s worldview and how it affected his “translation” of the text.

For this essay, I will focus on the practice of adoption and assigning heirs, coming of age celebrations, and famous parties held throughout history, as each of these concepts was prominently featured in the text and occur across the world. Future essays will be devoted to tavern culture and drinking songs, architecture in European medieval towns, and clothing design during the late 18^th through early 19^th centuries.

Adoption & Heirs

The practice of adoption is found in one of the oldest surviving written laws, the Code of Hammurabi from the Babylonian Empire written in the 18^th century BC. The legal text contained three clauses about adoption: an adopted child could not be enslaved if a biological child was born, but the child’s tongue could be cut out or an eye poked out for disrespect.

Among the oldest adoption stories concerned Moses, a Hebrew child adopted by the daughter of the Egyptian Pharoah (Exodus 1:1-10). While this story was in line with the modern concept of adoption, other Ancient Egyptian practices seem more unusual to modern researchers. Remarkably, evidence of these practices has been preserved in the two-part “Adoption Papyrus”, which was written in 1107 BC and 1089 BC. The earlier part allowed stablemaster Nebsefer to adopt his wife chantress Nanefer since the couple did not have children. This prevented family members from stealing property should Nebsefer die before Nanefer. In the later part, the couple adopted three children of an enslaved woman, two daughters and a son, who were possibly the biological children of Nebsefer. The younger brother of Nanefer even married the older adopted daughter, cementing her place in the family and assuring that property would remain within the family.

In modern Egypt, the adoption practice kafala is surrounded by controversy. In this practice, while children come to live in a family and are treated as a son or daughter, they do not inherit property or use the same family name, similar to the foster care system in the United States. Younger generations are more supportive of the practice, along with pushing for more widespread adoption of children with disabilities and darker complexion.

In some cultures of sub-Saharan Africa, children with maternal aunts and paternal uncles are automatically adopted as an extension of those families. A first person account written by Conrad Mbewe of Zambia explained that siblings of parents are sometimes distinguished by birth order, and a person might describe their many parents as the father, the older father, the younger father, and so on. Additionally, the children of all parents are considered siblings to the individual, and the children of siblings of the same sex are also the individual’s children. A person could easily have no biological children yet be considered the parent to many children.

Adoption practices have varied across Asia. In India, practitioners of Hinduism were historically required to have a son to perform their funerals, so couples without children would adopt a boy as their heir; however, if they already had a son, adoption was not permitted. Additionally, girls were not adopted. In Japan during the Tokugawa period, also known as the Edo period, which took place between 1603 and 1868, adoption of sons became increasingly popular among samurai families. Powerful families without a male heir frequently took custody of younger sons from less powerful families, which not only guaranteed a patriarchal leader for the next generation but also prevented brothers from fighting among themselves to become leaders of their biological families. Ancient Chinese literature is filled with poems written by a fatherless orphans or gū’ér, who were frequently adopted by older relatives. In exchange for childhood care, these children would maintain the graves of their adoptive parents; those whose graves were not maintained were said to become “hungry ghosts”. Children with no surviving relatives lived in government-run orphanages.

In Hawai’i and other cultures of Polynesia, a common form of adoption called hānai allows children to live with a member of their ohana or family-community. The child knows this person is not the biological parent and is not treated any differently from the person’s biological children, making them a member of ohana regardless of race. Unfortunately, some institutions do not recognize hānai, meaning hānai children of non-Hawai’ian ancestry may be barred from benefits offered to Hawai’ian children, such as admission to schools specializing in Hawai’ian education.

Other indiginous cultures also experience hardship related to adoption. Australian government workers forcibly removed Aboriginal Australian and Torres Straight Island children from their families to be adopted by white families, or more often treated as servants. This practice was a stark contrast to their traditional lifestyle where children were raised communally. These adoptions happened as early as 1849, although the practice was not codified until 1923, and the practice did not end until the time of the Bringing Them Home report of 1997. The seventeen percent of Aboriginal children taken from their families during this time are known as the Stolen Generation, and the situation is still being remediated almost thirty years after the practice ended.

Similarly, government officials in the United States and Canada removed Native American and First Nations children from their families, and then placed them either with a white family or in a residential boarding school. I have previously covered this topic during my review of Path Lit by Lightning by David Maraniss, which told the story of athlete Jim Thorpe, and the AIA Archaeology Hour talk “Finding the Children” with Kisha Supernaut, an archaeologist leading projects to find the unmarked graves of children who died at residential schools. Between twenty-five and thirty-five percent of Native American children in the United States were taken from their families between 1950 and 1978, when the Indian Child Welfare Act banned the practice.

Modern adoption culture in the West has its roots in the Codex Justinianus, a decree written by the Christian Emperor Justin of Byzantium. Parents could adopt younger grown-ups as heirs, act as foster parents to children with living parents, and adopt orphans as children or grandchildren. Married couples or single men could adopt as much as they wanted, but single women needed special permission and could only adopt if their biological children died; this was seemingly a practical decision, as widows had no means of supporting themselves, let alone a family. Slaves could be adopted and freed by their former masters turned fathers, but they were not granted the right of inheritance.

Adoption in Scandinavia during the age of the Vikings seemingly required less paperwork. A common indicator of adoption was knésetja, meaning “to place upon the knee” and appearing in the languages of Old Icelandic, Old Norse, and Old Norwegian. Generally, a high-ranking lord would send his messenger to place a younger and perhaps unwanted son upon the knee of a lower-ranking lord, forcing him to raise the child. In the legend of Hakon the Good, his badly behaved seventy-year-old father King Harald of Norway had conceived him with the teenage servant-girl Thora Mosterstang. Apparently not wanting to deal with the problems he had created, King Harald ordered his ambassador to put baby Hakon on the knee of King Aethelstan of England, even though Aethelstan was considered an equal or superior ruler. King Aethelstan was understandably unhappy with the situation but being “a good Christian” adopted baby Hakon anyway. The baby eventually grew up, took over his father’s kingdom from his older half-brother, and Christianized the kingdom.

Modern Western adoption practices began during the 19^th century, at least for white families looking to adopt white children. In the United States, the state of Massachusetts created the first child welfare law in 1851. New York City started the orphan train project in 1854. This system involved putting children on trains and shipping them west with the hope that someone would want them for free labor. Since then, laws have legalized transracial adoption and granted citizenship to children born abroad but adopted by a U.S. citizen. For people of my generation, adoption carries no stigma; in fact, it is astonishing to read about past animosity towards adoptees.

In the United Kingdom, while fostering a child was common and regulated by the mid-19^th century, no legal system for adoption existed until after World War I, as the first law was passed in 1926. This must have caused uncertainty in the young life of Tolkien and his brother Hilary, who were orphaned in 1904 after the death of their widowed mother. Fortunately, she had assigned their guardianship to her friend, Roman Catholic priest Father Francis Xavier Morgan, allowing the boys to still spend time with their cousins but avoiding a potential custody battle.

As for Hobbits, assigning a child as an heir was done by collecting seven witness signatures in red ink. According to Tolkien scholar Murray Smith, the need for seven signatures comes from Imperial Rome and was practiced until the time of the Byzantine Empire, once again alluding to the Númenóreans having a Greco-Roman styled culture, while the Hobbits selectively maintained practices of their disappeared colonizers. If life in the Shire exactly reflected post-medieval life in Western Europe, then the signatures would have belonged to literate, land-owning hobbit-lads who had reached the age of majority, or a relatively small portion of the population. However, the text never specified these rules, and between hobbit-lasses seemingly having the same rights as hobbit-lads except for inheritance law, and Bilbo’s apparent disdain for societal norms, the signatures might have been given by any of his friends, including hobbits, dwarves, and Gandalf. Having Hamfast Gamgee to place his mark on the document instead of having cousin and clan leader Otho Sackville-Baggins act as a signatory would be an effective insult and would explain why the Gaffer knew so much about the adoption process. Ultimately, this information can only be speculated, as Tolkien seems to have never created a facsimile of this document.

Coming of Age

Hobbits seem to age at about two-thirds the speed of Men, along with reaching two-thirds the height. Accordingly, when Hobbits come of age at thirty-three years old, this is equivalent to a Man turning twenty-one years old, the “coming of age” in Tolkien’s time for young men in England. Just like adoption, this concept is found in cultures around the world and varies widely according to belief.

In ancient Rome, a coming of age ceremony was available only to free boys and took place between the ages of fourteen and seventeen; girls and enslaved boys could not take part. The boy removed his bulla or protection charm and toga praetexta or boy’s clothes and instead put on a toga virilis or man’s clothes. Across the Mediterranean in Israel and spreading throughout Europe and the Middle East beginning in the 6^th century, boys came of age at thirteen years old during a bar mitzvah or “son’s deed” in Aramaic. The ceremony included readings from the Torah or holy book of Judaism, prayers given by the boy’s father, and a feast for the whole community. Today, girls have a similar ceremony called a bat mitzvah or “daughter’s deed”, which takes place at age 12. Politically liberal Jews have introduced the concept of b’nei mitzvah or “children’s deed” for non-binary kids, which eliminates gendered aspects of the ceremony.

Moving east, a coming of age ceremony for boys from samurai families known as genpuku developed in Edo period Japan. Boys of sixteen or seventeen sai, equivalent to fifteen or sixteen years old in the Western system of age measurement, began wearing their hair in a topknot and received the right to adopt.

For Confucianists in China, the coming of age ceremony of “capping” was one of six observances or Li in a man’s life and held the same importance as marrying and mourning one’s deceased ancestors. Also known as Guan Li or “Oath Ceremony”, boys of about eighteen years old would present their new clothes and cap at the family shrine in front of guests from the community. In a complex ritual, the most honored guest, an older man, would repeatedly place the new cap on the head of the boy to mark him as an adult. A smaller ritual for girls of fifteen years old was Ji Li or “Hairpin Ceremony”, when her hairstyle changed to be held in a bun by a hairpin. The Chinese Communist Party strongly discouraged these practices and has since replaced them with an “Eighteen-Year-Old Oath Ceremony” where raising the flag, singing the national anthem, and saying the pledge of allegiance have replaced ancestral worship.

Not all ceremonies were just for boys. In fact, in Latin America and Anglo America, coming of age parties tend to be for girls. The quinceañera or “fifteen years” and Sweet Sixteen were traditionally “coming out” ceremonies, marking the girl as eligible to get married, especially with a father’s approval. Modern ceremonies tend to be less formal but might still include a large party with community members, along with the honored girl wearing a fancy dress. As an added bonus, this is the age where children begin driving.

Coming of age in the modern West has become convoluted, especially in the United States, where markers of adulthood are staggered over a ten year period. While children begin learning to drive at age sixteen, or younger in a few states, age eighteen marks the right to vote, marry without a guardians permission, and join the military. The right to buy alcohol, tobacco, or cannabis does not come into effect until the age of twenty-one, while car renters will be charged with additional fees until they reach age twenty-five. A student who entered the education system as a kindergartener at the expected time of five years old and has not repeated grades or taken gap years will graduate a four-year college at age twenty-two and complete an increasingly required master’s or doctorate program between ages twenty-five and twenty-eight. The Hobbit coming of age at thirty-three years old is not so far off in comparison.

Famous Parties

Also called feasts or festivals, famous parties have historically been sponsored by a ruler and reserved for the highest ranking members of society. While modern music festivals have a taste of the bacchanalia and debauchery characteristic of these historical splurges, pop culture royalty is no match for a crazed monarch and his fantasies. Bilbo technically did not hold title, as his noble blood was on his mother’s side, but his reputation as a wealthy, eccentric person with royal friends from other cultures was enough for him to have the same position in Hobbiton society.

The Bible is filled with parties for people from all walks of life, but two most fitting the criteria appear in the books of Daniel and Esther. Daniel 5 records the Feast of Belshazzar, king of Babylon and son of Nebuchadnezzar, whose parties include the standard ancient affairs of heavy drinking, beautiful women, and disrespecting the cultures of their colonial subjects. During this party, the hand of God wrote a prophecy of the king’s doom on the wall, and Darius the Great assassinated the king later that night to become ruler of the Babylonian Empire, combining it with his already diverse empire of Medes and Persians. A generation later in Esther 1, Darius’ son Xerxes held an exclusive party for seven days, naturally filled with heavy drinking and beautiful women, but no cultural disrespect in this case. Unfortunately, Xerxes disrespected his wife Vashti by asking her to model for the guests, causing the couple to split up and Xerxes to look for a new, much younger wife.

Catastrophe and royal parties tend to go together, especially in France. In 1393, a costume-themed wedding reception for a lady-in-waiting to Queen Isabeau was attended by King Charles VI and his brother Prince Louis along with several other young nobles. Six of the men wore highly flammable wild men costumes, much like the Woses described back in “Races: Men, Part 2”. Unfortunately, Louis accidently lit several costumes on fire with a torch, killing four of the dancers. The event became known as Bal des Ardents or “Dance of the Burning Ones”. In 1661, French aristocrat Nicolas Fouquet held a party at his new mansion Chateau de Vaux-Le-Vicomte to entertain Louis XIV, which the king used as an opportunity to arrest Fouquet and sentence him to life imprisonment for alleged embezzlement.

Not all parties were real events. The mythological banquet was supposedly hosted by the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, who ruled from 1654 to 1722, as a sixty-sixth birthday party, or maybe by his grandson the Qianlong Emperor, who ruled from 1735 to 1796. In either case, the “Comprehensive Manchu-Han Banquet” would have allowed Manchu noble relatives to feast beside Han royalty, improving relations between the two ethnicities. An event of this size would have taken extraordinary amounts of planning, and the meticulous Chinese government would have recorded the event, except no such records exist. Apparently, one of these emperors had a clever PR team: the event never took place, but centuries of Chinese citizens had been convinced that it did.

Finally, a potential inspiration for the musical score to the Hobbiton event would be Music for the Royal Fireworks, composed by George Frideric Handel in 1749 for King George II of Great Britain. Like the royal events in France, the festival was filled with disaster despite the superior music. Incidents included major traffic backups over London Bridge, the loss of a gunner’s hand while shooting a cannon, another gunner blinded by fireworks, a building fire, and a woman forcibly stripped by well-meaning bystanders after her clothing caught on fire. Despite this mayhem, Handel’s piece is performed to this day.

Text Interpretation

While the concepts of adopting a child, coming of age, and holding a party are familiar and joyful to people of the modern world, these events were historically marked by unfair and harmful practices. The indulgent Hobbits appear childish and silly on the surface, but they soon turn towards destructive behavior when their leader disappears. Even if they had not been intent on disowning Frodo and taking Bilbo’s possessions as their own, the One Ring would still have acted as a corrupting presence at the heart of Bag End.

A turning point in this first chapter came with Frodo’s realization that he loved Bilbo, which only came after his ‘uncle’ had disappeared. In fact, Bilbo was the one person Frodo professed to love throughout the text, although he clearly cared for all his friends, especially Sam. This abrupt and belated profession, along with what I have learned from history, led me to many questions about their relationship. Why did Bilbo wait for Frodo to turn twenty-one, the Hobbit equivalent to fourteen in Man years, before adopting him, especially when Frodo was unwanted by his foster family at Brandy Hall? Why did Bilbo insist that he and Frodo were ‘uncle’ and ‘nephew’ rather than ‘father’ and ‘son’? How could Bilbo rationalize abandoning Frodo on the day he came of age, especially when the community held so much animosity towards him? Why did Bilbo tell secrets to Frodo that he never told anyone else, a red flag for child abuse even if Bilbo would never intentionally hurt his heir?

While Bilbo was kind and generous to Frodo, as he was to Sam and other village hobbits, he was also selfish in using a child to retaliate against his younger relatives who had wronged him sixty years earlier, especially when these relatives had been young adults. In fact, Lobelia Sackville-Baggins née Bracegirdle was only twenty-four years old, the equivalent to about sixteen in Man years, when the spoon theft incident took place, as she was born in Shire Reckoning (S.R.) 1318, and Bilbo returned from his adventure in S.R. 1342. Just as the emperors of China spreading rumors about fantastical feasts to impress their subject, Bilbo carefully constructed an aura of intrigue around himself to gain admiration and envy from those he likely considered beneath him. Just as indigenous children were taken from their communities by social workers, some of which were Christian missionaries who genuinely believed they were doing what was best and cited the Bible as evidence, Bilbo justified his abandonment of Frodo by citing how his ‘nephew’ loved the Shire as evidence that the younger hobbit was not ready to leave. Once again, comparative analysis demonstrates how the historical people of the Real World were complex and multifaceted, and the fictional people of Middle-earth were no different.

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