Abby Epplett, Historian

This is my last blog post of 2025! I will discuss two aspects of folklore that appear during “Chapter 2, The Shadow of the Past” related to the seventeen years Frodo spent living alone at Bag End. During this time, he took many trips through the woods of the Shire and was rumored to speak with people from other lands, refugees fleeing danger in the South. Folk cultures around the world have long been fascinated by or afraid of forests. The hobbits’ fears of who might lurk in the woods aligned with fears of Ancient and Medieval people in the Real World. Meanwhile, human migration and displacement due to natural or man-made disasters have existed for thousands of years but have been studied only for the past few decades. During this essay, I will describe both of these concepts and point out similarities between them: our natural unease over the unfamiliar.

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.

The Men in my illustrations for Part 2 look drastically different from the Men of Part 1. While the first group of Men is perceived as white or European-coded by modern readers, the second group is perceived as non-white or people of color. A major concern, even controversy, for critics of Tolkien’s work is that the text contains racist material, to which I agree, or that the text itself is inherently racist, which I would argue against. This ground has been trod over multiple times with a plethora of essays arguing for both sides. Many of these arguments struggle to separate the perspectives of fictional, in-universe characters from the perspective of the fictional version of Tolkien acting as a translator from the perspective of real-world Tolkien writing the book, and after writing that convoluted sentence, I can see why. While I do not have a PhD in Tolkien studies, I have completed plenty of research in related fields where I do have higher level degrees.

Continuing my series on historical comparisons with The Lord of the Rings , I move on to “2 Concerning Pipe-weed”, the second section of the Prologue. Smoking is a nearly universal concept, with cultures around the real world and in fantasy cultivating and imbibing their own favorite herb. J.R.R. Tolkien was a known heavy smoker, rarely going anywhere without his pipe, and yet his writing shows that he understood the dark side to smoking. Tolkien may not have been aware of the more serious health risks to smoking at the time of the books’ publication; in fact, smoking in moderation was considered a normal, even healthy way of life. However, the most common plant species used for smoking — including tobacco, opium, cannabis, and coca — are linked to colonization, worker exploitation, and addiction. Big Pipe-weed in Middle-earth, much like Big Tobacco in the real world, is quietly pervasive throughout The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings until the shocking final chapters of Par...

I recently finished the book One Goal: A Coach, A Team, and the Game that Brought a Divided Town Together by Amy Bass , published by Hachette Book Group in 2019. Bass is a professor of history and career writer with a special focus in the history of sports. This modern history book covers the state championship winning boy’s Lewiston High School soccer team from Lewiston, Maine . Known both as the location of Bates College and a longtime mill town, Lewiston has more recently become a refugee city for people fleeing from conflict in Somalia and other East African countries. In the book, Bass described the importance of a local kids team in bringing together a town filled with people from different backgrounds. Bass introduced the top players of the soccer team, almost all refugee children with a handful of Mainers. She quickly juxtoposed the family-oriented, East African, Muslim culture of the refugees to community-oriented, French-Canadian, Catholic culture of long-time ...

Earlier today — Wednesday, April 26, 2023 at 6:00 p.m. ET — I attended the webinar Venice, Crete, and the Birth of the Modern World hosted by the National Hellenic Museum (NHM) in Chicago, IL. I previously attended another NHM event, Tragedy, Comedy, & Democracy in Ancient Athens , held earlier this month. Just like last time, the fast-paced and occasionally humorous talk was given by Dr. Katherine “Katie” Kelaidis , director of the museum. Dr. Kelaidis explained that as an island “closer to Jerusalem than to Paris”, Crete is a crossroad between the East and West. The largest island in the Mediterranean served as a stop for traders and militaries, leading to influence from cultures in the Middle East and Ethiopia. The culture has been part of the Greek world for thousands of years. The Minoans , who were Pre-Indo-European settlers of Mediterranean islands, lived in Crete until the Greeks pushed them out of the area in 900 BC during the Greek Dark Ages . Later, during ...

On January 22 at 1:30 p.m. was the second presentation via Zoom in the 2023 Valley Talks series hosted by the Museum of Work & Culture in Woonsocket, RI . Leading the presentation was Alex Hold , the Executive Director of International House of Rhode Island , and Andrea Flores , the Vartan Gregorian Assistant Professor of Education at Brown University .