Abby Epplett, Historian

The third installment to my miniseries on the psychology of major characters in The Lord of the Rings will focus on Samwise Gamgee, later called Sam Gardner, who is considered the deuteragonist or secondary main character in the text. Unlike Bilbo and Frodo Baggins who enjoyed an enormous amount of privilege as part of the wealthy, educated elite, Sam and his family were among the lowest in the social hierarchy. Because of this disparity in status, Sam’s apparent psychological conditions were treated differently by the community than those of Bilbo and Frodo. While the Bagginses were explicitly called “mad” and “queer” for their behavior, attitudes towards Sam were less harsh. Mocking the Bagginses may have been the one way the ‘rustic’ hobbits could have an advantage over their ‘betters’, while Sam seemed to be considered another one of the villagers despite his differences.

This is the final essay before I begin my analysis of the dialogue portion of The Lord of the Rings . I hope to begin moving more quickly through the text now that I have laid a solid foundation and framing to my metaphorical house, but seeing as I tend to overanalyze, I cannot promise any amount of speed. Today I discuss Hobbiton, the famous hometown of Bilbo Baggins and possibly his father, Bungo Baggins. This was not the hometown of Frodo, as he was born in Buckland, but he was permitted to live in this area after Bilbo made him the heir to Bag End. I will cover the ownership, architecture, and layout of Hobbiton while comparing it to real-world history before providing the first animatic of the project.

In past essays, I have given a lot of thought to Elanor Gardner Fairbairn, a minor character of great importance who would become a major character in the hypothetical musical. She first appeared during “Overview of Appendix A” with the mention of her birthdate, 25 March Third Age (T.A.) 3021 / Fourth Age (F.A.) 1 / Shire Reckoning (S.R.) 1421, which served not only as a symbol of rebirth after the worldwide War of the Ring but also as a demonstration on how tricky the calendars of Middle-earth can be . Her husband, Fastred of Greenholm, received a mention in “Appendix A, II The Kings of the Mark” , and a full explanation of her work as an editor of The Red Book of Westmarch was given in “Framing Device” just two weeks ago. Rather than reviewing her life and occupation as I have done previously, I now turn to physical appearance, especially personal clothing style.

On Saturday, November 23 and Sunday, November 24, I attended the two-day webinar, the Christopher Tolkien Centenary Conference hosted by the Tolkien Society via Zoom. Past readers of the blog know that I am a big fan of conferences, both in-person and virtual, so this was a great opportunity to combine my love of intense learning events with my research for the hypothetical animated musical. Even as someone on the younger end of attendees, I felt right at home through the friendly chat, the generous speakers, and my extensive knowledge of the Legendarium. Here are my favorite highlights from each talk, minus anything that seemed to be proprietary information. Any mistakes are likely because I have been up since 4:45 a.m. watching this conference. For naming conventions, as said succinctly by James Tauber, “It’s become a common convention in Tolkien studies to use Tolkien to refer to the father and Christopher to refer to the son”, so I will do the same in this summary. Sa...

At last, I arrive at the final section of the appendixes. After a hundred and fifty pages of comparing Middle-earth history to real-world history, I have an even stronger grasp of how Tolkien used his expertise as a philologist and historian to build a fantasy world rooted in fact. This will serve as a solid foundation for future research as I move into the dialog portion of the text and reveal vignettes for the hypothetical animated musical.

During this week and next week, I am taking a brief break from the appendixes to create more illustrations for the people of Middle-earth. I will focus on Maiar, a Race of angel-like or god-like beings who traveled as invisible spirits or took a wide range of physical forms. While this term did not appear in The Lord of the Rings , many Maiar appeared in the text, and explanations of Maiar and their powers were given in The Silmarillion . Wizards and balrogs will appear this week, while Maiar symbolizing the environment and crafts will appear next week.

The first part of “Appendix E: Writing and Spelling”, focused on pronunciation. I am notoriously bad at pronouncing words that I only know by sight, some of my favorites being liaison, epitome, Yosemite, and mischievous. Because I learned most of my vocabulary from reading, I rarely heard more difficult words pronounced aloud until high school or college, when I learned the hard way that what I heard in my head was not the generally accepted way to say the word. I tended to think my linguistic snafus were pretty funny.

While Appendix D is named for the Shire Calendar, this section actually covers calendars from multiple Middle-earth cultures spanning thousands of years. The construction of these calendars presented an unresolved mystery: why were they so similar to modern Western calendars? A real-world explanation was that Tolkien was most familiar with the Gregorian calendar, but a Middle-earth explanation was more complex.

Happy Hobbit Day to all those who observe! This essay is posted on September 22, the birthdays of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, along with the autumnal equinox and the beginning of fall. The American Tolkien Society declared this a holiday in 1978, and since then, Middle-earth fans have celebrated with plenty of food and no shoes. While some fun-hating detractors argue that the celebration should really take place between September 12 and 14, owing to differences between the Gregorian calendar and the Shire calendar, a discussion of calendars will appear in two weeks and no longer be dwelt upon here. This week is dedicated to family trees. Genealogists gasp in delight upon reaching Appendix C, selections from the family trees of Hobbits first described back in Prologue, “1 Concerning Hobbits” : “The genealogical trees at the end of the Red Book of Westmarch are a small book in themselves… Hobbits delighted in such things, if they were accurate… set out fair and square with no c...

Appendix B contained a long and detailed timeline clarifying dates and locations related to characters found in the dialogue portion of the book and Appendix A, explaining relationships between characters, and describing the fates of characters, especially members of the Fellowship. Like in the real-world, all characters died on Middle-earth or passed over the Sea — a metaphor for death — bringing closure to the story in a way rarely seen in modern fiction but common in religious texts, mythologies, and history books.

After several weeks of somewhat dry lists and dates, I arrive at a story with dialog! The full name of this section is “(v) Here Follows Part of the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen”. The text existed in-universe as a longer body of work, but only a portion was appended to The Red Book of Minas Tirith , then copied into the Thain’s Book , part of the Shire Records that I discussed several weeks ago . As the title suggests, the section gives a short biography of Aragorn with a special focus on his relationship with Arwen Undómiel. The storyline of this section paralleled aspects of real-world history and culture including marriage customs, elves and fairies in folklore, royal standards or flags, epic poetry, and religious allegory. Age of First Marriage and Fairy Foster Father The section opens with Arathorn son of the chieftain Arador seeking a wife and wanting none but Gilraen the Fair. The one problem was that Arathorn was fifty-six years old, and Gilraen “had not reached th...