Abby Epplett, Historian

At long last, I present my character design prototypes for everyone’s favorite grumpy four-foot-tall mining engineers, the Dwarves. Other people groups described in the text as having dwarf-like traits previously appeared in this series: the Harfoot Hobbits once dwelled among the dwarves, and the Drúedain Men have a similar height and accent. The Men of Near Harad may also have been similar in appearance, as I have depicted them. However, the text did not explain if these groups shared a common ancestor.

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...

This post will be divided into three sections to explain how I used a combination of textual evidence, evolutionary theory, and historical fashion to illustrate the three breeds of Hobbits that will serve as my basis for designing future characters. In the first segment, I will discuss the evolutionary theories of the Hybrid-and-Replacement Model, Assimilation Model, and Convergent Evolution, relating these real-world theories about human history to descriptions presented in the first section of the Prologue, “1 Concerning Hobbits”, that appears in The Lord of the Rings: Part One, The Fellowship of the Ring . In the second segment, I review the physical descriptions of Hobbits overtly presented in the text along with making inferences based on this text and The Hobbit . Finally, I will describe the real-world 16 th and 17 th century cultures that inspired the outfits for these characters, including the Ottoman Empire, the Netherlands, and the Sámi. The Lord of the Rings ...