The Soil is Deep: “Home” in Lord of the Rings

‘From the many-willowed margin of the immemorial Thames

Standing in a vale outcarven in a world-forgotten day

There is dimply seen uprising through the greenly veiled stems

Many-mansioned tower-crowned in its dreamy robe of grey

That strange city by the river ages in the lives of men

Proudly wrapt in mystic memory overpassing human ken’

-Valedictory, 1911 [first stanza]

 

    One of Tolkien’s motivations in writing The Lord of the Rings was to ‘create a mythology for England’. In doing so, he devised The Shire, rooted in the bucolic landscape in which he spent his formative years both in the outskirts of Birmingham and a place which is close to my own heart, Oxfordshire. The poem above, written by Tolkien at nineteen whilst at Oxford, is dedicated to a real place, written by a young man who would come to understand what it meant to leave somewhere he belonged.

 

    Indeed, there is a particular kind of love that Tolkien communicates purely, the love of place. Not a person, nor an ideal, but a patch of earth. It is found in the Dwarves’ proud tales of Moria’s mountain-halls, in the Rohirrim’s devotion to the plains of Rohan, in every moment the (regularly) homesick hobbits close their eyes and think of their Shire. In many ways, The Lord of the Rings is, at its core, a story about what it means to love, and to lose, a home.

 

    The clearest cautionary examples are also the most dramatic. The Dwarves of Erebor and Moria did not merely love their mountains; they became consumed by them. Their pride in what their forefathers had built in the deep places of Middle-earth grew into a greed, pushing them to dig ever deeper until something terrible was awoken in the dark, the Balrog. Their love of Moria took hold and possessed them. Similarly, Denethor risked the fate of Minas Tirith, one of the great citadels of Men. He would rather the city were to lose its leader and next of kin than be surrendered. In both cases, Tolkien gives us the same warning: a love of home that cannot see beyond itself risks destroying the very thing it seeks to protect.

 

    And then there is the Shire. If the Dwarves loved too greedily, and the men of Gondor too proudly, the hobbits could be accused of loving too innocently. Their naïve belief that the evils of the “big folk” would never breach the borders of the Shire and find its way down their winding country lanes was thoroughly misplaced. For a long while, they were right. But Tolkien, who had seen first-hand what industrialisation had done to the English countryside he adored, understood that innocence can act as unconscious ignorance. The Scourge of the Shire, one of the more moving pieces of the story, is the price that hobbits pay for their insularity. What redeems the Shire, and ultimately saves it, is not the hobbits who stayed, but the four who left. Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin carried the Shire inside them all the way to Mordor and back; their love of home was the fuel that kept them moving when everything else failed. Crucially, it was only because they had left, embarking on a journey which would simultaneously break and rebuild their spirits, that they became the heroes capable of saving the Shire. The Shire is restored not despite the hobbits’ journey, but because of it. 

 

    For me personally, this is not merely literary observation. Fields brimming with seasonal crops, the berries growing freely on dark green bushes, the rolling hills with little footpaths over gentle streams—this is Oxfordshire, part of Tolkien's inspiration, and a place I am glad to call home. He was writing about a love he knew firsthand, and a fear he knew firsthand too. After having watching the fields and hedgerows of the Midlands being consumed by factory smoke and the ever-encroaching city, the war came, bringing with it the near-total destruction of an entire generation of young men who had grown up in those same quiet lanes and villages. Tolkien lost many close friends in WWI, including two of the four Tea Club, Barrovian Society members. His love of the countryside endured through those dark times in the muddy trenches of the Somme. It was that love, intact upon his return, that he poured into the Shire. It is no coincidence, then, that Samwise Gamgee does exactly the same thing. On the long road to Mordor, through shadow, starvation, and despair, it is the Shire that Sam holds onto and reminds Frodo of. However, it does not function as an escape, but as a reason to keep going. 

 

    The Elves have the most complex relationship with ‘home’. Unlike Men, Hobbits, or Dwarves, they do not love their homes carelessly or possessively. Galadriel and the Elves of Lothlórien had dwelt in Middle-earth for thousands of years, and their love of it may run deeper than any of the other people’s. And yet, crucially, when Frodo offers Galadriel the One Ring, it is refused. As outlined in The Silmarillion, the Elves are a fading people. Immortal though they are, their time in Middle-earth must draw to a close, ending only in the voyage West to Valinor. What stayed this inevitability were the Three Elven Rings: Narya, Nenya, and Vilya. Their power preserved Lothlórien and Rivendell. Due to the binding nature of these Rings to the One Ring, its destruction at Mount Doom rendered them useless. When she refuses the ring, Galadriel is fully aware of this fact. She is not simply resisting potential corruption; she is accepting the end of everything she has come to know and love in Middle-earth. Her refusal reflects a wisdom that Dwarves and Men do not possess: that clutching at the preservation of home is to begin its corruption. The Elves sail West not because they do not love Middle-earth, but because they love it wisely enough to let it go.

 

    Tolkien’s world is built on a love of place. It is also, quietly, a story about what love demands. Samwise Gamgee proves it is the most powerful force in Middle-earth, carrying him all through Mordor, to the fires of Mount Doom. But love requires something in return: the daring willingness to risk, leave or hold it loosely rather than clutch it until it breaks. The Dwarves who dug too deep, the Shire-folk who closed their borders to the world—they lost what they loved because they loved it too tightly. Those hobbits who walked out of their round doors came back strong enough to save it. The Elves, who had understood this truth for millennia, enacted the greatest renunciation of all, sailing away from a world they had cherished since its first age. As Merry tells Pippin on the far side of their own quest: “the soil of the Shire is deep, but there are things deeper and higher”.

- AOL, missing my Shire. 

- Rapeseed fields near my house, mid-December 2024

The Scouring of the Shire: A Fitting Conclusion to Frodo's Journey

  The purpose of the Scouring of the Shire, upon my first reading, seemed a bit strange. Good had triumphed over evil, had it not? The movies ended off at Gondor with the hobbits being praised by all the nation. Why shouldn’t the book end there too? Why is it necessary to detail the long journey back to the Shire when a seemingly more “suitable” ending was available? There are a variety of reasons for why the Scouring is vital to the narrative of The Lord of the Rings, but I will primarily argue here that it is a vital part of Frodo’s story and to remove it would be to remove the complexity, beauty, and sorrow that defines his character.

In comparison to all the other major characters, Frodo seems to get the short end of the stick. Aragorn returns as the rightful king of Gondor and marries Arwen, Sam becomes Mayor and marries Rosie, Merry and Pippin marry and maintain close relationships with the rest of the Fellowship. Frodo, however, is no longer content in the Shire, or indeed in Middle-Earth. Sam’s conversation with him before the Grey Havens is revealing:

“‘But’, said Sam, and tears started in his eyes, “I thought you were going to enjoy the Shire, too, for years and years, after all you have done.’ ‘So I thought too, once. But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: someone has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.’” (The Grey Havens)

This is the clearest indicator of the toll that Frodo’s journey has taken on him. On his journey to Mordor, Frodo’s perspective is increasingly absent which is easy to miss as a key sign that Frodo is wrestling with the influence of the Ring, and his energy and will are being drained as a result. The Scouring, to some extent, allows Frodo to voice the impact that the journey with the Ring has had on him. 

I think Frodo’s Dreme, or the Sea-Bell, is a useful way to think about Frodo’s return in the scouring. In the introduction to The Adventures of Tom Bombadil,  the collector comments briefly on the poem, in that it is unlikely to have actually written by Frodo himself, but was instead associated with the dark dreams that plagued him on the anniversaries of Weathertop and Shelob for the last few years he remained on Middle-Earth. The general sense of the poem is of loss and defeat, which seemed to pervade Frodo’s thoughts even after the rebuilding and regarding of the Shire. One can imagine the immeasurable sense of grief that Frodo would have felt to realize that despite defeating Sauron and returning with his life, his home no longer provided him with a sense of belonging. The familiarity and comfort that Tolkien shows so well in the beginning of the story is no longer present for Frodo, and he feels painfully out of place. 

Consider the poem’s narrator, who, having only heard traces of any elvish presence in Faërie, decides to crown himself King: “‘Here now I stand, king of this land, with gladdon-sword and reed-mace. Answer my call! Come forth all! Speak to me words! Show me a face!’” This seems to speak to the guilt that Frodo bears for ultimately failing to accomplish what he set out: “‘I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!’” The decision is a conscious, willing one; he does not say “I cannot” but that he chooses not to and will not cast it into Mount Doom, one that haunts him despite the fact that no mortal being would have been able to do differently in that situation. 

The poem also expresses a strong sense of disconnect between the narrator and those around him after he’s returned: “To myself I talk, For still they speak not, men that meet.” Frodo has experienced something that no other character has come close to doing. To other normal hobbits, his tales will likely seem fantastical and unlikely, as the Gaffer reacts to Sam’s fame, saying, “‘It takes a lot o’ believing…but I can see he’s been mixing with strange company’” (The Scouring of the Shire). The idyllic Shire and its people are at odds with all that Frodo has seen and felt. More importantly, even among Merry, Pippin, and Sam, Frodo stands out. He was stabbed by the Witch-King, poisoned by Shelob, and bore the ring to its uttermost end. While his wounds may have healed, the scars of his trauma remain. This lingering darkness is affirmed by many of the Wise who can see that Frodo has not been truly healed. Arwen says to him, “‘If your hurts grieve you still and the memory of your burden is heavy, then you may pass into the West, until all your wounds and weariness are healed,’” which comes before Frodo begins to show signs of discontent and fatigue, and predicts that he will not find peace within Middle-Earth. On the way back to the Shire, Gandalf, too, notices that all is not well:

“‘Are you in pain, Frodo?’ said Gandalf quietly as he rode by Frodo’s side. ‘Well, yes I am,’ said Frodo. ‘It is my shoulder. The wound aches, and the memory of darkness is heavy on me. It was a year ago today.’ ‘Alas! There are some wounds that cannot be wholly cured,’ said Gandalf. ‘I fear it may be so with mine,’ said Frodo. ‘There is no real going back. Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same; for I shall not be the same. I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest?’ Gandalf did not answer.” 

Frodo is poignantly aware of his own unrest long before he arrives at the Shire. He doubts whether returning home will provide him with any comfort. This conversation with Gandalf is withheld from the others, who believe that returning to the Shire will fix all their ills. After “Sharkey” has been removed, the only glimpses that Sam, Merry, and Pippin get of Frodo’s suffering are when he takes ill on occasion, which Frodo attempts to conceal. We continue to get brief glimpses of his anguish: “I am wounded; it will never really heal,” and “It is gone, and now all is dark and empty” (The Grey Havens). While Merry, Pippin, and Sam all encountered peril and evil on their journey, it is Frodo who faced The Evil, which for any mortal spirit would be impossible to overcome. Deliver us from evil, indeed. 

Without the Scouring, Frodo’s journey never finishes. To remove his gradual descent into sorrow and unrest would be to remove a critical aspect of his character. As he himself says, some people must give up the things they love so that others can have them. Frodo sacrifices his own happiness and contentment on Middle-Earth so that others, like Sam, Merry, and Pippin, can flourish and heal the Shire’s hurts. He gave up any hope of truly returning home so that others could do so; that is why his departure for the Havens is so moving and so necessary. 

- GTB

The Importance of The Scouring

The Scouring of The Shire is one of the largest and most discussed omissions in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings Trilogy alongside The House of Tom Bombadil. Knowledge of the event often serves as a litmus test for whether or not someone has read the book or just seen the films. While its absence from the movies can be justified by its effect on the film's pacing, its importance to the overall story in the literature should be undisputed. George R. R. Martin once said, “Every time I read it, I understand the brilliance of that segment more and more.” However, the transition from the ultimate engagements against the forces of evil at the Black Gate and the fires of Mount Doom to a skirmish that seems incredibly domestic or trivial often puzzles or even frustrates many during their initial or repeat read-throughs, feeling like a step down from the climactic ending of the Hobbits' adventures abroad. Why then do so many deem it important and necessary? What multifaceted, layered meaning is Martin referring to?

​Those who have spent any time studying Tolkien will understand the myriad ways myths inform his world-building and character crafting. The "monomythic" formula, as described by Joseph Campbell in his seminal work The Hero with a Thousand Faces, is broadly composed of three parts: separation, initiation, and the return. The final step, as described by Campbell, occurs when the hero comes back home with “the power to bestow boons on his fellow men”, having gone through the trials of the long journey, wholly transformed and capable of returning “the flow of life into the body of the world.” It is here that we can best observe the effect of the adventure on the hero, or, in the case of The Lord of the Rings, heroes. Their nature and abilities during the homecoming stand in contrast to their original selves. In The Return of the King, we see this previously in another character, Aragorn. Upon the apparent King's return to his rightful seat, after his separation and initiation, represented by his quest with The Fellowship and descent into the paths of the dead, he enters Minas Tirith, now willing and able to assume the throne and begin curing the people of Gondor, his healing abilities confirming the completion of his transformation from Ranger to King.  

The Hobbits return completely transformed from how they left, now elevated above their peers, not just in appearance, clad in armor and well-armed, but also in technical ability and heroic quality. The four heroes, seasoned by their perilous journey, now laugh in the face of the guards sent to detain them. This distinguishes them wholly from their fellow hobbits, who have lived in abject fear and obedience to Saruman’s decrees. Merry and Pippin, armed with the experience they have acquired as knights, effectively marshal the long-dormant forces of The Shire to outmaneuver and decisively rout Saruman's sheriffs. Sam, using the enchanted soil granted to him by Galadriel, re-greens The Shire and grows a new party tree. Beyond these acts, the three of them repeatedly take decisive action to swiftly dismantle Saruman's machinations. Following their heroics, Merry, Pippin, and Sam will all become well-respected hobbits and leaders among their people. Their arcs, for the most part, conclude in this chapter.

In fact, it is arguably Frodo, the main character, who plays the least significant role in the restoration of The Shire. Although he has returned physically, his travels have left an indelible wound on his soul, making him incapable of feeling at home in The Shire. While we see a growth in prowess among the other Hobbits, in Frodo, we observe the true nature of the burden he bore and the sacrifice he made. His desire to show mercy to Saruman represents his moral transformation. However, the lack of a Campbell-style return in the mold of his friends and Aragorn highlights that Frodo has not fully returned victorious and is struggling spiritually, and it contextualizes his decision to travel to the Undying Lands to seek final healing.

Through the events of this chapter, we again observe the thematic undertone of Faramir's famous declaration that he does not find intrinsic value in armaments but “love[s] only that which they defend,” making clear the rightwise purpose of taking up arms. Having spent the entire book aiding the free peoples of Middle-earth in the defense of their lands, the occupation and industrialization of their own home is a dark twist of fate, threatening to invalidate all that our heroes have accomplished. Sam's dreaded vision in the mirror of Galadriel is said to have been underwhelming in contrast to what he experienced upon seeing Bagshot Row again, bursting into tears beside the felled party tree. The feelings evoked in this chapter capture an extremely painful sentiment often only felt by the losing side in a war, not the victors, the feeling that it was all for nothing. What was the point in defeating Sauron and even setting off beyond the borders of Hobbiton if it was always destined to end this way? This combination of loss and despair is among the most difficult emotions any character in the book experiences, representing the stinging feeling shared by many who have survived combat and returned home to find it different from what they remembered.

The confirmation of our characters’ completion of their heroic journey and the nuanced portrayal of what it means to return home make The Scouring of The Shire not just a necessary formality but also an exploration of a deeply complicated subject. This makes it critical to the understanding of Tolkien's work as a whole and justifies its position as the penultimate chapter of The Lord of the Rings. In accordance with Martin's quote, I look forward to discovering further meaning in my next reading of this difficult yet brilliant chapter.

​-SDV

Why isn't Frodo a Hero?

Is Frodo the hero of The Lord of the Rings? In many ways, he is not – as discussed in class, Frodo does not get the happy, “heroic” ending that many other characters get. Sam settles down with the girl he had a hopeless crush on, has 14 kids, and lives out his days as mayor. Aragorn marries the princess, becomes king, and has the happily ever after of fairytale dreams. Frodo succumbs to the ring at the last moment – only saved by Gollum -- and returns home to find himself so utterly changed he no longer belongs.  

On the Fields of Cormallen, for a brief moment in the story, Frodo is a hero. Aragorn pulls him to the right of him and calls upon all the men and captains to “Praise them with great praise!”. And a minstrel of Gondor sings “‘For I will sing to you of Frodo of the Nine Fingers and the Ring of Doom’” Frodo is the titular character of a great poem!

Yet Frodo is not a hero in the Shire. Sam says, in the end of the Return of the King that “Frodo dropped quietly out of all the doings of the Shire, and Sam was pained to notice how little honour he had in his own country. Few people knew or wanted to know about his deeds and adventures; their admiration and respect were given mostly to Mr. Meriadoc and Mr. Peregrin and (if Sam had known it) to himself.” Frodo loses this honour upon entering Shire: it is Merry, Pippin and Sam that gain the prestige of their mission. Frodo cannot translate his journey into the leadership and community that the rest of the friends do. Instead, it consumes and isolates him.

In their last conversation, Frodo consoles Sam on his departure, and says that “‘Your time may come. Do not be too sad, Sam. You cannot be always torn in two. You will have to be one and whole, for many years. You have so much to enjoy and to be, and to do,’”. Frodo is, in the completion of his quest, literally torn in two: Gollum permanently bites off his finger. He is, as he tells Sam “too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.” Frodo is, in a way that wanders from the path of the usual hero’s journey, changed in a way that does not allow him to go home.

Frodo’s journey also drifts from the original fairy tale setup established by Tolkien in Tree and Leaf: that the true form of the fairy-tale is the “eucatastrophic tale”, where “the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn””. Essential to the fairy tale is this turn, which allows this relief, “a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart” to any man listening to it “however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures”.

Frodo has no true turn, no eucatastrophic ending. At best he ends his journey accepting his permanent loss. In the Shire, he does not become a hero of the old ways, fighting and leading. He tries to prevent bloodlust. Tolkien says in his letter to Christopher Tolkien, of the dangers of war that “But so short is human memory and so evanescent are its generations that in only about thirty years there will be few or no people with that direct experience which alone goes really to the heart. The burnt hand teaches the most about fire”. The ills of war are not only often felt primarily by the soldiers, but even they forget and go on to glamorize them. Frodo has seen the dangers of war, and comes away as Tolkien does: dispirited and disturbed by it, even as memory fades.

Shippey writes that Bilbo is a modern character in a fantasy setting. Frodo is, much like Bilbo, a modern hero among fantastical ones. Tolkien says in letter five on Rob’s death that “I feel just the same to both of you – nearer if anything and very much in need of you – I am hungry and lonely of course – but I don’t feel a member of a little complete body now”. Just as Frodo is repeatedly described in the end of the book to be never again whole, Tolkien described the losses of the Great War.

Tolkien longs to write a mythology for England. But he could not make Frodo the mythological hero. He bemoans to Christopher in his letter “The utter stupid waste of war, not only material but moral and spiritual, is so staggering to those who have to endure it. And always was (despite the poets) and always will be (despite the propagandists) – not of course that it has not is and will be necessary to face it in an evil world.” Frodo is, on the Fields of Cormallen, a hero spoken of in a poem. But when Frodo falls ill during Spring in the Shire, and says to Farmer Cotton, while clutching his neck that “It is gone for ever, he said, ‘and now all is dark and empty’”, we see his journey end not in the “eucatastrophe” of a fairy tale, but in the moral and spiritual loss of war.

Merry, at the spot where they “all started out together” says that “It seems almost like a dream that has slowly faded”. But Frodo has seen the evil of the world, the waste of war. To go back to where they are “To me it feels more like falling asleep again.”

- ZJ

Down the Hobbit Hole

Why hobbits? Why do they exist in Middle-earth and why are our protagonists hobbits?

    In “Creative Anachronisms,” Shippey draws a parallel between hobbits and rabbits. Rabbits do not naturally live in the British Isles and were only introduced in the thirteenth century, so there does not exist an Old English word for them, yet Tolkien chose to include them in his world. In fact, rabbits are one of the relatively few animals explicitly mentioned in LotR. In letter 316 to R.W. Burchfield, Tolkien even defined hobbit as a “hole-dweller,” much like rabbits with their famous rabbit holes, and as Shippey points out, Bilbo is often described as a rabbit in The Hobbit. The reason for this is that, like rabbits, hobbits are distinctly English but also distinctly not Old English: they like “fried fish and chips” (book 4 chapter 4, p. 333), smoke pipe-weed (despite tobacco only arriving in Europe in the 16th century), and settle their disputes using contracts written in modern financial language rather than violence (Shippey, “The Ring as ‘Equalizer’”). Essentially, the hobbits exist somewhat as a stand-in for a modern English spirit that lets modern readers relate to them and discover Middle-earth through them, as opposed to the more historically correct Men.

    This approach can be further refined by considering the contradictory nature of what it means to be English: small-town unadventurous folk who love singing and eating vs. heroic global conquerors with their epic legends. The first, embodied by the hobbits, has its historical roots in the Anglo-Saxons whereas the second, similar to the Gondorians with their Númenórean ancestors, are more comparable to the Normans that conquered them. Not much is known about the origins of the hobbits before crossing the Brandywine, like the Anglo-Saxons and their migration over the English Channel, whereas the Men and Elves have very rich histories. Although Tolkien was more interested in telling stories of the latter, the story would be incomplete without the former.

    In class, we discussed how each of the four core hobbits of LotR (plus Bilbo) is characterized by a different aspect of service and consequently heroism, but I am intrigued by the less heroic, yet equally devoted, servants, Gollum and Wormtongue. Gollum devoted hundreds of years to the Ring, and when he lost it, he scoured the ends of Middle-earth (including Mordor) to find it and get it back. Depending on whether you view the Ring as its own autonomous entity imposing its evil will on others or just something that magnifies the evil that already exists in others, Gollum is either the single most disciplined or the single least disciplined character in the story (given Shippey's discussion of the word). It is this dedication to the Ring that makes him unintentionally destroy it. If you define heroism by the outcome rather than the intention, then this is one of the most heroic acts in LotR. Ironically, this is very similar to the dilemma that came up in our discussion on whether Frodo failed his mission or not, and if you instead define heroism by the intention, then Frodo is not particularly heroic either since he chose to keep the Ring. I only mention this because it happens a second time—with Wormtongue—and as we know, Tolkien loves his comparable pairs of characters. Wormtongue dutifully does Saruman’s bidding, sabotaging the Rohirrim and subjugating the Shire, until he reaches a breaking point and kills his master. Again, if he had been any less devoted in his service, such as by standing up for himself or defecting after the fall of Isengard, Saruman would have survived since Frodo was willing to spare his life. As far as I can tell, Tolkien does not give a conclusive answer to the question: is service only heroic when the one you are serving is good? 

    However, these two instances speak to an important aspect of Frodo’s story: his lack of agency in practice. The narrative seems to undermine or completely disregard the choices he makes, such as keeping the Ring a secret from the rest of the hobbits, embarking on his quest alone (leaving the Shire, Rivendell, and Emyn Muil), keeping the Ring at Mount Doom, sparing Saruman’s life, etc.. I find this aspect particularly interesting because it distinguishes him from his three companions—each of which gets to decide their own fate—yet makes him much more realistic. When reading letter 5 to G.B. Smith, I couldn’t help but correlate Frodo’s fate with that of many modern soldiers, drafted into a foreign war and stripped of his agency, only to return home to a barely recognizable country, injured and sick. Again, Tolkien is able to incorporate both the modern and the ancient with Frodo’s tragic ending and the fairytale endings of the other hobbits. This is similar to how the realistic evil of the scouring of the Shire serves to balance out the fairytale evil of Sauron’s Mordor. I also want to mention that the core hobbits mature during their quest, but all of them, except Sam, seem to eventually “outgrow” hobbit society and evolve into something that isn’t quite hobbit but isn’t quite Man, either—three-quarter-lings, if I may. Sam, formerly just a gardener, heals the Shire and becomes its mayor—because remember, the hands of a king mayor are the hands of a healer—whereas Merry and Pippin eventually move to Gondor, and Bilbo and Frodo seemingly transcend the mortal world altogether by sailing west for Valinor.

The town of Richecourt in 1918 (Library of Congress) for reference, since the scouring of the Shire is missing from the movies.

    I think that part of the reason why the Ring-bearer had to be a hobbit is encapsulated by their distaste for seafaring (except for those weirdo Brandybucks). The uncontrollable and unpredictable nature of the sea represents both possibility and peril: it is the route to discovery, but also to overreach. For example, the Númenóreans attempt to transcend death by sailing to Valinor, but the sea ends up destroying them. This hubris is distinctly missing in the hobbits who do not seem to have many aspirations through which they can be corrupted. Hobbits, who barely wish to leave home, definitely do not dream of conquering distant lands. Boromir was so easily corrupted by the Ring because of his desire to save Gondor and become king, whereas the Ring had no effect on Tom Bombadil who is already perfectly content with his life as it is, and Sam was even able to give it up after carrying it for two days because he only wants to serve Frodo. I think this tells us something about how Tolkien views morality: the defeat of great evil does not come from greater power, but from the refusal of it; and such refusal is most likely to be found among those who never sought greatness to begin with.

-ME