The Lord of the Rings trilogy looms so large in our cultural consciousness nowadays that I was caught off guard by just how innocuous that opening page is. Seriously, "When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday..." sounds more like the beginning of some Dr. Seuss book than of a long, dark, world-spanning epic. Especially in today's cut-throat publishing world that places so much emphasis on that first page, first paragraph, first line that "grabs the reader's attention" lest some time-crunched editor toss your work to the reject pile without finishing, it is almost jarring to encounter a work that begins so leisurely--it is also refreshing. There is a self-confidence about this meandering approach, where Tolkien doesn't feel a need to impress you or sell you on a tale he knows will overawe you in due time. Nevertheless, we have little sense from these opening salvos of the pathos, pain, and passions that this series holds for us.
Yet though the full scope of this saga is hidden on the first page, the foreshadowing is still sinister in its own understated way: of Bilbo's seemingly endless youth, the Shire folks shake their heads and mutter, "It will have to be paid for...It isn't natural, and trouble will come of it!" No matter that the other Hobbits only spoke this in petty envy, it is a true prophecy, as the full extent of this price will be revealed in all its terrible beauty by the trilogy's end.
Though a New Critic would throw a yellow-flag on me with a shout of "Intentional Fallacy!" for saying this, I can't help but wonder how much Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray influenced Tolkien's portrayal of a never-aging aristocrat (for Bilbo is wealthy indeed) who pays for his youth with a dark secret so profound that even he himself can scarcely comprehend its cost. I also can't help wondering how much a literate British reading public would've intuitively picked up on those dark overtones in this Dorian-esque portrayal of Bilbo, so subtly different from the jovial, put-upon everyman we encountered in The Hobbit.
I find it interesting that Ben notes how off-handedly cruel Bilbo could be in his gift-giving, especially given what we later learn of Gollum's true origins--could we here, in this chapter, already be encountering subtle clues of how the ring has begun to corrupt Bilbo's soul the same way it had Smeagol's? I find Bilbo's statement that he feels like butter spread too thin on bread to be particularly ominous in this regard.
I also find fascinating Ben's observance that the Hobbits here come off as "gossipy, snoopy, impatient, shallow," since Tolkien famously admitted that the term "Hobbits" is a play on Babbit, the Nobel-prize winning novel by Sinclair Lewis about the failings of narrow-minded conformity in a safe-yet-stultifying middle-class community. Said Tolkien: "Babbitt has the same bourgeois smugness that hobbits do. His world is the same limited place." There is something anti-Pastoral about Tolkien's Hobbits, a repudiation of English Romanticism, a refusal to celebrate the "natural" village life embodied by the Shire--which refusal renders this novel, despite its retro-Medievalism, distinctly Modern. (The fact that the ultimate quest is to not gain, but destroy an artifact of great power, is likewise often cited as a peculiarly Modern twist in this series). Even though Tolkien clearly harbors more affection for his characters than Sinclair Lewis, Tolkien also clearly does not want you to idealize them.
Though I agree with Ben that "A Long Expected Party" is doubtless meant to ease us into new territory with its foibles of hobbits, I'm tempted to think that all the endless domestic detail of the first chapter is supposed to be a little tedious, that we are meant to desire escape from this same wearying tedium, that we are, like Bilbo and Frodo, to feel a little oppressed by the Shire. Even that chapter title, "A Long Expected Party," places us firmly in a world of set routine, unchanging in its banality, sans surprise, adventure, or the unexpected, with nothing to look forward to save parties that are expected long in advance, then come and pass without variance. We finish "A Long Expected Party" with Frodo longing to get away from the steady minutiae of Hobbiton--and we with him.
Yet though the opening chapter to the most famous fantasy series of the 20th century begins in such an unspectacular, quotidian fashion, it does have some bona fide drama: that final exchange between Gandolf and Bilbo, as we behold two long-time friends almost turn on each other over the ring, is a genuinely tense moment. Although the tension between them is resolved quickly enough, the tension about the ring is not. What is it about this mere plot device from a previous novel that could suddenly turn two such amiable and lovable old characters against each other, even just briefly? It isn't natural, and trouble will come of it.
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