alpharaposa | Bilbo, a hobbit out of place

One of those things I never really noticed or thought about when I was younger, no matter how many times I read The Lord of the Rings, was how out of place Bilbo is when the story begins, much less later on.

He is eleventy-one at the beginning (111), and Frodo doesn't go to Rivendell until 20 some years after that! The adventures and wars of The Hobbit are something like 70 years before the War of the Ring. Imagine somebody who went off to some obscure, far away war to us, like, say, the Boer Wars. They go far away, meet strange people and have a big fight involving people few of us have ever heard of. Then 70ish years pass in peace, with few reminders of those far away events other than regular visitors that look nothing like those of us who live in peace and safety here at home.

It'd be as if somebody who was a young man in, say, the Great Depression went away to a war that nobody else did. And then, when he came back, other veterans and strange people would visit him from time to time. Meanwhile, several generations of us would live in the same general area, raising crops or going boating or sometimes hiking over a ridge to visit some relatives, without any war and few events more remarkable than a really good harvest. The only rough or strange characters are the people visiting the man who went away that one time, and who still disappears every once in a while.

This man has many unusual treasures from his adventures, and stories to tell of unusual peoples. He even puts a few of his items for display in the local museum. How many of us would be much interested in his stories? A few as kids, maybe, but most would "grow out of it" and move on to more normal pursuits. Like a WWII vet still lingering on today, he'd slowly become part of a past we barely even think about. He'd keep a few friends among those old enough to remember some of the same things, and maybe have a younger companion who listens to his strange stories, but most people would have other things to do, other people on their minds. Once a year, he puts on a big party, and people go because the food is good, but that's about it.

And then he throws a very big party and outright disappears, going away to be with the people that he now has more in common with than his own fellow hobbits.

When everybody is there for the Council of Elrond, think of how strange it must be for Frodo and Sam, to see people from places from out of old stories, related to events as distant from them as World War II is from us. Even though they know about what happened, there's almost no immediacy. And yet, the events from back then may end up reshaping everything they know about the world they grew up in.

And Bilbo, the aging veteran who was there and brought those stories home, he's still scrappy and willing but now too old to pick up his sword and go do the work. The companions go away to fight, leaving him nodding by the fire, writing poems and bits of memory, waiting to see if the younger generations will get the job done.

It makes me think of my own grandfather in his waning years, when he finally wanted to talk about the things he saw and did before he went away, and I get a lump in my throat. And I see just how important Frodo must have been to Bilbo, as one of the few people willing to listen to and believe an old hobbit that became so foreign in his own hometown.