Bag End
Bag End is the underground dwelling of the Hobbits Bilbo and Frodo Baggins in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. From there, both Bilbo and Frodo set out on their adventures, and both return there, for a while. As such, Bag End represents the familiar, safe, comfortable place which is the antithesis of the dangerous places that they visit.[3] It forms one end of the main story arcs in the novels, and since the Hobbits return there, it also forms an end point in the story circle in each case.[4]
Tolkien described himself as a Hobbit in all but size. Scholars have noted that Bag End is a vision of Tolkien's ideal home, and effectively an expression of character.
Description
J. R. R. Tolkien
The Hobbit begins with "among the most famous first lines in literature":[5]
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.[6]
The
Another of Tolkien's drawings, The Hall at Bag-End, Residence of B. Baggins Esquire, depicts the interior, complete
Peter Jackson
Chad Chisholm and colleagues, reviewing Jackson's 2012 film
Analysis
Real-world origins
"Bag End" was the real name of the Tudor home, dated to 1413, of Tolkien's aunt Jane Neave in the village of Dormston, Worcestershire.[15][16] The scholar of literature and film Steven Woodward and the architectural historian Kostis Kourelis suggest that Tolkien may have based his Hobbit-holes on Iceland's turf houses, such as those at Keldur.[17]
Character from architecture
Tolkien stated "I am in fact a Hobbit", and scholars agree that he was in many ways like his Hobbits, enjoying good food, gardening, smoking a pipe, and living in a familiar and comfortable home.[5] Tolkien makes Bag End a place where, in the Tolkien scholar Thomas Honegger's words, "most readers feel severely tempted to put on their imaginary slippers and settle down to a piece of cake and some tea."[3] Honegger argues that places have a critical role in The Lord of the Rings, and the function of the safe Hobbit-hole is to establish the character of the "hol-bytlan (hole-dwellers), in the first place stationary beings who have a deep-rooted aversion against travelling outside the Shire." For them, Honegger writes, "Travelling abroad belongs to the same class as adventures", quoting Bilbo's remark in The Hobbit: "Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!"[3]
Joseph Wright's 1898–1905 The English Dialect Dictionary has an entry for hobman, one of many possible sources of the word hobbit, which states that "Each elf-man or hobman had his habitation, to which he gave his name".[18] The Tolkien scholar Michael Livingston comments that from this it is easy "to recall the man-like, elf-friend, hole-dwelling hobbit Mr. Baggins of Bag-End, hired by the not-too-dissimilar dwarves to commit thievery".[18]
The scholar of literature Johanna Brooke writes in the
Brooke notes Tolkien's statement that "only the richest and poorest"[2] in fact were able to continue the traditional Hobbit-practice of living in holes: the poor might have, as Tolkien said, "burrows of the most primitive kind... with only one window or none".[2] Bag End is sharply contrasted with such a burrow, its best rooms being provided with "deep-set round windows". Brooke comments that Tolkien has shown this in The Hill: Hobbiton-across-the-Water, where Bag End has several windows while the Hobbit-holes further down (of Bagshot Row) have fewer. Other signifiers of wealth and class include such Victorian era comforts as a dining-room, multiple pantries, and wardrobes. Such things could indicate, Brooke writes, that Bag End's owner is "indulgent, overly-luxurious, too comfortable, a tad vain even",[2] though against this, the hanging-space for many hats and coats suggests that welcoming guests is important to him. Brooke quotes Morris's remark that "the working man cannot afford to live in anything that an architect could design; moderate-sized rabbit-warrens [are] for rich middle-class men",[19] stating that with its mention of rabbit warrens, this "aptly suits Bag End".[2]
The cartographer Karen Wynn Fonstad created a plan of Bag End, showing her vision of its comfortable layout with many cellars and pantries, complete with multiple fireplaces and chimneys, based on the clues given by Tolkien in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Her plan makes Bag End some 130 feet (40 m) long and up to 50 feet (15 m) wide, cut into the Hill.[20] Honegger writes that Fonstad's work has contributed substantially to giving Middle-earth an "independent existence".[3]
Only one outlet
The Tolkien scholar
The most desirable residence
The journalist Matthew Dennison compares
Shippey argues that the Bagginses and the Sackville-Bagginses are "connected opposites", since the opposite of a
Feature | Bilbo Baggins | Lobelia Sackville-Baggins |
---|---|---|
Manner, attitude | Plain | Snobbish |
Role in story | Burglar |
Bourgeois
|
Language | English (dialect)[b] | Frenchified |
No through road | Bag End | cul-de-sac
|
Bag End | Actual owner, resident | Would-be owner, resident |
Contrasts with faraway places
The historian Joseph Loconte wrote that Tolkien had set up a contrast between Frodo's light and serene Bag End and the corrupted wizard Saruman's dark and industrially destructive Isengard. Loconte likens this to the contrast in Tolkien's fellow-Inkling C. S. Lewis's 1950 children's book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe between the delightful but humble home of Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, and the icy opulence of the palace of the White Witch. In Loconte's view, both authors "reintroduce[d] into the popular imagination a Christian vision of hope in a world tortured by doubt and disillusionment".[26][27]
Honegger points out a quite different contrast, between Bag End as depicted in Tolkien's drawing The Hall at Bag End, "the homely yet narrowly limited space of a hobbit-hole with the similarly neat and defined landscape of the Shire in the background," with his The Forest of Lothlórien in Spring, which shows "no particular place, but an airy glade in a forest filled with sunlight, evoking a feeling of sheltered openness."
Bag End, The Shire | Faraway place | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
Quality | Time | Name | Quality | Time |
Homely, narrowly limited | In the present | Forest of Lothlórien |
Sheltered openness | In the past
|
Secluded petit bourgeois idyll | transcendental, idealised idyll | |||
Comfortable, tame | Old Forest | Untamed nature | ||
Rivendell | Idyllic | |||
Moria | Dwarves' promised land |
Strangeness
Bag End receives strange visitors – Gandalf and the Dwarves, making it seem a "queer place", in the character
Parody
The 1969 parody novel Bored of the Rings, written by the National Lampoon founders Henry Beard and Douglas Kenney, mocks Frodo's homecoming from his dangerous quest to Bag End with the words "he walked directly to his cozy fire and slumped in the chair. He began to muse upon the years of delicious boredom that lay ahead. Perhaps he would take up Scrabble".[31]
Notes
- ^ The French actually also say un cul-de-sac, see the relevant French Wiktionary entry.
- ^ Shippey notes that "Baggins" is close to the spoken words bæggin, bægginz in the dialect of Huddersfield, Yorkshire.[25][24]
References
- ISBN 978-0-415-86511-1.
- ^ Journal of Tolkien Research. 4 (1). Article 1.
- ^ ISBN 978-3-9521424-5-5.
- ^ ISBN 9780313232831.
- ^ a b Vollrodt, Kim (20 September 2017). "Tolkien trivia: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit"". Oxford University Press. Retrieved 20 August 2022.
- ^ Tolkien 1937, Chapter 1. An Unexpected Party.
- ISBN 978-0-261-10322-1.
- ISBN 978-1-851-24485-0.
- ^ Hammond & Scull 1995, p. 146 "The Hall at Bag-End".
- ^ Tolkien 1937, Chapter 2. Roast Mutton."If you had dusted the mantelpiece you would have found this just under the clock,' said Gandalf, handing Bilbo a note" [from Thorin]..
- ^ Tolkien, J. R. R. Bilbo's last Song: (for "XIV. Return to Hobbiton" note 21) "the Hornblower who received the barometer now changes from Cosimo (by way of Carambo) to Colombo." (A Long-expected Party): "For Cosimo Chubb, treat it as your own, Bingo: on the barometer. Cosimo used to bang it with a large fat finger whenever he came to call. He was afraid of getting wet, and wore a scarf and macintosh all the year round."
- ^ Huffstutter, P. J. (24 October 2003). "Not Just a Tolkien Amount". Los Angeles Times.
- ISBN 978-1869505301.
- JSTOR 48614797.
- ^ "Lord of the Rings inspiration in the archives". Explore the Past (Worcestershire Historic Environment Record). 29 May 2013.
- OCLC 551485018. Andrew Morton wrote an account of his findingsfor the Tolkien Library.
- S2CID 243929250.
- ^ JSTOR 26815505.
- ^ Morris, William (2008) [1888]. "The Revival of Architecture". In Harry Francis Mallgrave; Christina Contandriopoulos (eds.). Architectural Theory Volume II: an Anthology from 1871 to 2005. Singapore: Blackwell Publishing. p. 15.
- ^ a b Fonstad, Karen Wynn (1994) [1981]. The Atlas of Middle-earth. HarperCollins. pp. 118–119.
- ^ ISBN 978-0261-10401-3.
- ^ "cul-de-sac". Collins English-French Dictionary. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
- ^ a b Dennison, Matthew (18 August 2015). "Behind The Mask: Vita Sackville-West". St. Martin's Press. Archived from the original on 20 September 2015. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-547-52441-2.
- ^ Shippey cites Haigh, W. E. (1928). Glossary of the Dialect of the Huddersfield District. Oxford University Press., noting that Tolkien had written the Prologue.
- )
- JSTOR 44783383.
- JSTOR 45320421.
- JSTOR 45321703.
- ^ a b LaFontaine, David (2016). "The Tolkien in Bilbo Baggins". The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide. 23 (6).
- ISBN 978-0-451-13730-2.
Sources
- George Allen & Unwin.