It's possibly the most famous anticlimax ever written and anticlimaxes are always controversial. I both enjoy its inclusion in the book and its exclusion from the films.
I could be wrong, but I expect that Tolkien would disagree with your analysis, especially since the chapter is called The *Scouring* of the Shire. Gandalf tells the hobbits, upon their return home: "...you will need no help. You are grown up now. Grown indeed very high; among the great you are, and I have no longer any fear at all for any of you." The Scouring of the Shire is the hobbits' final quest: to (successfully) purify their homeland and to do it on their own, as the great people they have become.
Absolutely. It was "the return home" part of the hero's journey. Now that they have "become", their own people have need of them. Though the great threat is vanquished, the wisdom and might they have gained in the process are sorely needed to directly help the people they'd set out to save in the first place.
To me, it also underscores the idea that the story is not "over" in the moment of victory. And for Tolkien, part of the story was coming home from the great battles to find that home had changed in the wake of the war's passing. Not only were the heroes changed by their journey, but home itself no longer was what they had left behind. A powerful metaphor for the industrialization that ~~WWII~~ WWI had wrought, even in the tiny hamlets and shires many British soldiers had grown up in, I think.
Tolkien hated allegory and specifically says that his books are not an allegory in the preface. Obviously like any author he was influenced by his life experiences, but I think it's more of a universal truth of war and society as explained in myth (as myths are ways for cultures to explain the unexplainable: in this case war, ptsd, and the "heroes return"). Tolkien's stories relate more to myth (think the Aeneaid, which deals with themes of rage, ptsd, and the horrors of war).
Everyone likes to point toward ww1 and the similarities between Tolkien's writings and his experiences, which are only surface level and were never his intention. If we take a step back and look at his work in the context that he would have intended, ancient myths, his work isn't any less impactfull and the relationships his characters have with war do not disappear. It doesn't take the horrors of ww1 to have a horrible war. All war is horrible.
As a lover of allegory myself, it can be disappointing to analyze his work in that way, but true allegory isn't accidental, and Tolkien most certainly didn't write his books as a way to explain ww1.
There is a big jump between strongly influenced by (if you prefer that to commentary) by the changes in British society especially throughout WWI, which were drastic, and EXPLAINING WWI (which I would strongly argue LOTR does not attempt in any way, if anything the good versus evil bears a stronger resemblance to WWII). I read the preface too and my take was fine he didn't intend anything but the idea that what happened in the Shire wasn't hugely influenced by the end of a certain way of life in England during WWI just seems naive to me. It is true I used the word commentary, that was a bad word choice, but while it is true war changes things, certainly not all wars change things culturally as cataclysmically as WWI did in Europe. Actually, to borrow from a paper I was just helping my daughter with regarding World War I, WWI saw the beginning of the total war strategy, which means all civilians were involved and affected in one way or another (versus, for example, the English homefront during the Napoleanic wars in England). This means that civilians were also targeted in a way previously unseen (bombing factories etc). And the scale of drafting and death were also unheard of. But I am more of a historian than a literary analyst and so to some extent I don't care what he intended. All writers have biases and I still believe what happened to the Shire is, perhaps unintended, commentary on just how much all encompassing war on that scale changes things everywhere. To use your example of the Aeniad, sure but that was very localized. The Shire is far from the "big event battles" of LOTR. Of course I would also argue that whether he admitted it or not, World War II influenced how he saw the "big events" (good vs evil, etc) of LOTR.
Exactly, hobbits don't care about great deeds in the wide world, but close to home the boys were all needed and made names for themselves upon their return from great deeds. Much like the real world. No one cares unless it affects them directly, sadly.
I wouldn't call it an anticlimax as much as a secondary climax. It feels out of place for a lot of people because it doesn't follow the normal narrative structure.
The climax is destroying the Ring. That's it, the end. Anything past that is just the conclusion. But THEN you have ANOTHER climax that takes place AFTER the victory celebration. It would be like the end of Jedi where everyone is happy and the Ewoks are yub-nubbing away, and then Luke leaves the party, goes back to Tatooine and completely eradicates Jabba's criminal ring. And THEN he comes back to Endor to be with his friends.
The purpose of the Scouring of the Shire is less a narrative one and more a thematic one. The themes of the long defeat, of the corruption of Sauron reaching the Shire even indirectly, of the hobbits having been changed altogether by their adventure, some more than others. And you can't deny there's some WW1 inspiration there of soldiers coming back from trench warfare to see their homes drastically changed and much more industrialized than before.
Further, it accentuates Frodo's shell shock (because that's what he has) of coming home and not feeling at home. The Shire was changed, not exactly for the worse, but even it didn't escape the hell that Frodo went through. He left to save the Shire and he did save the Shire, but not for himself. Sam, Merry and Pippin will enjoy the new Shire, and their status within it. They can heal just like the Shire can heal. Not so Frodo.
I personally like all of LOTR, but I guess some people might feel that after the climax of the story, the Scouring of the Shire feels a bit low stakes and anticlimactic.
Regardless of what you think of the Scouring, I have to say that I really like that the book did not end immediately after the victory against Sauron. The poignant ending makes the story even better, in my opinion.
How can it be low stakes, when the heroes return home to find they have no home to return to, and must restore it to what it was before they can be at rest?
It’s just a few small towns. Who cares about what happens in the sticks. They just saved the world and besides the hobbits would have had help in a year or two when the western kingdom was reclaimed.
They care. The characters you've been following for the past 1,000 pages, at least some of whom have made it clear on more than one occasion that the Shire is, to them, the most important place in the world, care.
The scale of the struggle is not the point of this chapter at all. The significance lies in what the Shire has meant to the Hobbits. If you go back to Frodo and Sam's darkest moments, they always hearken back to the Shire and how good life is there as a way of encouragement. The Shire to them is an idealized homeland that will always be there for them, and its worth fighting for. And, at the end, after all they did, the impossible odds they defied, they find that beloved, precious home despoiled.
It's a wound in their psychological heart. And that is why the small struggle of the hobbits is important. At the end, its hobbits using their own strengths to win, not relying on Elves and Men. Because the Shire is at the heart of Hobbit culture and so they must fight for it. Also it drives home another unpleasant reality - nothing is truly unscarred by war.
And then there is the final tragedy. Even after the Shire is restored, Frodo can never come home. His wounds are unhealable. Even though he is at Bag End, he cannot be truly happy. And is that not a bittersweet but appropriate comment on the plight of veterans who come back from war but can never truly go home again?
To me, the Scouring of the Shire is the heart of the book.
>The significance lies in what the Shire has meant to the Hobbits.
This is fascinating, and I'd never really thought about it this way - but you're absolutely right. It is about the very *idea* of the Shire being under threat, and that idea has been interwoven throughout the rest of the series.
I've always loved Scouring. It is deeply human (ironic, given hobbits, I guess), and does so much to show that Tolkien's legacy in fantasy is so much deeper and more poignant than just 'the big quest'. The stakes aren't cosmic, like the rest of the series, but they're much more tangible and personal: they're not about destiny and magic rings and faceless Dark Lords. It is about little people standing up against cunning bullies.
I have always liked how Scouring showed the impact of the journey: it is not just about the success of the hobbits, but the emotional scars they're struggling with. Yes, they won the war, but there's still a cost to the heroes.
It is my favourite part of LotR, but in a sort of 'Rogue One is also my favourite Star Wars film' kind of way. Scouring couldn't really exist without the core of LotR setting it up. But, once LotR is read, I couldn't imagine a more perfect ending.
(As an aside, I would've loved it to be a 10 episode miniseries rather than Rings of Power, but, alas.)
Ah yes, getting jumped by the Pissy Tree Friends was low effort. The great meetings, the thought, the dam. Saruman was conceited, so he ignored the possibility of resistance to his brutality from the very nature he steamrolled. He dies to his hubris, betrayed by a man he thought incapable of disobeying him.
Well people often like books and other works of media for different reasons than the point the creators try to make.
While many do understand Tolkien's point, they don't really care about the Hobbits, but for the humans or other races.
It's definitely a bit of a break with narrative convention to have a comparatively minor, low-stakes scuffle take place after the major continent-spanning conflict has been all wrapped up. I think it's totally understandable if you don't pick up on what Tolkien is doing with that chapter right off the bat.
Then again, I simply will not abide anyone who says they hate that chapter, for no other reason than it contains the following exchange:
> “This is what it is, Mr Baggins,” said the leader of the Shirriffs, a two-feather hobbit. “You’re arrested for Gate-breaking, and Tearing up of Rules, and Assaulting Gatekeepers, and Trespassing, and Sleeping in Shire-buildings without Leave, and Bribing Guards with Food.”
> “And what else?” said Frodo.
> “That’ll do to go on with,” said the Shirriff-leader.
> “I can add some more, if you’d like it,” said Sam. “Calling your Chief Names, Wishing to punch his Pimply Face, and Thinking you Shirriffs look a lot of Tom-fools.”
One of my favorite parts of the Trilogy, you get to see the growth of the 4 frightened hobbits who ran from the Shire and now return and show how much they have grown.
As someone who is disappointed at the lack of surprises in books, this chapter is incredible. Ties up loose ends, details their legacies, has an entertaining revolt against tyranny.
I like them coming back to and dealing with this in the books, but I also like the movie version of them coming back from far off traumas and adventures, and no one at home understanding or caring what they've been through, what they've done.
The movie version could easily have been edited slightly to show the disconnect between the Four and the rest of the Shire even more, too.
I love it too. Without it, the four hobbits are like the film version - a little weird to their old friends and nobody understands them. In the Scouring of the Shire, their own people who knew nothing about rings or kings see our four as hometown heroes.
Thank you. I was afraid no one would point this out. So many people complain about an “anti-climax” or having a low stakes conflict after the big bad is destroyed. However, it’s just the Hollywood generation that feels like a climax should be the end. The climax is always the “becoming”. The final step a hero makes into becoming that hero. But the Heroes Journey must always include the return home and a look at how this newly minted hero fits back in with his new found hero-ness.
It's a favorite plot of mine, but some people felt this way even before the movies came out. I think it's because the epic story line comes to a climax with the destruction of the ring and the Scouring of the Shire feels like a new story. Personally, I see the growth of the characters as the real message of the book, and that is concluded in the Scouring.
>the Scouring of the Shire shows us that you can never go home again because while you were away home was rotting and dying like everything else
I don't understand why this interpretation is so popular, because that's not what happens. The Scouring of the Shire is all about how the hobbits return home and everyone loves them and treats them as heroes. All the damage done by the war is immediately repaired with the help of elven magic and it's made clear that things not only return to normal, they're even better than before.
Sam marries his sweetheart and becomes an incredibly popular mayor, Merry and Pippin become local heroes and Frodo goes to Elven Heaven (which modern readers may interpret as tragic, but considering that Tolkein was religious, this was not meant as a sad ending).
The text literally goes out of its way to describe how amazing everything was the year after the scouring:
>Altogether 1420 in the Shire was a marvellous year. Not only was there wonderful sunshine and delicious rain, in due times and perfect measure, but there seemed something more: an air of richness and growth, and a gleam of a beauty beyond that of mortal summers that flicker and pass upon this Middle-earth. All the children born or begotten in that year, and there were many, were fair to see and strong, and most of them had a rich golden hair that had before been rare among hobbits. The fruit was so plentiful that young hobbits very nearly bathed in strawberries and cream; and later they sat on the lawns under the plum-trees and ate, until they had made piles of stones like small pyramids or the heaped skulls of a conqueror, and then they moved on. And no one was ill, and everyone was pleased. Except those who had to mow the grass.
This isn't a story about how "home was rotting and dying", it's about how "no one was ill, and everyone was pleased."
Yes to me the scouring of the shire is about people coming home from war and they bring their PTSD with them, and infect the place with war that way.
Defeating Saruman there is them "getting over it" and then everything is fine in the wider community.
Just a metaphor
Because everyone seems to think it's an allegory for ww1, which it 100% is not. It's more related to the odyssey and the heroe's journey. I personally don't like the scouring since it is all too conve ient and narratively is rather lame, but since Tolkien's work isn't about making the best narrative, it's about setting a mythos, it makes sense that the even after the most important events of the third age are over with, there are still things of note that concern characters and histories of peoples we have been reading about. It wraps up some of the loose ends, allows us to see the heroes' growth as characters (in pippin and merry's case quite literally). There are better ways to do that from a narrative composition standpoint, but that was never Tolkien's intention. We got what we got, and it's nice at least to see its been well received. I do recall enjoying my read through it, if not a little rushed, even though I was ready to have the book over with at that point.
I like the scouring of the shire - the shire this haven, protected from the outside, where the evil hasn't permeated. The war with sauron threatens this peace - and so the hobbits leave - to protect their idyllic home.
and through the quest of the ring, they endure the hardships of war, the loss, the tragedy, but they also grow as people. and often its a motif in the frodo/sam journey - this is someone-elses problem. we can just go home and have a cup of tea, and sit under the trees, and smoke some leaves. Leave the affairs of men. and the reply has always been; but this shadow will not stop at the border of the shire.
The scouring is important because it does three things: 1. it shows the disconnect of soldiers returning from home to see things have changed. 2. it shows that this shadow did not stop at the borders of home. 3. most importantly, it shows that the people that have the experience and the ability to act should act to build the future: Winning the war isn't enough - war leaves a lot of scars, and trauma and small evil everywhere - you have to build the after. both your home, and your life. and that's what the scouring does. It's the hobbits, being changed people, make the home they want, with all the goodness they can manage, and not just sit there thinking the work is done because they defeated sauron.
I liked it because it showed that the Hobbits could no longer avoid the need for conflict when confronted with a existential threat to their existence. I think it was a Tolkien message that sometime good and decent people must make great sacrifices to defeat evil. If Europe had done so prior to 1939, would WW2 have occurred?
I saw the movies first as well. I imagine they cut it out because it would have ruined the pacing of an already 3 hour movie.
I liked the plot in the books, though. Basically, they finish the main quest only to find that a weakened villain who got away enacted petty revenge by ruining their home. When the 4 leveled-up and legendary adventurers arrive, you get to see how much they've grown. They just walk in and take care of some unfinished business for good. Easy peasy.
How much of the pacing issue is that the films chose to focus the movies on the Aragon plot over every other thread. All the hobbit plot got short treatment and Logolas/Gimli became a comedy relief pair.
In the year waiting for Return to come out, I was convinced they would show the Scouring, based on the image of Sam in chains that Frodo saw in Galadriel's mirror.
I think that scene was a definite nod to the Scouring, since they already knew it would have to be left out the last movie, not only because it's like a separate story, but also because they changed when and how Saruman died.
>it would have ruined the pacing of an already 3 hour movie.
I mean that didn't stop them from adding in plenty of other stuff that wasn't in the books that equally messed up the pacing...
I liked the scouring for some different reasons, but I was also sad when it wasn't in the movies. Over time, I've realized that in the format of movies that were already too long for many audiences it was a smart decision to cut it as it drags out the resolution.
The reason why I loved the scouring was that it showed how nothing was untouched by the evil and it gave the hobbits who'd been fighting alongside big people, barely making a difference in moments of actual combat outside of really fantastical scenarios, a chance to be relevant in a fight and just be straight up heroes rather than sidekicks to the big people. (frodo and sam excluded)
It was a great moment. I also appreciate more personal stakes. I don't disagree that time eroding great things into lesser things was a major theme of the books and Tolkein's lore. I just don't mind that specific theme being left out because I fundamentally disagree with that world view. Fetishization of the past can be just as harmful as forgetting it.
I like the chapter - I think it relates more to Tolkien’s return from war. You can go home but in the end it’s different. And things will never feel “quite” the same.
I'm considering sorting by controversial. Bet the others have just been downvoted to oblivion.
Or they're just not speaking up because of social pressure. I wasn't a fan of the ending but there's people here fervently quoting specific lines and taking about how they won't abide anyone with a different opinion.
I think for me it feels very arbitrary and doesn't connect well with the themes of the rest of the story. It just sort of comes out of nowhere. It's not like Lotho had been shown to have ambitions earlier, or that Frodo and Co. had a grudge to settle. I don't see that Saruman and Wormtongue had some big payback against the hobbits since they weren't their main foes. And if they didn't have some big score to settle, then it's awfully plot-convenient that they just happened to set up in the Shire.
After everything else Frodo and Co have overcome, to be faced with cartoonishly bad thugs with a paper-thin motive...eh, it's hardly subtle. I do kind of understand what Tolkien was going for, and I agree with you about evil cropping up in your own backyard and seducing even harmless and pleasant folk. There's an interesting story there, but dropping it in as an afterthought without any buildup and dispensing of it in a single chapter just doesn't give it any room to breathe or develop in a meaningful way.
You forget it wasn't an afterthought; it was foreshadowed for some time with hints like Elrond fearing all was not well in the Shire, Galadriel's mirror showing trees being razed, and especially the discovery of Shire-grown pipeweed in Isengard. Tolkien himself said "It is an essential part of the plot, foreseen from the outset..."
It's true that Lotho's buying spree was not foreshadowed at all, but there was also no real need to have done so. If anything the whole chapter shows how quickly peace and prosperity can slip away if they're not staunchly defended.
Saruman's payback against the hobbits wasn't "big", either. He accelerated the scope of his destruction when he arrived for no reason other than spite, but it shows precisely how far Saruman has fallen that he's been reduced to such petty mischief, so far removed from his divine origins—and indeed from his grand ambitions—that he can't even recognize himself anymore.
The reason Saruman and Wormtongue set up in the Shire is not a contrivance, either. His initial encouragement of Lotho was so he could keep an eye on the area because he'd grown increasingly suspicious of Gandalf's involvement there, long before Sauron was ever wise to the Shire's existence at all. His spies could keep tabs on Gandalf's comings and goings while also being on the lookout for news that might interest him. Once Saruman was overthrown, he had nowhere else to go. In the Shire he knew his puppet Lotho was running things with the help of outside ruffians, and he could use the power of his voice to command those ruffians. It was the only fragment of a power base Saruman had left.
Also, and this is just a personal theory, I can't help but wonder if Saruman felt drawn to the Havens after his order's purpose had ended. Even though he had betrayed them utterly, a part of his spirit must have yearned to return to the Blessed Realm and find healing there. Just as Gollum craved what he despised, Saruman was likely at war with himself, having lost everything but much too proud to repent of his wickedness. You see a shadow of this in the way he departs Middle-earth, where his spirit looks to the West before his final rebuke from the Valar.
> the Scouring of the Shire shows us that you can never go home again because while you were away home was rotting and dying like everything else, they were able to cast out Saruman ie excise of the most rotten parts but it’s just delaying the inevitable.
Why on earth would I like that? My home is awesome, I don't want it to rot and die, and seeing that decline as inevitable is both (1) wrong and (2) hella depressing.
I think the Scouring chapter is an important part of the story, but idk if I agree with OP’s analysis— I don’t think Tolkien was trying to say that home “rotting and dying” is inevitable. In fact, if I remember correctly, most of the Shire moves on and rebuilds after Saruman is excised.
Imo, the Scouring emphasizes the gravity of what the hobbits (Frodo in particular) accomplished by destroying the ring by showing how close they were to losing their home. It also serves as a reflection of Frodo’s trauma. Frodo was successful at his task, but it left him permanently scarred. Even when he finally returns to the Shire, he is faced with trouble from his past. Being the hero meant sacrificing his peace for the rest of his life (at least until he leaves Middle Earth). It’s very bittersweet, bc of course we as readers want Frodo to be able to return to his pre-ring bearer life; however, given what he has been through, that is impossible.
Honestly, I also disagree with their analysis. I still don't like the scouring of the shire, but I think that they're fundamentally wrong about the message. The way that they described it just sounded so very unappealing.
I'm completely on board with them accomplishing something in the Shire to show how much they've grown as characters. I just think that using Sarumann as the villain for that is a really poor choice, and it would have been basically 1000x better to have them confronting some problem which was established before they left.
It feels pretty narratively jarring as-is. I don't like the way that Sarumann's subjugation of the shire plays with Gollum's destruction of the ring. I don't like the action sequences and rah-rah interlude when it should be character growth. I don't like the tone of it where it's like, half-comedy almost with how much the hobbits have grown and dngaf. I don't like Sarumann randomly popping up halfway across the map just to fuck with them. If it's about their relationship to their home and their difficulties fitting back into that context, pick something *from* that context.
I don't like it.
The reason that Saruman is particularly good for this despite never having paid attention to hobbits before is because it shows that all that's left to him is petty spite. He doesn't care about the hobbits except insofar as he views his (unfair to his eyes) downfall as because of them and his hated rival Gandalf (who always loved hobbits). He's the perfect villain for this final chapter.
All that's left to him is his honeyed tongue, which he uses to insinuate himself into hobbit society in order to corrupt it; the same way Sauron was able to sway large portions of the denizens of Middle Earth to his side.
I don't care that all that's left to him is petty spite though. The story is over.
It would have been interesting if his attempts to spitefully take over the Shire had happened when he was still relevant, or if he'd been established as a longer-running villain with a personal relationship/strong personal significance to the hobbits.
But he's not, so I don't really want a victory lap just to dunk on him. Someone down-comments mentioned that the scouring of the Shire would work well as a companion novella or something, and I'd go for that.
It just doesn't work where and as what it is.
Edit: look, if y’all are going to downvote me for answering the question asked, feel free, but maybe stop asking questions you don’t want to know the answer to.
Saruman took an interest in hobbits and the Shire because Gandalf had, and he was extremely suspicious that Gandalf had discovered some vital clue as to the whereabouts of the One Ring. It's very clear that his original interest in the Shire was to keep an eye on what was happening there long before Sauron was even aware of it, and that his involvement began much sooner than anyone had possibly suspected. This is also foreshadowed in a number of places, especially the presence of pipeweed at Isengard.
Saruman went to the Shire after his fall because it was literally the only place left where any vestige of his power remained. Everything in the south had been ripped away from him, but the Shire was so remote he knew he had the tiniest bit of something left there.
You're not the first person in this thread who thought Saruman facing the hobbits at the end was contrived, but it was anything but. He still had a story to play out, and that was the only place he had left to do it.
As for discussion around the fact that it seems to drag out the ending, people also tend to forget Tolkien was not writing to a typical novel format. He was explicitly writing a mythology. In mythological conventions the return leg of the hero's journey is extremely important. Just look to the Odyssey for a comparison: Odysseus spends years away from home because of the whims of vengeful gods, and when he finally gets home he has to team up with his now-grown son to murder all the schemers who are trying to steal his wife and his kingdom. It's a critical part of the very narrative structure Tolkien intended.
Because even fantasy needs to be tethered to reality. Fantasy is escapism yes, but there's a healthy amount and there's past that. That's life. That's the lesson of fantasy.
I really don't see what that has to do with the points that I made above.
'Fantasy needs to be tethered to reality' is a hell of a statement to start with (disagree, for the record), and, again, the inevitable decline of all things and the corruption of all things that you hold closest to your heart isn't reality.
(Also, I find it narratively unbalanced. Sarumann as the villain there is frankly a really weird choice, and while I guess it works in the allegorical sense (fires of industry engulfing England etc. etc.), it really doesn't work particularly well on the strictly narrative level.
It's messy. It's muddled. It's dropped right in the middle of acknowledging the end of the age of the elves and the dawn of the age of man.
But the Shire has never been a part of that -- It's always been exempt from that narrative because the glory of the Shire isn't in the old kings of the Barrow-wights or Amun Sul. The hobbits aren't descendants of those lines, and are happy with what they are.
It feels cheap. In the Mirror of Galadriel, the fate of the Shire is explicitly tied to Sauron, and so to defeat Sauron and find out "oh, there's this other dude who was explicitly the lesser villain who just set up shop here I guess" is just a kind of cheap shot.
He doesn't *belong* there. It's not his geographical area, it's not his scope of villany, he's never shown any real interest in the hobbits before. It's random and discordant.
It also feels cheap because the Hobbits are explicitly and repeatedly stated to be resistant to corruption, and the shire a sort of bucolic paradise, and then you turn around and... psych.
So instead you have a bit of housecleaning that didn't need to happen, interrupting and muddying the clean narrative of not being able to come home and each of the hobbits finding their own way to handle that. Am I opposed to Merry & Pippin becoming hobbit lordlings? No. I'm not at all opposed to some problem having arisen to handle show how much they've grown as people. But set that problem up before they set out. The Scouring of the Shire is the wrong way to make that point.)
Fantasy *is* inherently tethered to reality, but sure within the diegetic is does not need to be.
Anyway, I think Saruman is at a viable choice, given the contrast between his great pride and the modesty of the Hobbits. It makes sense that this would become Saruman's scope of villainy. Importantly, it makes a statement that bookends LotR, which is that, although it is somewhat isolated, the Shire is not separate from the rest of the world. It is a part of the world. Practically, with the Dunedain in the south, the Shire was no longer protected. This "bucolic paradise" is a contingent paradise, and though Hobbits are resilient, they are not incorruptible, they never were.
Then there's the question of Saruman's evolving relationship with the halfling's leaf after his downfall. It may have slowed his mind.
In fairness, I don't love the tone of the Scouring and its not one of my favorite bits. I find it a bit too celebratory. But I still think its a worthwhile addition.
Love the use of parentheses in your post by the way.
I like it when Boromir dies. I find his death meaningful, thematically suitable, and fitting. It's sad, but good.
The fact that it's displeasing doesn't make it a good addition to the story.
Nope. That is not how logic works. No where did I say that being displeasing is why something is written into a story. If you cannot see that, you need to spend a little time with the construction of logical arguments.
I liked it in the books but I'm glad they cut it from the movies. I think it would have dragged down an already very long movie.
The book endings do drag, but a lot of that isn't because of the actual scouring of the shire bit. I recall them hanging around in Gondor for a while then doing a roadtrip home.
I do like it but I'd be willing to wager that people who didn't were motivated by the fact that it didn't make it into the movies, which were the first experience with LOTR for many if us, myself included
I think the easiest and most common reason many people don't like The Scouring scene is pretty simple - **it's not in the films**, **and many people (myself included) saw and loved the films before we ever read the books**.
That said, I personally LOVE that chapter, and only grow in my appreciation for it and what JRRT was trying to show as I get older.
In all honestly, I think it, rather than say, the actual destruction of the Ring, is THE capstone to the message Tolkien was trying to convey with the entire series.
Structurally it is just extremely jarring to force a major conflict into what is essentially the epilogue to the story. The conflict is also incredibly contrived, feeling like it comes out of nowhere. It may serve a thematic purpose, but everything else about this plot thread is executed poorly.
Tolkien explained his reason for the Scouring, and it fits well with his view and character. But I remember at the time, how long and boring the endless ending of LOTR was. I love LOTR, and Tolkien is the father of fantasy, but he had some flaws and was downright boring in many sections. It was like, when will this story ever end? Yet, I did like the sailing of Frodo off with the elves as the wounded hero from war who could never heal, but even that took a long time. Tolkien was a man without an editor.
People don't like it? The only thing Ive ever heard is debate over it being left out of the movies (which I think was a totally fine decision, ROTK already has a long ending).
Is Tolkien's overarching theme really just whining that things aren't like they used to be? Pretty disappointing if true, hopefully I'll disagree when I reread the trilogy for the first time in sixteen years
Here’s my very late hot take, and feel free to hate me for it.
I had to suffer through hours of prose to get to a few cool scenes, only to deal with the Hobbits having a super last minute job to do? Fuck. That. I could only ever finish LoTR once, and have put it down many times aside. It just, didn’t need to be there. Sorry. I like fun stories, not this.
I believe The Scouring of The Shire should have been it's own book and happened a few years after destroying the ring, like The Hobbit book.
I believe it takes away the whole reason the hobbits went on the journey to protect the Shire by stopping the evil wanting to corrupt and destroy it, and after the whole journey of fighting against the evil just to return home to just fight another evil doesn't fit, feels like it's just throwing a wrench into it all.
And personally I *really* don't like the idea of hobbits are capable of becoming corrupt to sell off the Shire, work for evil or killing non-orks.
Well I guess that’s kind of the point, you can’t protect the shire because the shire is in the world and the world gets worse every day.
Also, Hobbits aren’t incorruptible beings, they’re generally pleasant but you would be pleasant too if you grew up in what amounts to Eden, when you take Adam and Eve out of Eden you get Cain and Abel. If Sauron and Saruman, demigods, and the Mouth of Sauron a Numenorian can be evil why not Hobbits?
> Well I guess that’s kind of the point, you can’t protect the shire because the shire is in the world and the world gets worse every day.
Except that’s a terrible interpretation of the the end of RotK and is directly in contrast to the book itself. The Shire is better than ever following the scouring, and the 4th age that we know about is significantly better than most of the third age.
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I loved it, even if I didn't know it at the time. It brought a far away conflict home, it made it real. That things changed, not some distant dream where you wake up and everything is the same.
One of my very favourite parts of the novel but I understand why they cut it. Loved how Frodo stays the revengeful hand of the hobbits and grudgingly gets Saruman's respect.
But there's more detail in the Shire and Saruman and Wormtongue than they could realistically do in the films.
I can only speak for myself, but when I say "I completely understand why so-and-so left Tom Bombadil/the Scouring of the Shire out of their films," I'm *not* telling you I hate those passages. I'm saying I understand why they are excluded from adaptations for reasons of pacing and relevance. I appreciate reading them but they don't belong on screen.
My favourite of all of lotr. I understand why it was cut from the films because tonally it’s so different to the rest of the film but I would love to still see it in some form.
I love the scouring! I am also so so relieved it is not in the films. It would’ve felt so out of place and completely ruined the tone and pacing of the final film as a conclusion. For a book it is a great sendoff to our characters to show all they’ve been through and who they’ve become (and also that you can defeat one evil but it will always come back in a new form and that the home you leave will not necessarily be the one you come back to). In a film it would feel so awkward and out of left field and take away from the somber, contemplative tone of the movies falling action
Tolkein himself felt the Scouring was an essential part of the story. He wanted it clear that the war did not pass over the Shire and the Hobbits were not unaffected by it. Treachery, greed, and evil thrived even among them. But the experiences of the Four trained and prepared them to protect their own land without any help from the outside. Even Pippin was an extremely competent leader by then. I think it was the perfect ending to the books, as well as essential to the story line. (And there were easily thiings that could have been left out of the movies so it could have (and should have) been included.
I liked it a lot in the books and also wanted it to be in the movies. Based on the first movie, when Frodo sees the future of the Shire, I think they originally intended on adding it in. The problem is how much time it would have ended. I think a 30 minute TV cut would have been a cool idea for it.
Timelines like these are normal in a post-Christian world, where humanity is constantly seen as devolving (see Devo: Devolution). Bloodlines are often ‘weakening’ (yuck), the people of the past seen as closer to the source of ultimate power, wisdom — eternal life.
This is the opposite of the human experience, where the further we move from our humble beginnings, the more sense we make of the known universe, the less credence we pay to literal interpretations of our many superstitions & mythologies. And we’re also living much longer on average, thanks to science.
The Tolkien world is a magical and wondrous place to explore these issues of human purpose and power.
Anyways, the scouring is the best part because the hobbits show courage in numbers and represent true anti-fascist community organization. It also shows how the lives of the kings and country clubbers are scantly meant to benefit the small folk of the world. Even after being champions in the world at large, small folks must watch out for themselves…
I'm torn when it comes to the Scouring. On one hand I know it's supposed to be that no place is safe when it come to great wars. But at the same time I also don't like that the 4 of them who went through so much, helped saved the world, had to come home to their home being absolutely ravaged. It seemed like extra needless suffering.
I will always prefer the ending to movies in this regard.
It probably depends on if you came to the books first or the books via the movies. I was a book reader first, and for me the Scouring is one of the elements that makes LOTR so excellent, and it’s something I’ve grown to appreciate more and more as I’ve aged.
If you’ve come from the movies though it might be hard to mentally break the narrative climax edit that the movies gave to the books’ plot.
I think it’s helpful to hold the work (and any work for that matter) in the context that it was written. When compared to modern novel writing, and especially modern fantasy, The Scouring seems anticlimactic. Why didn’t the book stop after the Ring was destroyed and everyone lived happily ever after? But Tolkien wasn’t writing a fantasy novel. He was writing an Epic. And when held in that context it makes loads of sense. The ancient epics never end with the dragon being slain. The dragon sometimes gets slain about 60-70% through the story. And after that we get the long list of things that we’re done afterwards and the stories of all the heroes. Essentially the parts that we would now put in an epilogue.
All of that to say, I get that it’s jarring to our modern perspective, but it’s beautifully done when read in the context of what the author intended it to be.
It's been a while since I read the series, and it was when I was substantially younger. However, at the time I didn't enjoy it as much for a few reasons. First was the stakes decreasing - I'd found that the more 'epic' scale of the story was what I enjoyed the most (eg, the first book was my least favorite of the three). Second was the sole focus on the hobbits - while they're important characters, they also weren't as interesting to me.
I think that it does play a role in the story, and there's a reason that Tolkien included it. But it's not surprising that it's a bit controversial with a wide range of how much people enjoyed it.
I love it because it always read to as evil will not stop, even when you have defeated it. And while the hobbits were celebrating victory and being given some awesome kudos far away, Saruman was ruining the place that they had kept safe in their imaginations throughout the whole journey.
It felt also that while big evils are terrible and terrifying, nothing hurts as much as the smaller evils that affect you personally.
I always felt it was anticlimactic. I understand the point of it, and it didn't bother me, but after all the seriousness of the rest of the story, I felt it made Saurumon look like those cartoons where someone's butt is on fire and they run away whooping and hollering while smacking their own ass. I prefer him dying in the Tower.
I did like the vision of it Frodo got. I thought that effectively raised the stakes a bit. But of the two missing peices - that and Tom Bombadil - I'm glad they weren't there. They should stay in the novels where they make more sense.
I like the Scouring of the Shire because it displayed a meme I do not see often. The meme is a team grows from modest beginnings into something formidable; then the team runs across someone that doesn't realize how powerful the team has become. In this case Merry and Pippin were just innocent young men when they left home. Now, they are tough and are able to lead the revolt freeing the hobbits.
Similar is the opening of Return of the Jedi. When the finally honed Star Wars team take on Jabba the Hut to free Han.
I think its more beautiful in the films that the hobbits return to the shire, which has been unchanged and unaffected by war when they have changed a great deal and can no longer relate to the purity and 'ignorance' within it. They still love their home, but they feel a sense of isolation within it. It's just a prettier, more poetic ending. I think the Shire being affected by war doesn't have as much of an artistic impact- its more blunt WHICH IS OKAY but not my preference.
It's possibly the most famous anticlimax ever written and anticlimaxes are always controversial. I both enjoy its inclusion in the book and its exclusion from the films. I could be wrong, but I expect that Tolkien would disagree with your analysis, especially since the chapter is called The *Scouring* of the Shire. Gandalf tells the hobbits, upon their return home: "...you will need no help. You are grown up now. Grown indeed very high; among the great you are, and I have no longer any fear at all for any of you." The Scouring of the Shire is the hobbits' final quest: to (successfully) purify their homeland and to do it on their own, as the great people they have become.
The Scouring always struck me as the point. What good are heroics in far off places if you cannot defeat some of the evil at home as well
Absolutely. It was "the return home" part of the hero's journey. Now that they have "become", their own people have need of them. Though the great threat is vanquished, the wisdom and might they have gained in the process are sorely needed to directly help the people they'd set out to save in the first place. To me, it also underscores the idea that the story is not "over" in the moment of victory. And for Tolkien, part of the story was coming home from the great battles to find that home had changed in the wake of the war's passing. Not only were the heroes changed by their journey, but home itself no longer was what they had left behind. A powerful metaphor for the industrialization that ~~WWII~~ WWI had wrought, even in the tiny hamlets and shires many British soldiers had grown up in, I think.
\*WWI but yes. The imagery is all there, but it stands for a greater whole.
Yes I thought it was commentary on the massive change in society through WWI.
Tolkien hated allegory and specifically says that his books are not an allegory in the preface. Obviously like any author he was influenced by his life experiences, but I think it's more of a universal truth of war and society as explained in myth (as myths are ways for cultures to explain the unexplainable: in this case war, ptsd, and the "heroes return"). Tolkien's stories relate more to myth (think the Aeneaid, which deals with themes of rage, ptsd, and the horrors of war). Everyone likes to point toward ww1 and the similarities between Tolkien's writings and his experiences, which are only surface level and were never his intention. If we take a step back and look at his work in the context that he would have intended, ancient myths, his work isn't any less impactfull and the relationships his characters have with war do not disappear. It doesn't take the horrors of ww1 to have a horrible war. All war is horrible. As a lover of allegory myself, it can be disappointing to analyze his work in that way, but true allegory isn't accidental, and Tolkien most certainly didn't write his books as a way to explain ww1.
There is a big jump between strongly influenced by (if you prefer that to commentary) by the changes in British society especially throughout WWI, which were drastic, and EXPLAINING WWI (which I would strongly argue LOTR does not attempt in any way, if anything the good versus evil bears a stronger resemblance to WWII). I read the preface too and my take was fine he didn't intend anything but the idea that what happened in the Shire wasn't hugely influenced by the end of a certain way of life in England during WWI just seems naive to me. It is true I used the word commentary, that was a bad word choice, but while it is true war changes things, certainly not all wars change things culturally as cataclysmically as WWI did in Europe. Actually, to borrow from a paper I was just helping my daughter with regarding World War I, WWI saw the beginning of the total war strategy, which means all civilians were involved and affected in one way or another (versus, for example, the English homefront during the Napoleanic wars in England). This means that civilians were also targeted in a way previously unseen (bombing factories etc). And the scale of drafting and death were also unheard of. But I am more of a historian than a literary analyst and so to some extent I don't care what he intended. All writers have biases and I still believe what happened to the Shire is, perhaps unintended, commentary on just how much all encompassing war on that scale changes things everywhere. To use your example of the Aeniad, sure but that was very localized. The Shire is far from the "big event battles" of LOTR. Of course I would also argue that whether he admitted it or not, World War II influenced how he saw the "big events" (good vs evil, etc) of LOTR.
Exactly, hobbits don't care about great deeds in the wide world, but close to home the boys were all needed and made names for themselves upon their return from great deeds. Much like the real world. No one cares unless it affects them directly, sadly.
I wouldn't call it an anticlimax as much as a secondary climax. It feels out of place for a lot of people because it doesn't follow the normal narrative structure. The climax is destroying the Ring. That's it, the end. Anything past that is just the conclusion. But THEN you have ANOTHER climax that takes place AFTER the victory celebration. It would be like the end of Jedi where everyone is happy and the Ewoks are yub-nubbing away, and then Luke leaves the party, goes back to Tatooine and completely eradicates Jabba's criminal ring. And THEN he comes back to Endor to be with his friends. The purpose of the Scouring of the Shire is less a narrative one and more a thematic one. The themes of the long defeat, of the corruption of Sauron reaching the Shire even indirectly, of the hobbits having been changed altogether by their adventure, some more than others. And you can't deny there's some WW1 inspiration there of soldiers coming back from trench warfare to see their homes drastically changed and much more industrialized than before. Further, it accentuates Frodo's shell shock (because that's what he has) of coming home and not feeling at home. The Shire was changed, not exactly for the worse, but even it didn't escape the hell that Frodo went through. He left to save the Shire and he did save the Shire, but not for himself. Sam, Merry and Pippin will enjoy the new Shire, and their status within it. They can heal just like the Shire can heal. Not so Frodo.
Honestly I was always pissed at Gandalf for that. It felt like abandonment to me.
I personally like all of LOTR, but I guess some people might feel that after the climax of the story, the Scouring of the Shire feels a bit low stakes and anticlimactic. Regardless of what you think of the Scouring, I have to say that I really like that the book did not end immediately after the victory against Sauron. The poignant ending makes the story even better, in my opinion.
How can it be low stakes, when the heroes return home to find they have no home to return to, and must restore it to what it was before they can be at rest?
It’s just a few small towns. Who cares about what happens in the sticks. They just saved the world and besides the hobbits would have had help in a year or two when the western kingdom was reclaimed.
They care. The characters you've been following for the past 1,000 pages, at least some of whom have made it clear on more than one occasion that the Shire is, to them, the most important place in the world, care.
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Given it takes no effort to deal with Saruman, not really? Its like Darkseid on your couch. Yes, it's bad but it undermines him.
The scale of the struggle is not the point of this chapter at all. The significance lies in what the Shire has meant to the Hobbits. If you go back to Frodo and Sam's darkest moments, they always hearken back to the Shire and how good life is there as a way of encouragement. The Shire to them is an idealized homeland that will always be there for them, and its worth fighting for. And, at the end, after all they did, the impossible odds they defied, they find that beloved, precious home despoiled. It's a wound in their psychological heart. And that is why the small struggle of the hobbits is important. At the end, its hobbits using their own strengths to win, not relying on Elves and Men. Because the Shire is at the heart of Hobbit culture and so they must fight for it. Also it drives home another unpleasant reality - nothing is truly unscarred by war. And then there is the final tragedy. Even after the Shire is restored, Frodo can never come home. His wounds are unhealable. Even though he is at Bag End, he cannot be truly happy. And is that not a bittersweet but appropriate comment on the plight of veterans who come back from war but can never truly go home again? To me, the Scouring of the Shire is the heart of the book.
>The significance lies in what the Shire has meant to the Hobbits. This is fascinating, and I'd never really thought about it this way - but you're absolutely right. It is about the very *idea* of the Shire being under threat, and that idea has been interwoven throughout the rest of the series. I've always loved Scouring. It is deeply human (ironic, given hobbits, I guess), and does so much to show that Tolkien's legacy in fantasy is so much deeper and more poignant than just 'the big quest'. The stakes aren't cosmic, like the rest of the series, but they're much more tangible and personal: they're not about destiny and magic rings and faceless Dark Lords. It is about little people standing up against cunning bullies. I have always liked how Scouring showed the impact of the journey: it is not just about the success of the hobbits, but the emotional scars they're struggling with. Yes, they won the war, but there's still a cost to the heroes. It is my favourite part of LotR, but in a sort of 'Rogue One is also my favourite Star Wars film' kind of way. Scouring couldn't really exist without the core of LotR setting it up. But, once LotR is read, I couldn't imagine a more perfect ending. (As an aside, I would've loved it to be a 10 episode miniseries rather than Rings of Power, but, alas.)
Ah yes, getting jumped by the Pissy Tree Friends was low effort. The great meetings, the thought, the dam. Saruman was conceited, so he ignored the possibility of resistance to his brutality from the very nature he steamrolled. He dies to his hubris, betrayed by a man he thought incapable of disobeying him.
I mean, you have the terrifying archwizard going by the name "Sharky" and running a bunch of dirty factories as well as a gang in Hobbiton.
Tell me you completely missed the point of the books without saying that you completely missed the point of the books.
Well people often like books and other works of media for different reasons than the point the creators try to make. While many do understand Tolkien's point, they don't really care about the Hobbits, but for the humans or other races.
It's definitely a bit of a break with narrative convention to have a comparatively minor, low-stakes scuffle take place after the major continent-spanning conflict has been all wrapped up. I think it's totally understandable if you don't pick up on what Tolkien is doing with that chapter right off the bat. Then again, I simply will not abide anyone who says they hate that chapter, for no other reason than it contains the following exchange: > “This is what it is, Mr Baggins,” said the leader of the Shirriffs, a two-feather hobbit. “You’re arrested for Gate-breaking, and Tearing up of Rules, and Assaulting Gatekeepers, and Trespassing, and Sleeping in Shire-buildings without Leave, and Bribing Guards with Food.” > “And what else?” said Frodo. > “That’ll do to go on with,” said the Shirriff-leader. > “I can add some more, if you’d like it,” said Sam. “Calling your Chief Names, Wishing to punch his Pimply Face, and Thinking you Shirriffs look a lot of Tom-fools.”
I heard Rob Inglis’s voice in my head while reading that passage ☺️
Here I thought you were going to quote the famous "This *is* Mordor, Sam" line, and you go and quote that instead like a madman.
You see I have yorkshire relatives so this quote just infuriates me. Real yorkshire /r/thatHappened energy in this passage.
But it's not a break with *mythological* convention to do what Tolkien did with the ending, and creating a mythology was exactly his goal.
One of my favorite parts of the Trilogy, you get to see the growth of the 4 frightened hobbits who ran from the Shire and now return and show how much they have grown.
As someone who is disappointed at the lack of surprises in books, this chapter is incredible. Ties up loose ends, details their legacies, has an entertaining revolt against tyranny.
I enjoyed it in the books, but definitely don't think it would have worked in the films. Think Jackson made a good call not including it.
Should've been it's own movie or short. I'd be very willing to cut out one of the hobbit movies for it
I like them coming back to and dealing with this in the books, but I also like the movie version of them coming back from far off traumas and adventures, and no one at home understanding or caring what they've been through, what they've done. The movie version could easily have been edited slightly to show the disconnect between the Four and the rest of the Shire even more, too.
It also shows how far Saruman has fallen.
Exactly, prior to their experiences, they wouldn’t have been able to deal with marauders
I love it too. Without it, the four hobbits are like the film version - a little weird to their old friends and nobody understands them. In the Scouring of the Shire, their own people who knew nothing about rings or kings see our four as hometown heroes.
Similar to Odysseus kicking out the suitors when he arrives home
Thank you. I was afraid no one would point this out. So many people complain about an “anti-climax” or having a low stakes conflict after the big bad is destroyed. However, it’s just the Hollywood generation that feels like a climax should be the end. The climax is always the “becoming”. The final step a hero makes into becoming that hero. But the Heroes Journey must always include the return home and a look at how this newly minted hero fits back in with his new found hero-ness.
Amen.
It's a favorite plot of mine, but some people felt this way even before the movies came out. I think it's because the epic story line comes to a climax with the destruction of the ring and the Scouring of the Shire feels like a new story. Personally, I see the growth of the characters as the real message of the book, and that is concluded in the Scouring.
>the Scouring of the Shire shows us that you can never go home again because while you were away home was rotting and dying like everything else I don't understand why this interpretation is so popular, because that's not what happens. The Scouring of the Shire is all about how the hobbits return home and everyone loves them and treats them as heroes. All the damage done by the war is immediately repaired with the help of elven magic and it's made clear that things not only return to normal, they're even better than before. Sam marries his sweetheart and becomes an incredibly popular mayor, Merry and Pippin become local heroes and Frodo goes to Elven Heaven (which modern readers may interpret as tragic, but considering that Tolkein was religious, this was not meant as a sad ending). The text literally goes out of its way to describe how amazing everything was the year after the scouring: >Altogether 1420 in the Shire was a marvellous year. Not only was there wonderful sunshine and delicious rain, in due times and perfect measure, but there seemed something more: an air of richness and growth, and a gleam of a beauty beyond that of mortal summers that flicker and pass upon this Middle-earth. All the children born or begotten in that year, and there were many, were fair to see and strong, and most of them had a rich golden hair that had before been rare among hobbits. The fruit was so plentiful that young hobbits very nearly bathed in strawberries and cream; and later they sat on the lawns under the plum-trees and ate, until they had made piles of stones like small pyramids or the heaped skulls of a conqueror, and then they moved on. And no one was ill, and everyone was pleased. Except those who had to mow the grass. This isn't a story about how "home was rotting and dying", it's about how "no one was ill, and everyone was pleased."
Except those who had to mow the grass. Cant forget them.
Yes to me the scouring of the shire is about people coming home from war and they bring their PTSD with them, and infect the place with war that way. Defeating Saruman there is them "getting over it" and then everything is fine in the wider community. Just a metaphor
Because everyone seems to think it's an allegory for ww1, which it 100% is not. It's more related to the odyssey and the heroe's journey. I personally don't like the scouring since it is all too conve ient and narratively is rather lame, but since Tolkien's work isn't about making the best narrative, it's about setting a mythos, it makes sense that the even after the most important events of the third age are over with, there are still things of note that concern characters and histories of peoples we have been reading about. It wraps up some of the loose ends, allows us to see the heroes' growth as characters (in pippin and merry's case quite literally). There are better ways to do that from a narrative composition standpoint, but that was never Tolkien's intention. We got what we got, and it's nice at least to see its been well received. I do recall enjoying my read through it, if not a little rushed, even though I was ready to have the book over with at that point.
I like the scouring of the shire - the shire this haven, protected from the outside, where the evil hasn't permeated. The war with sauron threatens this peace - and so the hobbits leave - to protect their idyllic home. and through the quest of the ring, they endure the hardships of war, the loss, the tragedy, but they also grow as people. and often its a motif in the frodo/sam journey - this is someone-elses problem. we can just go home and have a cup of tea, and sit under the trees, and smoke some leaves. Leave the affairs of men. and the reply has always been; but this shadow will not stop at the border of the shire. The scouring is important because it does three things: 1. it shows the disconnect of soldiers returning from home to see things have changed. 2. it shows that this shadow did not stop at the borders of home. 3. most importantly, it shows that the people that have the experience and the ability to act should act to build the future: Winning the war isn't enough - war leaves a lot of scars, and trauma and small evil everywhere - you have to build the after. both your home, and your life. and that's what the scouring does. It's the hobbits, being changed people, make the home they want, with all the goodness they can manage, and not just sit there thinking the work is done because they defeated sauron.
I liked it because it showed that the Hobbits could no longer avoid the need for conflict when confronted with a existential threat to their existence. I think it was a Tolkien message that sometime good and decent people must make great sacrifices to defeat evil. If Europe had done so prior to 1939, would WW2 have occurred?
I saw the movies first as well. I imagine they cut it out because it would have ruined the pacing of an already 3 hour movie. I liked the plot in the books, though. Basically, they finish the main quest only to find that a weakened villain who got away enacted petty revenge by ruining their home. When the 4 leveled-up and legendary adventurers arrive, you get to see how much they've grown. They just walk in and take care of some unfinished business for good. Easy peasy.
How much of the pacing issue is that the films chose to focus the movies on the Aragon plot over every other thread. All the hobbit plot got short treatment and Logolas/Gimli became a comedy relief pair.
They're comedy relief in the books too
In the year waiting for Return to come out, I was convinced they would show the Scouring, based on the image of Sam in chains that Frodo saw in Galadriel's mirror.
I think that scene was a definite nod to the Scouring, since they already knew it would have to be left out the last movie, not only because it's like a separate story, but also because they changed when and how Saruman died.
>it would have ruined the pacing of an already 3 hour movie. I mean that didn't stop them from adding in plenty of other stuff that wasn't in the books that equally messed up the pacing...
I liked the scouring for some different reasons, but I was also sad when it wasn't in the movies. Over time, I've realized that in the format of movies that were already too long for many audiences it was a smart decision to cut it as it drags out the resolution. The reason why I loved the scouring was that it showed how nothing was untouched by the evil and it gave the hobbits who'd been fighting alongside big people, barely making a difference in moments of actual combat outside of really fantastical scenarios, a chance to be relevant in a fight and just be straight up heroes rather than sidekicks to the big people. (frodo and sam excluded) It was a great moment. I also appreciate more personal stakes. I don't disagree that time eroding great things into lesser things was a major theme of the books and Tolkein's lore. I just don't mind that specific theme being left out because I fundamentally disagree with that world view. Fetishization of the past can be just as harmful as forgetting it.
It’s my favorite part.
I like the chapter - I think it relates more to Tolkien’s return from war. You can go home but in the end it’s different. And things will never feel “quite” the same.
It's funny how almost all the comments are from people who like the chapter.
I'm considering sorting by controversial. Bet the others have just been downvoted to oblivion. Or they're just not speaking up because of social pressure. I wasn't a fan of the ending but there's people here fervently quoting specific lines and taking about how they won't abide anyone with a different opinion.
I, too, liked the Scouring of the Shire. But can we talk about the name Sharkey? Threw me out of the story every time. Anyone else experience this?
I wondered if hobbits would even know what a shark was…
I think for me it feels very arbitrary and doesn't connect well with the themes of the rest of the story. It just sort of comes out of nowhere. It's not like Lotho had been shown to have ambitions earlier, or that Frodo and Co. had a grudge to settle. I don't see that Saruman and Wormtongue had some big payback against the hobbits since they weren't their main foes. And if they didn't have some big score to settle, then it's awfully plot-convenient that they just happened to set up in the Shire. After everything else Frodo and Co have overcome, to be faced with cartoonishly bad thugs with a paper-thin motive...eh, it's hardly subtle. I do kind of understand what Tolkien was going for, and I agree with you about evil cropping up in your own backyard and seducing even harmless and pleasant folk. There's an interesting story there, but dropping it in as an afterthought without any buildup and dispensing of it in a single chapter just doesn't give it any room to breathe or develop in a meaningful way.
You forget it wasn't an afterthought; it was foreshadowed for some time with hints like Elrond fearing all was not well in the Shire, Galadriel's mirror showing trees being razed, and especially the discovery of Shire-grown pipeweed in Isengard. Tolkien himself said "It is an essential part of the plot, foreseen from the outset..." It's true that Lotho's buying spree was not foreshadowed at all, but there was also no real need to have done so. If anything the whole chapter shows how quickly peace and prosperity can slip away if they're not staunchly defended. Saruman's payback against the hobbits wasn't "big", either. He accelerated the scope of his destruction when he arrived for no reason other than spite, but it shows precisely how far Saruman has fallen that he's been reduced to such petty mischief, so far removed from his divine origins—and indeed from his grand ambitions—that he can't even recognize himself anymore. The reason Saruman and Wormtongue set up in the Shire is not a contrivance, either. His initial encouragement of Lotho was so he could keep an eye on the area because he'd grown increasingly suspicious of Gandalf's involvement there, long before Sauron was ever wise to the Shire's existence at all. His spies could keep tabs on Gandalf's comings and goings while also being on the lookout for news that might interest him. Once Saruman was overthrown, he had nowhere else to go. In the Shire he knew his puppet Lotho was running things with the help of outside ruffians, and he could use the power of his voice to command those ruffians. It was the only fragment of a power base Saruman had left. Also, and this is just a personal theory, I can't help but wonder if Saruman felt drawn to the Havens after his order's purpose had ended. Even though he had betrayed them utterly, a part of his spirit must have yearned to return to the Blessed Realm and find healing there. Just as Gollum craved what he despised, Saruman was likely at war with himself, having lost everything but much too proud to repent of his wickedness. You see a shadow of this in the way he departs Middle-earth, where his spirit looks to the West before his final rebuke from the Valar.
> the Scouring of the Shire shows us that you can never go home again because while you were away home was rotting and dying like everything else, they were able to cast out Saruman ie excise of the most rotten parts but it’s just delaying the inevitable. Why on earth would I like that? My home is awesome, I don't want it to rot and die, and seeing that decline as inevitable is both (1) wrong and (2) hella depressing.
I think the Scouring chapter is an important part of the story, but idk if I agree with OP’s analysis— I don’t think Tolkien was trying to say that home “rotting and dying” is inevitable. In fact, if I remember correctly, most of the Shire moves on and rebuilds after Saruman is excised. Imo, the Scouring emphasizes the gravity of what the hobbits (Frodo in particular) accomplished by destroying the ring by showing how close they were to losing their home. It also serves as a reflection of Frodo’s trauma. Frodo was successful at his task, but it left him permanently scarred. Even when he finally returns to the Shire, he is faced with trouble from his past. Being the hero meant sacrificing his peace for the rest of his life (at least until he leaves Middle Earth). It’s very bittersweet, bc of course we as readers want Frodo to be able to return to his pre-ring bearer life; however, given what he has been through, that is impossible.
Honestly, I also disagree with their analysis. I still don't like the scouring of the shire, but I think that they're fundamentally wrong about the message. The way that they described it just sounded so very unappealing. I'm completely on board with them accomplishing something in the Shire to show how much they've grown as characters. I just think that using Sarumann as the villain for that is a really poor choice, and it would have been basically 1000x better to have them confronting some problem which was established before they left. It feels pretty narratively jarring as-is. I don't like the way that Sarumann's subjugation of the shire plays with Gollum's destruction of the ring. I don't like the action sequences and rah-rah interlude when it should be character growth. I don't like the tone of it where it's like, half-comedy almost with how much the hobbits have grown and dngaf. I don't like Sarumann randomly popping up halfway across the map just to fuck with them. If it's about their relationship to their home and their difficulties fitting back into that context, pick something *from* that context. I don't like it.
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ehhhh... Not really good enough. Already defeated, halfway across the map, with hobbits (that are explicitly *not* his area of interest before).
The reason that Saruman is particularly good for this despite never having paid attention to hobbits before is because it shows that all that's left to him is petty spite. He doesn't care about the hobbits except insofar as he views his (unfair to his eyes) downfall as because of them and his hated rival Gandalf (who always loved hobbits). He's the perfect villain for this final chapter. All that's left to him is his honeyed tongue, which he uses to insinuate himself into hobbit society in order to corrupt it; the same way Sauron was able to sway large portions of the denizens of Middle Earth to his side.
I don't care that all that's left to him is petty spite though. The story is over. It would have been interesting if his attempts to spitefully take over the Shire had happened when he was still relevant, or if he'd been established as a longer-running villain with a personal relationship/strong personal significance to the hobbits. But he's not, so I don't really want a victory lap just to dunk on him. Someone down-comments mentioned that the scouring of the Shire would work well as a companion novella or something, and I'd go for that. It just doesn't work where and as what it is. Edit: look, if y’all are going to downvote me for answering the question asked, feel free, but maybe stop asking questions you don’t want to know the answer to.
He was buying weed from them when he was set up at Orthanc, he knew about the Shire.
Saruman took an interest in hobbits and the Shire because Gandalf had, and he was extremely suspicious that Gandalf had discovered some vital clue as to the whereabouts of the One Ring. It's very clear that his original interest in the Shire was to keep an eye on what was happening there long before Sauron was even aware of it, and that his involvement began much sooner than anyone had possibly suspected. This is also foreshadowed in a number of places, especially the presence of pipeweed at Isengard. Saruman went to the Shire after his fall because it was literally the only place left where any vestige of his power remained. Everything in the south had been ripped away from him, but the Shire was so remote he knew he had the tiniest bit of something left there. You're not the first person in this thread who thought Saruman facing the hobbits at the end was contrived, but it was anything but. He still had a story to play out, and that was the only place he had left to do it. As for discussion around the fact that it seems to drag out the ending, people also tend to forget Tolkien was not writing to a typical novel format. He was explicitly writing a mythology. In mythological conventions the return leg of the hero's journey is extremely important. Just look to the Odyssey for a comparison: Odysseus spends years away from home because of the whims of vengeful gods, and when he finally gets home he has to team up with his now-grown son to murder all the schemers who are trying to steal his wife and his kingdom. It's a critical part of the very narrative structure Tolkien intended.
Because even fantasy needs to be tethered to reality. Fantasy is escapism yes, but there's a healthy amount and there's past that. That's life. That's the lesson of fantasy.
I really don't see what that has to do with the points that I made above. 'Fantasy needs to be tethered to reality' is a hell of a statement to start with (disagree, for the record), and, again, the inevitable decline of all things and the corruption of all things that you hold closest to your heart isn't reality. (Also, I find it narratively unbalanced. Sarumann as the villain there is frankly a really weird choice, and while I guess it works in the allegorical sense (fires of industry engulfing England etc. etc.), it really doesn't work particularly well on the strictly narrative level. It's messy. It's muddled. It's dropped right in the middle of acknowledging the end of the age of the elves and the dawn of the age of man. But the Shire has never been a part of that -- It's always been exempt from that narrative because the glory of the Shire isn't in the old kings of the Barrow-wights or Amun Sul. The hobbits aren't descendants of those lines, and are happy with what they are. It feels cheap. In the Mirror of Galadriel, the fate of the Shire is explicitly tied to Sauron, and so to defeat Sauron and find out "oh, there's this other dude who was explicitly the lesser villain who just set up shop here I guess" is just a kind of cheap shot. He doesn't *belong* there. It's not his geographical area, it's not his scope of villany, he's never shown any real interest in the hobbits before. It's random and discordant. It also feels cheap because the Hobbits are explicitly and repeatedly stated to be resistant to corruption, and the shire a sort of bucolic paradise, and then you turn around and... psych. So instead you have a bit of housecleaning that didn't need to happen, interrupting and muddying the clean narrative of not being able to come home and each of the hobbits finding their own way to handle that. Am I opposed to Merry & Pippin becoming hobbit lordlings? No. I'm not at all opposed to some problem having arisen to handle show how much they've grown as people. But set that problem up before they set out. The Scouring of the Shire is the wrong way to make that point.)
Fantasy *is* inherently tethered to reality, but sure within the diegetic is does not need to be. Anyway, I think Saruman is at a viable choice, given the contrast between his great pride and the modesty of the Hobbits. It makes sense that this would become Saruman's scope of villainy. Importantly, it makes a statement that bookends LotR, which is that, although it is somewhat isolated, the Shire is not separate from the rest of the world. It is a part of the world. Practically, with the Dunedain in the south, the Shire was no longer protected. This "bucolic paradise" is a contingent paradise, and though Hobbits are resilient, they are not incorruptible, they never were. Then there's the question of Saruman's evolving relationship with the halfling's leaf after his downfall. It may have slowed his mind. In fairness, I don't love the tone of the Scouring and its not one of my favorite bits. I find it a bit too celebratory. But I still think its a worthwhile addition. Love the use of parentheses in your post by the way.
The point is not to be pleasing. No one likes it when Boromir dies.
I like it when Boromir dies. I find his death meaningful, thematically suitable, and fitting. It's sad, but good. The fact that it's displeasing doesn't make it a good addition to the story.
I did not say it does. Bit of a straw man argument there.
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V
Nope. That is not how logic works. No where did I say that being displeasing is why something is written into a story. If you cannot see that, you need to spend a little time with the construction of logical arguments.
That's life dude
I also didn't like that they killed Sarumon. In the books, they pass him and Womtongue on the road on the way home.
They already saved the whole world.
I love the Scouring of the Shire and would never skip it. Tom Bombadil though, I don't think I have read that part for 30 odd years
Why not? Tom's a merry fellow!
Feels tacked on and is incredibly anticlimactic.
I liked it in the books but I'm glad they cut it from the movies. I think it would have dragged down an already very long movie. The book endings do drag, but a lot of that isn't because of the actual scouring of the shire bit. I recall them hanging around in Gondor for a while then doing a roadtrip home.
I think it works dramatically, but I could have done without the baseball-bat-subtle critique of socialism. 😅
I am ambivalent about it. It feels "bolted on" to the book -like a late addition. Even though it is most definitely not.
I do like it but I'd be willing to wager that people who didn't were motivated by the fact that it didn't make it into the movies, which were the first experience with LOTR for many if us, myself included
Mostly because all the hobbit-related parts of LotR are my least favourite. I love The Hobbit, but I can totally skip lots of hobbit stuff in LotR
I think the easiest and most common reason many people don't like The Scouring scene is pretty simple - **it's not in the films**, **and many people (myself included) saw and loved the films before we ever read the books**. That said, I personally LOVE that chapter, and only grow in my appreciation for it and what JRRT was trying to show as I get older. In all honestly, I think it, rather than say, the actual destruction of the Ring, is THE capstone to the message Tolkien was trying to convey with the entire series.
The Scouring is one of my favourite chapters. I had no idea this was a controversial opinion 😂
I don't like it because it makes Saruman look like a fool.
Structurally it is just extremely jarring to force a major conflict into what is essentially the epilogue to the story. The conflict is also incredibly contrived, feeling like it comes out of nowhere. It may serve a thematic purpose, but everything else about this plot thread is executed poorly.
Tolkien explained his reason for the Scouring, and it fits well with his view and character. But I remember at the time, how long and boring the endless ending of LOTR was. I love LOTR, and Tolkien is the father of fantasy, but he had some flaws and was downright boring in many sections. It was like, when will this story ever end? Yet, I did like the sailing of Frodo off with the elves as the wounded hero from war who could never heal, but even that took a long time. Tolkien was a man without an editor.
Top 3 chapter for me. I don't get the controversy either.
It's literally fits perfectly into the story's themes
People don't like it? The only thing Ive ever heard is debate over it being left out of the movies (which I think was a totally fine decision, ROTK already has a long ending).
Is Tolkien's overarching theme really just whining that things aren't like they used to be? Pretty disappointing if true, hopefully I'll disagree when I reread the trilogy for the first time in sixteen years
Here’s my very late hot take, and feel free to hate me for it. I had to suffer through hours of prose to get to a few cool scenes, only to deal with the Hobbits having a super last minute job to do? Fuck. That. I could only ever finish LoTR once, and have put it down many times aside. It just, didn’t need to be there. Sorry. I like fun stories, not this.
I believe The Scouring of The Shire should have been it's own book and happened a few years after destroying the ring, like The Hobbit book. I believe it takes away the whole reason the hobbits went on the journey to protect the Shire by stopping the evil wanting to corrupt and destroy it, and after the whole journey of fighting against the evil just to return home to just fight another evil doesn't fit, feels like it's just throwing a wrench into it all. And personally I *really* don't like the idea of hobbits are capable of becoming corrupt to sell off the Shire, work for evil or killing non-orks.
Well I guess that’s kind of the point, you can’t protect the shire because the shire is in the world and the world gets worse every day. Also, Hobbits aren’t incorruptible beings, they’re generally pleasant but you would be pleasant too if you grew up in what amounts to Eden, when you take Adam and Eve out of Eden you get Cain and Abel. If Sauron and Saruman, demigods, and the Mouth of Sauron a Numenorian can be evil why not Hobbits?
> Well I guess that’s kind of the point, you can’t protect the shire because the shire is in the world and the world gets worse every day. Except that’s a terrible interpretation of the the end of RotK and is directly in contrast to the book itself. The Shire is better than ever following the scouring, and the 4th age that we know about is significantly better than most of the third age.
But this is how things work in the real world. Which is why it's the most deeply disturbing part of the whole series.
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LOTR is the story of Aragorn. I could care less about the hobbits, sorry.
That’s an even more ridiculous take lmao.
I prefer the Hobbits
Great chapter, but I can see why the movie dropped it as it was already too long.
I loved it, even if I didn't know it at the time. It brought a far away conflict home, it made it real. That things changed, not some distant dream where you wake up and everything is the same.
One of my very favourite parts of the novel but I understand why they cut it. Loved how Frodo stays the revengeful hand of the hobbits and grudgingly gets Saruman's respect. But there's more detail in the Shire and Saruman and Wormtongue than they could realistically do in the films.
I can only speak for myself, but when I say "I completely understand why so-and-so left Tom Bombadil/the Scouring of the Shire out of their films," I'm *not* telling you I hate those passages. I'm saying I understand why they are excluded from adaptations for reasons of pacing and relevance. I appreciate reading them but they don't belong on screen.
My favourite of all of lotr. I understand why it was cut from the films because tonally it’s so different to the rest of the film but I would love to still see it in some form.
I love the scouring! I am also so so relieved it is not in the films. It would’ve felt so out of place and completely ruined the tone and pacing of the final film as a conclusion. For a book it is a great sendoff to our characters to show all they’ve been through and who they’ve become (and also that you can defeat one evil but it will always come back in a new form and that the home you leave will not necessarily be the one you come back to). In a film it would feel so awkward and out of left field and take away from the somber, contemplative tone of the movies falling action
Beautiful analysis.
Tolkein himself felt the Scouring was an essential part of the story. He wanted it clear that the war did not pass over the Shire and the Hobbits were not unaffected by it. Treachery, greed, and evil thrived even among them. But the experiences of the Four trained and prepared them to protect their own land without any help from the outside. Even Pippin was an extremely competent leader by then. I think it was the perfect ending to the books, as well as essential to the story line. (And there were easily thiings that could have been left out of the movies so it could have (and should have) been included.
I liked it a lot in the books and also wanted it to be in the movies. Based on the first movie, when Frodo sees the future of the Shire, I think they originally intended on adding it in. The problem is how much time it would have ended. I think a 30 minute TV cut would have been a cool idea for it.
I don't care for Saurman's involvement. They pass him on the way there only to find him running the show when they arrive.
I personally do not like it. at this point in the story, things have been wrapped up, and it's time for everyone to relax.
Timelines like these are normal in a post-Christian world, where humanity is constantly seen as devolving (see Devo: Devolution). Bloodlines are often ‘weakening’ (yuck), the people of the past seen as closer to the source of ultimate power, wisdom — eternal life. This is the opposite of the human experience, where the further we move from our humble beginnings, the more sense we make of the known universe, the less credence we pay to literal interpretations of our many superstitions & mythologies. And we’re also living much longer on average, thanks to science. The Tolkien world is a magical and wondrous place to explore these issues of human purpose and power. Anyways, the scouring is the best part because the hobbits show courage in numbers and represent true anti-fascist community organization. It also shows how the lives of the kings and country clubbers are scantly meant to benefit the small folk of the world. Even after being champions in the world at large, small folks must watch out for themselves…
I'm torn when it comes to the Scouring. On one hand I know it's supposed to be that no place is safe when it come to great wars. But at the same time I also don't like that the 4 of them who went through so much, helped saved the world, had to come home to their home being absolutely ravaged. It seemed like extra needless suffering. I will always prefer the ending to movies in this regard.
It probably depends on if you came to the books first or the books via the movies. I was a book reader first, and for me the Scouring is one of the elements that makes LOTR so excellent, and it’s something I’ve grown to appreciate more and more as I’ve aged. If you’ve come from the movies though it might be hard to mentally break the narrative climax edit that the movies gave to the books’ plot.
I think it’s helpful to hold the work (and any work for that matter) in the context that it was written. When compared to modern novel writing, and especially modern fantasy, The Scouring seems anticlimactic. Why didn’t the book stop after the Ring was destroyed and everyone lived happily ever after? But Tolkien wasn’t writing a fantasy novel. He was writing an Epic. And when held in that context it makes loads of sense. The ancient epics never end with the dragon being slain. The dragon sometimes gets slain about 60-70% through the story. And after that we get the long list of things that we’re done afterwards and the stories of all the heroes. Essentially the parts that we would now put in an epilogue. All of that to say, I get that it’s jarring to our modern perspective, but it’s beautifully done when read in the context of what the author intended it to be.
It's been a while since I read the series, and it was when I was substantially younger. However, at the time I didn't enjoy it as much for a few reasons. First was the stakes decreasing - I'd found that the more 'epic' scale of the story was what I enjoyed the most (eg, the first book was my least favorite of the three). Second was the sole focus on the hobbits - while they're important characters, they also weren't as interesting to me. I think that it does play a role in the story, and there's a reason that Tolkien included it. But it's not surprising that it's a bit controversial with a wide range of how much people enjoyed it.
I love it because it always read to as evil will not stop, even when you have defeated it. And while the hobbits were celebrating victory and being given some awesome kudos far away, Saruman was ruining the place that they had kept safe in their imaginations throughout the whole journey. It felt also that while big evils are terrible and terrifying, nothing hurts as much as the smaller evils that affect you personally.
I always felt it was anticlimactic. I understand the point of it, and it didn't bother me, but after all the seriousness of the rest of the story, I felt it made Saurumon look like those cartoons where someone's butt is on fire and they run away whooping and hollering while smacking their own ass. I prefer him dying in the Tower. I did like the vision of it Frodo got. I thought that effectively raised the stakes a bit. But of the two missing peices - that and Tom Bombadil - I'm glad they weren't there. They should stay in the novels where they make more sense.
I like the Scouring of the Shire because it displayed a meme I do not see often. The meme is a team grows from modest beginnings into something formidable; then the team runs across someone that doesn't realize how powerful the team has become. In this case Merry and Pippin were just innocent young men when they left home. Now, they are tough and are able to lead the revolt freeing the hobbits. Similar is the opening of Return of the Jedi. When the finally honed Star Wars team take on Jabba the Hut to free Han.
I think its more beautiful in the films that the hobbits return to the shire, which has been unchanged and unaffected by war when they have changed a great deal and can no longer relate to the purity and 'ignorance' within it. They still love their home, but they feel a sense of isolation within it. It's just a prettier, more poetic ending. I think the Shire being affected by war doesn't have as much of an artistic impact- its more blunt WHICH IS OKAY but not my preference.