The Wisdom of the Shire

Bilbo has faced crazed goblins, diabolical dragons, fiendish talking spiders and a gurgling psychopath. But of all the creatures in Middle-earth, he’s most afraid of two grasping Hobbits—his creepy cousins, those Sackville-Bagginses.

There’s something about his cousin Lobelia and her husband Otho that just scares the bread and butter right out of poor Bilbo. It’s because they want him dead, of course. Lobelia is Bilbo’s natural heir, and she lusts after Bag End and all its snug glories.

It’s the Sackville-Bagginses, no doubt, who declare Bilbo “presumed dead” while he’s on his adventure with the Dwarves. Bilbo comes home just in time to stop an estate sale on his lawn; but he never gets back all the silver spoons Lobelia pilfered from his kitchen.

Whenever the S.-B.’s, as Bilbo calls them, come snooping around Bag End like a pair of ghouls from the Barrow-downs,* Bilbo uses the Ring to disappear and run away. Can you blame him? Is there anything more grotesque than a relative waiting like Shelob the spider for somebody to die so they can inherit all of their junk? The S.-B.’s are devastated when Bilbo takes Frodo as his heir. And they’re just as delighted when Frodo decides to sell them Bag End and move away from the Shire.

Frodo, in a small effort to get back at Lobelia for all her vindictiveness over the years, drinks up all the wine in the cellars before moving out. And then, just for spite, he leaves a bunch of dirty dishes in the sink. Frodo, you see, is the least grasping Hobbit who ever lived. He never cared about inheriting Bag End. All he wanted was to be with his beloved uncle; and the S.-B.’s are an insult to familial love.

After Frodo leaves Hobbiton on his expedition to deliver the Ring to Rivendell, Lobelia’s son Lotho “Pimple” Sackville-Baggins begins exporting pipe-weed to Saruman the White in return for cold hard cash. He buys up land all over the Four Farthings, sending off more and more of the Shire’s food (even during a winter shortage) to Saruman’s fortress of Isengard.* Lotho is like a corrupt corporation with zero morals. He is the Goldman Sachsville-Baggins of the Shire. Pretty soon sinister Men start showing up in Hobbiton. They’re ruffians who do Lotho’s bidding, locking up anybody who disagrees with Pimple and making a pig’s breakfast of the Shire. We know what happens when Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin return home after the War of the Ring: they clean house, angry Hobbit-style.

Why hasn’t this sort of reckoning happened in our own world? How can companies like Goldman Sachs get away with financial murder, making themselves richer than ever while millions get poorer, laughing in their sleeves and calling their own clients “Muppets” behind their backs? It’s mind-boggling how a bunch of greedy Pimples run the world, while the rest of us sit back and watch them do it.

Bilbo, like Frodo, isn’t a greedy or grasping Hobbit either. He’s fairly well off to begin with when Gandalf asks him to be his burglar. Bilbo doesn’t covet gold or jewels—he’s probably never thought about them in his life. What finally gets to Bilbo is the idea of seeing something new. Mountains! Adventure! He has a map tacked to his wall with all of his favorite walks marked in red ink. Heading off with the Dwarves would mean leaving the borders of that map behind. Bilbo eventually learns, however, about the terrible Dwarven lust for precious things, and his part in that drama nearly gets him killed.

Dwarves are not evil creatures by nature. They love to work with stone and to shape material that was never alive (as opposed to the Elves who work with wood and other growing things). The joy for the Dwarves is simply in finding a vein of mithril* or some fantastic jewel, rather than the intrinsic value of that precious discovery. The Seven Rings Sauron made for the Dwarf Lords had no power to bend them to his will and make them do his bidding. For they were an ungovernable species, even by magic, and this infuriated the Dark Lord who did everything he could to get his Dwarven Rings back once he realized his mistake.*

Sauron’s Rings did have the power to twist the minds of the Dwarves who wore them, causing the owners to become more fixated on rooting out gold and gems—a kind of greed amplifier. The kingdom of Erebor (inside the Lonely Mountain) was created by Thorin’s ancestor while he was under the influence of just such a Ring. Fabulous wealth was unearthed, including the Arkenstone, a hypnotically shimmering jewel like a giant diamond. Eventually the dragon Smaug was drawn to the Lonely Mountain where he killed all the Dwarves and moved into their mansion. Thorin and his father were two of the few to escape.*

When Bilbo first meets Smaug (aka “the Greatest of Calamities”), the dragon has been napping on and off for 171 years inside the Lonely Mountain—ever since he gobbled up the last tasty Dwarf and burned the nearby city of Dale to the ground. Smaug has been lounging about, like a spectacularly lazy cat, on his heaps of gold and piles of gemstones, content to dream his wicked dreams. The Men of Laketown welcome the Dwarves with open arms, excited at the prospect of rivers of gold flowing down from the Lonely Mountain to the their wooden town built upon the Long Lake.*

Bilbo is terrified of the monster, and he has every right to be. Dragons can hypnotize you with their eyes, freezing you where you stand, and burn you to a crisp before you can say, “Bard the Bowman!” But the Hobbit is staggered by the sight of all of that gold—bewitched by the “lust of the Dwarves.” He also wants to snatch something to prove to the Dwarves he’s a canny burglar and not a cowardly grocer (as Thorin insultingly calls him).

For centuries people have been fascinated by the idea of a monster sitting on a pile of ready money. Indeed the mythos of a dragon protecting its hoard goes back over a thousand years to the Old English epic Beowulf which Tolkien drew upon for the character of Smaug. It’s a powerful symbol of miserliness—like a fat king who lolls about on a golden throne while his scrawny servants sleep in the straw (or a giant computer company that’s sitting on a half-trillion dollars while its workers bed down in stark factory-managed dormitories).*

There’s just something repellent about the notion of a dragon lazing about on a mountain of cash, isn’t there? “What use has a monster for gold and jewels, anyway?” you may very well ask. The treasure is wasted on this reptilian gold-grubber! For us humans, however, the riches could provide so much meaning to our lives. We need that gold. It could give us real power. We’d be able to buy or do whatever we want!

The problem with this reasoning is that we too often equate wealth with happiness. And extreme wealth with bliss. Winning the lottery is the modern-day equivalent of finding a hoard of gold. But if the stories about the misery of lottery winners are true, having bags of money tossed into your lap is more of a curse than a boon. (You can only buy so many hot tubs).

What would you do if you found a dragon’s hoard? I’d probably run around like a chicken with my head cut off, stuffing my pockets with coins and jewels, giggling insanely. But then, as my pockets got heavier and heavier, I’d start to think, How am I going to get all of this crap back home?

Smaug the dragon presents Bilbo with this same conundrum, and puts the poor Hobbit back on his bare heels. He mocks Bilbo asking him if he and the Dwarves had ever discussed how they were going to transport their shares of the treasure from the desolation of the Lonely Mountain. And how will they defend it from attack? Bilbo is taken aback. He’d never thought of how he was going to get one fourteenth of a small mountain of bullion to the Shire. How could he possibly make it home on such a dangerous road with “war and murder” all the way there and back again? A journey that nearly killed him half a dozen times just getting to the Lonely Mountain in the first place!*

The dragon is merely expressing an age-old truth faced by anyone who’s lusted after wealth. The idea of striking it rich is so alluring it can drive you on and on to do crazy things in order to achieve your goal. But once you get it, you might find the burdens of the riches are too profound to bear, or not worth the trouble it took to get them. Many people ruin their health and their relationships seeking wealth. And some willingly smash their moral compasses at the start of their journey, tossing aside ethics and empathy in a grim chase for prosperity.

The Master of Laketown is the perfect example of this kind of person. The materialistic administrator misappropriates funds meant to rebuild Laketown after that city is destroyed by Smaug, and he flees into the Wastes where he ends up starving to death, scorned and alone (and no doubt still clutching his bags of gold).

Of course Smaug the dragon gets cocky and shows Bilbo his “dragon’s heel,” and the rest is history for Bilbo’s memoirs—The Red Book of Westmarch. By the time Bilbo and the Dwarves enter the Smaug-less chamber and start fondling their treasure, the Hobbit has had enough. He could care less about the heaps of gold and jewels. He isn’t bewitched anymore, unlike the Dwarves who can’t stop pawing through the stuff. Bilbo would trade all the riches for a simple cup of fresh clean water from one of Beorn the giant’s wooden bowls. When Bilbo finds the Arkenstone he pockets it on a whim.

Thorin is overcome with pride at his sudden reversal of fortune. He’s reclaimed his birthright. It’s taken him nearly two hundred years, but he’s succeeded. This newfound sense of power puffs him up, making him more reckless and stubborn and haughty than he already was. He’s totally unwilling to compromise with the Men and Elves who want a piece of the action, even though the amount he would have to give them to satisfy their lust would be a pittance compared to what he already owns. Thorin has become the dragon sitting on its hoard. He’ll sacrifice himself and his friends simply to spite his perceived enemies.

After Bilbo sneaks into the camp of Men and Elves and offers up the Arkenstone as a solution to the stalemate, Thorin finds out and goes mad with rage. The Arkenstone was the one thing he craved more than any object in the Lonely Mountain! He grabs Bilbo and shakes him like a rabbit and is about to throw him off a high wall—dash the poor Hobbit to his death on the rocks below—when Gandalf steps in and orders Thorin to let his burglar go.

Even Thorin, however, cannot hate the lovable Bilbo forever. After the Battle of the Five Armies—after Thorin is mortally wounded and on his deathbed—he asks Bilbo for his forgiveness. The Dwarf does not want to die and go to the Halls of Waiting without making certain he and Bilbo have made peace.*

This really is the profound lesson of The Hobbit. Thorin goes on a quest that has dominated his thoughts nearly his entire life—to wrest back his kingdom and wealth from a dragon. All his days have been consumed with a desire for gold and power and getting his hands on the irreplaceable jewel of the Arkenstone. But in the end he realizes his lust for Smaug’s hoard was meaningless. The only thing that matters, he tells Bilbo, is their friendship, which is worth far more than any precious thing mined from the ground.

Of course Bilbo can’t hold a grudge. He’s a “kindly little soul” as Tolkien says, and he sits in a corner of Thorin’s tent near his friend’s deathbed and weeps his eyes out. Bilbo has been through a lot, after all. The Hobbit thought the hardest part of this adventure would be dealing with the dragon, but the Dwarves and Men and Elves turned out to be the difficult ones to fathom.

Bilbo ends up coming back to Bag End with more than enough gold to last the bachelor Hobbit a lifetime or two. He uses the money to enjoy himself and doesn’t hoard it like Smaug. Bilbo throws great parties. His wine cellar and pantries are well stocked. He takes up writing poetry and probably spends quite a bit on his library. He wears fine clothes and keeps Bag End in tiptop shape. He adopts his orphaned nephew and makes him his heir, providing him with a happy, comfortable and well-rounded upbringing.*

Frodo, though, never really gets to enjoy himself in old age like his uncle Bilbo. The War of the Ring hurts and changes him in too many ways and, surprisingly, it has done the same to his relative Lobelia Sackville-Baggins. After Saruman is defeated and his thugs cast out of the Shire, the Hobbits discover that Lobelia has been in prison for quite some time. She’s well past a hundred years old now and frail from starvation. For the first time in his life Frodo feels sorry for his cousin. When Lobelia hears that her miserable son Pimple was murdered by Wormtongue, she is heartbroken and moves out of Bag End and Hobbiton forever.

Lobelia’s miseries have made her a more empathetic Hobbit, however. She has learned compassion for other Shire-folk, and is no longer avaricious. She takes all of the ill-gotten money that belonged to her son and gives it to Frodo for him to start a sort of foundation: a Shire NGO, if you will, that builds new homes for the displaced victims of Saruman’s destructive invasion. It’s Hobbitat for Humanity.

The twenty-first century has produced an exponential growth in materialism. Nowadays it seems like the only people who are held in high regard are the super wealthy. It’s not enough to be a millionaire anymore. Billionaires are where it’s at. And people will do anything, it appears, to claw their way to the top of the dragon’s heap of gold. Gordon Gekko (as played by Michael Douglas) was enlisted twenty-five years after the movie Wall Street to recant his “Greed is good” slogan in a video campaign created by the FBI in 2012—an effort to curb rampant insider trading.*

My wife and I got married twenty years ago when we were still in college. We didn’t have enough money to buy new shoes, let alone pay for a wedding. So we had a barefoot ceremony in my parents’ backyard. Our generous friends and family brought food and drinks and we all danced together on the grass. Who needs new shoes when you’ve got true love and friendship?

The Hobbits, who hardly ever wear shoes, would understand exactly what I’m talking about.

The Wisdom of the Shire Tells Us …

“Greed is for bewitched Dwarves, avaricious dragons, and gold-loving Sackville-Bagginses.”