[ SECRET POST #3365 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3365 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 070 secrets from Secret Submission Post #481.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

This might be sort of off topic but for people who are more well-versed in Tolkien

[(Anonymous)]

So, in the appendices of LOTR it's said that no one knows exactly where hobbits came from, but they seemed to be related to humans.

So I was wondering, does other external material from Tolkien say anything about if hobbits are just a sub-species of humans and therefore aren't really a separate race, or if they're a totally different race, like the dwarves, and created by a Vala like the dwarves rather than Eru/God (like, since the dwarves were created by Aule, could the hobbits have been created by Yavanna? Since they love their earth and farms and food and gardens so much, and their shortness and bare feet seem to fit as being a signal for being "close to the earth"...and Yavanna was a huge overachiever anyway given how many lifeforms she created...)

Re: This might be sort of off topic but for people who are more well-versed in Tolkien

[(Anonymous)]

They are definitely not made by Yavanna. The Ents are her answer to Aule's dwarves. From the parts of HoME that I have read (and I haven't read absolutely everything but I have read a fair bit), hobbits are pseudo-human.

The thing is, the creation of the dwarves was basically retelling Abraham and Isaac. Whether a creature has a soul or not is a pretty big deal. Tolkien wrestles with the notion of whether the eagles, ents, and other sentient creatures had souls the way elves and humans do. Dwarves are granted souls when Aule repented of their making. So, it doesn't really go into the mythology Tolkien was creating to have hobbits be something other than human, and if they were, they wouldn't have souls.

But, it's complicated by the fact that Tolkien was creating his legendarium long before he included hobbits. So, I'm not sure he totally knew what to do with them. But, from the Valar perspective, the Valar were not allowed to create sentient creatures without Eru's permission. Yavanna does ask to create the ents. After what happened with the dwarves, I think she would be wary of repeating his mistake with hobbits, and I don't think she connected to human/elf-like creatures as she did plants.

Also, hobbits are very human, and I personally think it's too simplistic to think of them as her creations for being pastoral. There are tales of the hobbits coming from the east (the same as the elves and humans came from) and not all of them were pastoral in nature.

Re: This might be sort of off topic but for people who are more well-versed in Tolkien

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

Ah interesting, thanks that makes a lot of sense!

Re: This might be sort of off topic but for people who are more well-versed in Tolkien

[(Anonymous)]

da

Yeah I don't remember exactly where I could cite it from (is it mentioned in the appendices?), but it seemed clear from what I read that the hobbits were a sub-group of humans.

Though I suppose that doesn't preclude them from possibly having a favorite Vala, like the Elves have Varda/Elbereth, and that could maybe be Yavanna. Tolkien was always very adamant about keeping religious practices for the characters within middle-earth very informal and un-organized, and only including religious content in the actual canonical framework of the fictional universe as portrayed in the Silmarillion.

Re: This might be sort of off topic but for people who are more well-versed in Tolkien

[(Anonymous)]

another DA

I always thought the implication with Hobbits was that they were a natural adaptation to the other humanoid Free Peoples of their coming to Middle-Earth. The three historic strains of Hobbit - Stoor, Fallohide and Harfoot - strongly mirror Men, Elves and Dwarves, and ended up converging into a single race with the odd strongly throwback individual or line (Tooks in particular tending to be noticably Fallohide). If they seem ideally adapted to their time and place, that's probably no accident - they're the closest thing the east has to an indigenous humanoid race.