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Runaway  by Lindelea 2 Review(s)
FantasyFanReviewed Chapter: 14 on 10/16/2003
I've read this chapter over several times now, and I can't put my finger on it, but something doesn't seem quite right about Pippin's anger. I know he's cold when he's angry, not shouting and blustering like his father, but somehow it doesn't paint a desperate enough picture here. I'm not sure he'd even be able to talk to Ferdi, much less explain himself at length. I guess I visualized Merry taking the lead in getting the story out, and Pippin either having to be restrained in his anger by Merry (not necessarily physically), or so focused on his son as to almost unaware of what else was going on. Maybe that's not right either (I'm not the writer, you make up much better stuff than I ever could); I wish I could be more specific about why it didn't make me shiver as I had expected. Sorry.

Author Reply: Hmmmm. You know, I couldn't get Pippin's anger to my satisfaction and so turned to Jo, for I was very frustrated and ready to wrap up the story neatly and unconvincingly, just to get it over with and not have to deal with the problam. I'll pass this on to Jo and we'll see if the Muse strikes either of us over the head with inspiration. If not, I thank you for your insights anyhow, for they are always very helpful.

Jo did write him as much more wrapped up in Farry than I originally had, so it sounds like she was taking the story in the same direction you hint at...

It all just got too intense for me, and I have turned the piloting controls over to her, just making an occasional tweak or course adjustment for my part, at the moment. There is an awful lot of anger and intense emotion in the last half of this story. Perhaps I bit off more than I can chew. I can write life-threatening angst with the best of them, but fury? Am not so sure about that.

FantasyFanReviewed Chapter: 14 on 10/13/2003
So, Farry has not run away after all, but he's still in no position to help exonerate Ferdi and Tolly. If anything, his fever dream adds fuel to the fire, and for Pippin, seeing his son injured and fevered only adds to his rage. He's angry enough now to scare Ferdi, but I don't think we've seen the worst of Pippin's fury. They haven't started a formal hearing yet, waiting for Tolly I suppose, so Ferdi's got a little while to plead his case before he's silenced. Too bad his head is still muddled.

Merry refers to an un-hobbity thirst for vengance in the previous chapter, and Pip remarks that Everard is thinking like a ruffian. In this chapter Ferdi wonders if Merry and Pippin are more like Men than hobbits, but would not any father feel so? I think Pip's being unfairly judged. Pippin's past association with Men has been to the hobbits' benefit for the most part. He has a broader viewpoint, new ideas and an openness to change that are lacking in the typical Shire resident. His quest taught him to appreciate his roots, but also strengthened his will and moral compass. It is those good things about his interactions with the world of Elves and Men that make him an exceptional Thain. I think that's what bothers me about Merry's attitude in the other story. In his fear of loss of innocence, he's denying all the rest of the hobbits a chance to realize the full potential for growth in the experience of living through the Troubles. Do they not have the proverb in the Shire, 'Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it?'

Author Reply: As to Merry's attitude... remember, hobbits are for the most part stubbornly provincial. Even though the Travellers are exceptional, they have that grounding in tradition and they are, when it comes down to it, hobbits.

Change is not simple, and I do not see such a thing as a social revolution (upsetting the class system) happening in the Shire; it took the Industrial Revolution to do that in England, along with socialists determined to upset the status quo (the monarchy in England watched the royals being thrown out in other countries and I think made concessions, but I need to brush up on my English history again, for it is only dim in my memory at the moment).

The status quo was upset, and seriously so, by Sharkey and his ruffians, but even in Tolkien's writings we see things going back as they were, hobbits busy as bees wiping out all the ruffians' works and making the Shire hobbity again. The King seals this with his edict. Obviously it was not the perfect solution, for Tolkien starts out by telling us that hobbits have changed and become very shy of men, and implies that the Shire no longer exists... how sad! I refuse to write that decline, however, and would rather think of hobbits at their peak. (I just had the oddest image come to mind... hobbits as one of those punch-clowns, the kind that you punch as hard as you can but it always comes upright again, smiling at you. I bet the hobbits of the Shire saw which way the wind was blowing, sometime between the fourth age and now, and picked up and moved, just as the Fallohides and Stoors and Harfoots did earlier, before they established the Shire! Somewhere in a hidden corner of the world is a bustling New Shire... and those few elusive hobbits Tolkien mentions at the start of his work are descendants of the ones who stayed behind and were overrun by the modern world...)

While the class system makes us modern Americans uneasy, those who lived in it hardly thought twice about its inequities, it was just the way things were. I am not saying that it is right for some to be "above" others because of an accident of birth, even when I try to reproduce that way of life as accurately as possible. It was a fact of life, and people accepted it, and it even worked, after a fashion, as long as no one abused their position. You probably won't see a social revolution, a classless society, in these stories, though you will see some softening around the edges... (and honestly, our supposedly freedom-and-opportunity-for-all society is hardly equable. We have an elite who think they know better than the rest of us and try to tell us how to live and try to shape our behaviour through taxes and tax-breaks... but let us not get into modern-day politics, I would much rather stay in the Shire for the moment...)

Author Reply: I appreciate your taking the time and effort to reply to my reply, especially since there wasn't an automatic feature to make it easy. Ah, but dialogue is fun! Some of my characters are very tradition-bound, and might fret about the status quo (see Rosie in chapter 33 of "Small and Passing Thing"), but not feel they have the power to do anything about it, while others with power judiciously make their own traditions while trying to maintain the underpinning of the Shire...

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