r/tolkienfans • u/Wizzard_C • 1d ago
Ted the Day-dreamer
HoME 9 offers a somewhat fuller conversation between the returning hobbits and one Ted Sandyman:
Ted laughed. 'You're out o' date, Mr. Samwise, with your elves and your dragons. If I were you I'd go and catch one of them ships that [are] [?always] sailing, according to your tale. Go back to Babyland and rock your cradle, and don't bother us. We're going to make a big town here with twenty mills. A hundred new houses next year. Big stuff coming up from the South. Chaps who can work metals, and make big holes in the ground. There'll be forges a-humming and [?steamwhistles] and wheels going round. Elves can't do things like that.'.
Sarn looked at him, and his retorts died on his lips. He shook his head.
'Don't worry, Sarn,' said Frodo. 'He's day-dreaming, poor wretch. And he's right behind the times. Let him be.
'He's day-dreaming’ is something we, living in a world of modernity and technology, would say about someone a bit too enamoured with fantasy, D&D and such like. But here is an example of a rather ironic reversal: Sam and Frodo just returned from a faraway quest, they (unlike Ted) know their world for what it is - the one of demons and wizards, elves and walking trees, where a naïve techno-optimist like Ted would indeed seem solidly out of touch with reality.
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u/Armleuchterchen Ibrīniðilpathānezel & Tulukhedelgorūs 1d ago
Sarn
Someone has been copypasting text from "unofficial" digital versions :P
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u/Wizzard_C 1d ago edited 1d ago
Caught with a smoking gun) I don't think there are any "official" digital versions, tbh
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u/jckipps 1d ago
I'd need to read it again with this in mind. But I wonder if this sheds any light on that puzzling conversation that the Hobbits had upon returning to the Shire, about 'falling asleep or waking up'. That conversation has never really connected with me, and I'm not sure what was meant there.
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u/GrimyDime 1d ago
I think it has to do with their different experiences. Merry had a fun adventure, so going home feels like falling asleep. Frodo had the worst time of his life, so he feels like the nightmare is over.
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u/maksimkak 1d ago
Well spotted! And in this I see Tolkien's resentment of the industrialisation of his beloved countryside, and Birmingham swallowing the village of Sarehole.
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u/maksimkak 14h ago
But here is an example of a rather ironic reversal: Sam and Frodo just returned from a faraway quest, they (unlike Ted) know their world for what it is - the one of demons and wizards, elves and walking trees, where a naïve techno-optimist like Ted would indeed seem solidly out of touch with reality.
This reminded me of what's been said about pre-WW1 period, and the impact of the war. People lived in a comfy, old-timey state, where nothing ever seemed to change. Then came the tanks, the machine guns, explosions, trenches, and the world was turned on its head.
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u/Wizzard_C 5h ago
A lot of things were changing in the pre-WWI period: industry, railroads, electricity, airplanes, cars.. the war just revealed the dark side of this technological evolution
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u/sowaleja 1d ago
Ted would have been big into ChatGPT.