Too Much To Dream

The Old Hobbit and the Sea

Strangest Lord of the Rings nitpick ever: Jim Henley wonders why the sea isn't featured more in the tale. (Original question here; or you can start at the previous link and scroll downwards.) All I can say is: the sea and boats do not figure much in this particular set of Middle Earth goings-on because the sea and boats don't figure much in this particular set of Middle Earth goings-on. The story has nothing to do with the fact that England IRL is an island and was often (though not always) a seafaring power. I do think that there is a slight misreading of Tolkien's "intentions of creating a mythology for England" going on here. For one thing, Tolkien was not really trying to do this: trying to pass off his fictional characters and countryside as actual native mythology, rather he was using the tools and trappings of myth to create an imaginative story such as those he liked to read, and he filled it with all sorts of English things and motifs, as well as frank anachronisms from his own life such as "pipe-weed" (tobacco, a plant unknown in the real Middle Ages of the actual England), because he was English and he liked those things. Of course, that's a simplistic reading of Tolkien's motives and intentions, but I do think that people are taking the "he was creating a mythology!" and are running with it off into some strange places.

That being said, the lack of sea and boat travel (except for the takeover and subsequent sail upriver to beseiged Minas Tirith of the the black ship of the Corsairs that Aragorn undertakes in the Return of the King, and of course the boat ride down the Anduin), in the story is because most of the story takes place very far inland in Tolkien's world, in places nowhere near the ocean or any large bodies of water. In any case, as someone has already pointed out to him, the sea is a constant background theme in the story, with the Elves leaving Middle Earth and sailing to Valinor, the background of the Atlantis-like Numenor for the tales, and so on. Someone also wrote with an idea that since Tolkien was a "modern" Brit he had a "modern" concept of distance and travel, and thus was used to being able to get around without bothering with boats, but that won't wash either. Tolkien was very firm about the medievalish setting of the story: people in the Middle Ages rarely traveled far from their native towns and villages, and so it is the case with the average inhabitant of Tolkien's imaginary world. Furthermore, most of the countryside outside of the landlocked Shire is at the time of the story mostly desolate and unpopulated except for a few isolated communities, and there are only a couple of roads. Thus travelling anywhere outside one's community a dangerous undertaking that only someone who was rather cracked would do voluntarily (like Bilbo), or at absolute necessity (like Frodo carrying the ring out of the Shire). Also, unlike the real England, the story takes place on a continent. And lastly, the characters are heading towards Mordor, which is not only landlocked but has no contact with the shore, and no rivers flowing into it, and it is a desert.