Only quite a Little Fellow (Managed by mere Luck, pt.4)

In three recent posts, I have been discussing Gandalf’s words at the end of The Hobbit: ‘You don’t really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit?” As I was copying the passage out into my Tolkien Commonplace Book, I thought to myself that I ought to round off this discussion of Gandalf’s words by talking about how the wizard ends that paragraph, the penultimate of the book. If you haven’t read the previous entries in this series, here they are: Managed by mere Luck: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

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Once Gandalf has done explaining to Bilbo the true nature of the Luck he has benefited from and giving the hobbit a sense of his place in the grander narrative of the world’s history, the wizard makes a sudden turn, an unexpected turn to a post-modern audience I think, but a turn that is very important, especially as they are final words of the wizard Gandalf in the book.

For context, the full paragraph of Gandalf’s last words runs as follows:

And why should thot they prove true? Surely you don’t disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don’t really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all.

I find this whole paragraph curious partly because, as I mentioned in the first post of this series, Gandalf doesn’t actually seems to be responding to what Bilbo said, at least not the actual words. Perhaps there is something in Bilbo’s manner that Gandalf is responding to, but I really think this is Tolkien breaking the fourth wall in a subtle way to speak directly to his readership.

In the last three posts on this paragraph, I have focused on the very important role that Bilbo plays in the larger history of Middle-earth although Bilbo cannot see that because, well, he’s only been focused on himself, which is a very natural thing for all of us to do. But the curious moves comes immediately after telling Bilbo that these things weren’t just for the hobbit’s own benefit. Immediately after saying something that could inflate Bilbo’s ego and make him feel a very important cog in the wheel of the world, Gandalf tells him that he is only a little fellow in the wide world at the end of the day.

This fascinates me, and as I said it seems very contrary to our post-modern world’s way of thinking, to the zeitgeist that says every one of us is important, unique, and capable of changing the world. Surely, we are important. As a Christian, Tolkien could not have doubted that, being as we are made in the image of God. Likewise, we are unique—though perhaps not quite so unique as we like to think. Pick your personality test, and you will find anything from 5 to 16, to 100 different personality subsets, but the last time I checked there were well over 100 people just in my neighbourhood. 

But the most insidious of that tripartite lie is that each of us is capable of changing the world. What does that even mean? The World as a concept is largely meaningless, an empty idea that none of us experience in reality. We are barely even able to conceive of a unified Nation or Country, never mind the World. Change your Town, that’s possible. Change your neighbourhood or family? Conceivable. Change yourself? The only thing any of us can realistically hope to accomplish over the course of 70 or 80 years.

We tell our kids this nonsense everyday in school: “Go out there and change the world!” Half of them haven’t even got their lives together. The other half have only just begun to master entry-level calculus. 

But, but, Bilbo did indeed change the world!

That is very true, and yet Gandalf still put Bilbo in his place, telling him he is only a little fellow in the wide world. Why? How did Bilbo change the world?

He changed the world by changing himself. And even that required more than a little pushing and shoving from Gandalf just to get the hobbit out his front door. At no point does Bilbo choose to go on the adventure. He chooses often not to go home, but he never chooses to set out in the first place. Gandalf literally drives him out onto the road.

So what’s the point? Well, our Orthodox monastics pray the Jesus prayer thousands of times a day: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. Those who don’t understand monasticism (as I once did not) will accuse monks of selfishly seeking their own salvation at the expense of the rest of the world—there it is again; it’s insidious! Monks are accused of doing the exact opposite of Christ’s commission to go into the world and preach, convert, and baptise. They only care about themselves; no one else matters.

This is obviously a facile and juvenile way of thinking. The monks have rightly figured out that If I don’t fix myself—or ask God to do it—then how am I of any use to anyone else around me, never mind the world at large?

It is an important question to ask ourselves, and it certainly one of the deep meanings lying behind Gandalf’s words. If we look at the arc Bilbo has been on, and that I have discussed in the previous three posts in this series, we have a reluctant hobbit who acts in the world. He makes real decisions. And he is also guided and shielded by the hand of Providence. He grows in confidence and ability all through the story, but he is also completely and utterly reliant on “Luck” to the very end. And when it is all over, he is only one benefactor among many—some not yet born—of his choices. But, Gandalf reminds him, he is a little fellow.

In other words, Bilbo could not have changed the world if he has set out to do so. 

Only in setting out to do the task that was set before him—helping the dwarves defeat Smaug—is Bilbo able to effect any lasting change on the world. When we say to ourselves, to our children, that they need to change the world, we are giving them an impossible task. When we tell them to do this small thing that, as Gandalf says to Bilbo way back in chapter one, is “Very amusing for me, very good for you,” then we grow. And when we grow, we affect others—hell, if we don’t grow, we affect others only for worse.

Back to the monks: St Maximus the Confessor described the human person as being the whole world in microcosm. The best way to save the world is to save oneself. To pray for my own salvation is to pray for the salvation of the world. For in each of us lie all the particular elements of Creation waiting to be redeemed. It is a mystical understanding of salvation to be sure, but it is the deep wisdom of humility, knowing that the only person in this world I can change is myself. 

Whether or not we change affects the impact we have on others. And when we say The World, what we really mean is “other people.” 

We need humble goals in life, I told my students this year. If you are so fixated on saving the world that you can’t even turn in your English homework, you are neither saving the world nor yourself.