it's Love Merry Brandybuck Hours
Jun. 25th, 2021 10:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
roselightfairy“It all depends on what you want,” put in Merry. “You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin - to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours - closer than you keep it yourself. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo. Anyway, there it is. We know most of what Gandalf has told you. We know a good deal about the Ring. We are horribly afraid - but we are coming with you or following you like hounds.”
I can ramble for so long on how Merry is low-key the best character in the story for all of us who aren’t heroes, who aren’t meant for greater things or in any way touched by “greater” powers as Tolkien might define them. Frodo and Sam and what they undertake is exceptional; Aragorn has spent all his life preparing to be king of Gondor and do what he must - but the way I described Merry once in a fic was that he “knew [what he was getting into] and had gone anyway.” I think of Merry when I think of my own inclination to commit to something before I know how much it will hurt, in a way I can’t back away from, because I can’t bear to live with myself if I chose not to do it. Merry doesn’t know how much this journey will hurt; how much it will break his heart or change him forever. He hasn’t grown up the way the non-hobbit characters have, living in a world at war. He hasn’t been prepared for this as Frodo has in some ways - learning about how other people think and speak, for instance, with his ability to speak with the high elves they meet - but he’s not impulsive like Pippin: he walked into this knowing how much it had the potential to hurt him.
There’s so much that the other characters have that he lacks: Sam, of course, is a three-books-long tale in pure grit and love and determination; Frodo seems touched by some spirit sometimes; Pippin has flashes of intuition that make him better able to respond, at times, in crises. Merry is the most practical of the four of them, in so many ways; he wasn’t made for this kind of adventure, but he goes anyway, because he can’t live with himself if he doesn’t. And it’s how he will end up carrying out his bravest deeds. He’s the character we can all identify with, amidst all these exceptional people, and that makes me love him more. I have a lot of complaints about the movie’s portrayal of him, but that speech they gave him - I just want to help my friends - is so much the core of who he is, and I love him so much.
I can ramble for so long on how Merry is low-key the best character in the story for all of us who aren’t heroes, who aren’t meant for greater things or in any way touched by “greater” powers as Tolkien might define them. Frodo and Sam and what they undertake is exceptional; Aragorn has spent all his life preparing to be king of Gondor and do what he must - but the way I described Merry once in a fic was that he “knew [what he was getting into] and had gone anyway.” I think of Merry when I think of my own inclination to commit to something before I know how much it will hurt, in a way I can’t back away from, because I can’t bear to live with myself if I chose not to do it. Merry doesn’t know how much this journey will hurt; how much it will break his heart or change him forever. He hasn’t grown up the way the non-hobbit characters have, living in a world at war. He hasn’t been prepared for this as Frodo has in some ways - learning about how other people think and speak, for instance, with his ability to speak with the high elves they meet - but he’s not impulsive like Pippin: he walked into this knowing how much it had the potential to hurt him.
There’s so much that the other characters have that he lacks: Sam, of course, is a three-books-long tale in pure grit and love and determination; Frodo seems touched by some spirit sometimes; Pippin has flashes of intuition that make him better able to respond, at times, in crises. Merry is the most practical of the four of them, in so many ways; he wasn’t made for this kind of adventure, but he goes anyway, because he can’t live with himself if he doesn’t. And it’s how he will end up carrying out his bravest deeds. He’s the character we can all identify with, amidst all these exceptional people, and that makes me love him more. I have a lot of complaints about the movie’s portrayal of him, but that speech they gave him - I just want to help my friends - is so much the core of who he is, and I love him so much.
