Food and Storytelling in Lord of the Rings

I’ll be honest. I’m not sure how it has taken me so long to get around to talking about Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings, and Tolkien’s works in general, was my entry point to being more critical and academic about the nature of popular culture’s importance in storytelling. It also holds a lot of personal significance to me. But maybe that’s why it’s taken so long to get around to - there’s so much meaningful elements within this that sorting through it all can be tough.

While I could talk about all sorts of aspects of Lord of the Rings, today, I want to focus on one important point: food. That may not be where you may have thought this would go for this channel’s first foray into Middle-earth, but here we are. I think food, in general, is really fascinating. Cultures around the world have intricate food laws that delineate what should or should not be eaten based on aspects of morality. In many places, food regulations are what define one culture as being separate from another.

And Middle-earth is no different.

In fact, food is frequently used as a way to demonstrate differences between the varieties of peoples and nations throughout the world. The depictions of food, the relationships different peoples have with food, and discussions around food do a lot to give life to the story, and is an important aspect of Tolkien’s storytelling. His use of food and particularly of different eating metaphors throughout the work demonstrate relations with power, and food becomes an important part of storytelling.

Now, a quick note. Obviously, this is a video essay, which means that there’s an important visual part of what’s happening. That being said, a lot of what I’m going to be drawing on is the direct source material - the books, rather than the movies. Though, the movies did get a lot right, and are still absolute beautiful works in their own right. In fact, probably a lot of what I will talk about in relation to food in the books is also in the movies. But thought it would be worth mentioning.

Anyway. Food is demonstrated as important from the very beginning. There were lots of elements of the chapter on Concerning Hobbits at the beginning of the trilogy that concerned food. The hobbits here are desribed as having mouths suited to “laughing, and eating and drinking” and that they ate roughly six meals a day. There’s also a large portion dedicated to their various pipe weeds, most notably Old Toby. This means readers are brought to food’s importance very early when it comes to hobbits.

Hobbits are, quite frankly, obsessed with food. So much of the hobbits both in general around the Shire, and for the four hobbits who then embark on large adventures, food is always a large part of their life and engagements. Bilbo interrupts the Council of Elrond to demand lunch. When healed after defeating the Chief Ringwraith, Merry wakes up and says he’s hungry. Sam carries cooking equipment with him all the way to Mordor, and even laments the loss of his pots and pans when he’s in Mordor.

Hobbits just love food. Their culture is filled with simply joys and big feats. The presence and details of their food is what distinguishes Hobbits from other cultures. The food of elves, in contrast, is not described in great detail. Lembas is one of the most described aspects of elvish food, and becomes a staple in the lives of the Fellowship, but it’s not really described in detail or even in what it’s made of. The rest of the elvish food is not given much attention, so much so that some scholars think elves are vegetarian, but this is mostly due to the lack of descriptions of meat. But lack of description isn’t an example of what’s technically there.

The race of men also have food and some feasts, but their relationship with food seems vastly different. Feasts are reserved for special occasions and great occasions, while hobbits like feasts no matter the occasion. Food is much more a necessity of life for the race of men, rather than an aspect of life’s enjoyment.

The way that hobbits find food and eating so important is understood by other nations as well, and used as a definitional point. Even Treebeard uses their relationship with food to describe the hobbits when he amends his song about the various groups of people to include hobbits. In his poem, he describes hobbits as “hungry”.

Food is an important aspect of Hobbit language. The best example of this actually comes from a linguist joke of Tolkien’s. The river that runs through the Shire is, in the Elven language, Baranduin. But when Hobbits refer to it, the Elven word Baranduin becomes altered to Brandywine. Tolkien likes to make these little jokes and references about how language changes and moves overtime, but it also reveals how important food and drink is to Hobbits, that they would change the name to something so related to consumption.

Another fun moment that is also direct conversation about morality, is the stew made by Sam with Gollum. Sam discusses the nature of cooking and making things delicious, and even comments about cooking some potatoes. But Gollum reacts violently against the idea. While this is a kind of silly scene, it also demosntrates fundamental differences between the moralities of Gollum and the Hobbits.

Gollum always sits somewhere in between the corrupted and the Hobbits, who seem more jovial than corrupted (though, obviously, the corruption does happen). This is echoed in Gollum’s choices of food - he is always hungry and discussing eating. Like hobbits, he has songs about food. Though the words and depictions of Gollum eating are far more animalistic and gross feeling than that of hobbits. In the book, the words chosen to describe Gollum eating are words like “devouring” and “gnawing”. His choices of food are also equally disgusting to the likes of the hobbits, choices like raw fish, worms, and even trying to eat dead bodies in the Lord of the Rings.

Gollum essentially is a demonstration of hobbits when they are corrupted. More corrupted nations, like the Orcs for example, are also ones who eat with similar language - devouring and gnawing and chewing. Their choices are also more reflective, with discussions of meat and sometimes cannibalism. The description of this meat as being sometimes described as “flesh” instead of meat is an obvious choice to paint these choices of food in a specific light.

But I can’t let a full discussion of food and Lord of the Rings pass without discussing one of the most important, beautiful, and silly comments in the whole series. This is when Gandalf is talking to Bilbo about his life and how Bilbo is ageing (or, more accurately at this point, not ageing). Bilbo says he feels like “butter that has been scraped over too much bread”. There’s so much going on in this quiet statement, so let’s take it one at a time.

First off, we have a reflection on how hobbits have a habit of speaking more simply. As Merry explains to Aragorn: “But it is the way of my people to use light words at such times and say less than they mean. We fear to say too much. It robs us of the right words when a jest is out of place”. I think this is fair for many of the discussions the hobbits have. But In the case of Bilbo’s description, I think there’s even more going on. In fact, I think this is the exact proper phrasing to use.

This is because of our second point, which we’ve been waxing on about for a long time already today: the importance of food. Food is so all consuming (pun intended) for hobbits that it invades their language in names but also in metaphor and other forms of folklore or interpersonal relationships. For Bilbo to reach for food as a way to explain things, its an example of how pervasive food is for hobbits.

But also, this statement from Bilbo is accompanied by other food metaphors that are not as related to hobbits. In the follow chapter, Gandalf immediately uses eating metaphors to describe the Ring and Sauron. Faramir continues the metaphor by describing the men given the nine rings of power as being “devoured” by Sauron. Gollum says that if Sauron gets the ring he will “eat us all”.

Speaking of Gollum, he’s both described and seen as being mortally hungry since the Ring. Frodo sees a glimpse of a similar look in Bilbo when he reaches for the Ring in Rivendell.

Therefore, I think Bilbo’s little comment about feeling like butter spread over too much bread is not only an apt description of what it feels to age, but also a welcome entrance to metaphors and discussions around food, power, and corruption as it’s depicted in Lord of the Rings - through food.