Peregrin Took

Last updated
Peregrin Took
Tolkien character
Portrayed by Billy Boyd
Information
AliasesPippin, Pip,
"Ernil i Pheriannath"
Thain Peregrin I,
Razanur Tûk
Race Hobbit (Fallohide branch)
Book(s)

Peregrin Took, more commonly known simply as Pippin, is a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings . He is closely tied with his friend and cousin, Meriadoc Brandybuck (Merry), and the two are together during most of the story. Pippin and Merry are introduced as a pair of young hobbits who become ensnared in fellow hobbit Frodo Baggins's quest to destroy the One Ring. In this regard, Pippin is a member of the Fellowship of the Ring. He and Merry become separated from the rest of the group at the breaking of the Fellowship and spend much of The Two Towers with their own story line. Impetuous and curious, he enlists (in The Return of the King ) as a soldier in the army of Gondor and fights in several battles during the War of the Ring. In the epilogues to the main story, Pippin returns to the Shire and becomes Thain or hereditary leader of the land before dying and being buried as a hero in Gondor.

Contents

Middle-earth narrative

Fictional family background

In Tolkien's fiction, Peregrin was the only son and heir of Paladin Took II, the Thain of the Shire. His best friend Meriadoc Brandybuck, more commonly known as Merry, was his cousin; another good friend was Frodo Baggins.

The name Peregrin means "pilgrim", a wanderer in strange countries. [1] Pippin indeed saw much more of Middle-earth than most Hobbits: he journeyed with Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring, and fought in the War of the Ring. Late in life he travelled again to the kingdoms of Rohan and Gondor.

Tolkien constructs an elaborate family history for Peregrin. He is made the only son of the aristocratic Paladin Took II and his wife Eglantine Banks. He had three older sisters, Pearl Took, Pimpernel Took, and Pervinca Took. They were raised in the Tooks' Great Smials and their father's farm at Whitwell. In 3001 Pippin and his family were among the 144 special guests at the Farewell Party of Bilbo Baggins, a relative in Hobbiton. His best friend Meriadoc Brandybuck was his cousin, son of Paladin's sister Esmeralda Brandybuck. He was a friend of Frodo Baggins, a more remote cousin.

Fictional history

In The Lord of the Rings, Pippin is the youngest of the four Hobbits who set out from the Shire, the only one who had not yet reached his 'coming of age'. At Rivendell, the Council of Elrond chooses Merry and Pippin as the last two members of the Fellowship.

After crossing the Misty Mountains and being given a brooch by the elf-queen Galadriel, Merry and Pippin are captured by Orcs. While held captive, he purposefully drops his elven brooch as a sign for Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, who are in pursuit. During a skirmish among his captors, Pippin and Merry escape, and meet the tree-giant Treebeard, leader of the Ents. They rouse the Ents against the wizard Saruman and destroy his stronghold of Isengard. Treebeard's "Ent-draught" makes Merry and Pippin grow to become the tallest Hobbits in history.

Gríma Wormtongue, Saruman's spy among the Rohirrim, throws Saruman's palantír , a stone of seeing, at the Fellowship. Pippin looks into it, and sees Sauron himself. To keep Pippin safe from Sauron's forces, Gandalf takes him to the city of Minas Tirith, separating him from his friends. The effect on Sauron is important to the plot, as Sauron wrongly assumes that Pippin has the One Ring, and that he is Saruman's prisoner. [2]

In Minas Tirith, Pippin is brought to the city's Steward Denethor, and volunteers to serve him out of respect for Denethor's son Boromir, who had died trying to defend Merry and Pippin from the Orcs. According to Gandalf, this gesture touches Denethor, who accepts the Hobbit's offer and makes him one of the Guards of the Citadel. Later, when Denethor despairs and sets out to burn his son Faramir and himself alive in Rath Dínen, Pippin fetches Gandalf, saving Faramir's life.

Pippin is the only hobbit to join the Army of the West, led by Aragorn, as it assaults the Black Gate of Mordor in a feint to distract Sauron from the One Ring's journey towards Mount Doom. During the resulting battle, Pippin kills a troll, who falls on him. Gimli recognises his Hobbit feet under the troll and drags him out, saving his life.

Returning home, he and Merry rouse the hobbits of the Shire to destroy Saruman's forces during the Scouring of the Shire, achieving greater fame in their homeland than Frodo.

Reception

The critic Jane Chance Nitzsche discusses the role of Pippin and his friend Merry, another hobbit, in illuminating the contrast between the "good and bad Germanic lords Theoden and Denethor". She writes that both leaders receive the allegiance of a hobbit, but very differently: Denethor, Steward of Gondor, undervalues Pippin because he is small, and binds him with a formal oath, whereas Theoden, King of Rohan, treats Merry with love, which the hobbit responds to. [3]

The critic Tom Shippey notes that Tolkien uses the two hobbits and their low simple humour as foils for the much higher romance to which he was aspiring with the more heroic and kingly figures of Theoden, Denethor, and Aragorn: an unfamiliar and old-fashioned writing style that might otherwise, Shippey writes, have lost his readers entirely. [4] He notes that Pippin and Merry serve, too, as guides to introduce the reader to seeing the various non-human characters, letting the reader know that an ent looks an old tree stump or "almost like the figure of some gnarled old man". [5]

The two apparently minor hobbits have another role, too, Shippey writes: it it to remain of good courage when even strong men start to doubt whether victory is possible, as when Pippin comforts the soldier of Gondor, Beregond, as the hordes of Mordor approach Minas Tirith. [6]

A fourth purpose, notes the Tolkien critic Paul Kocher, is given by Tolkien himself, in the words of the wizard Gandalf: "the young hobbits ... were brought to Fangorn, and their coming was like the falling of small stones that starts an avalanche in the mountains." [7] Kocher observes that Tolkien is describing Merry and Pippin's role in the same terms as he spells out Gollum's purpose and Gandalf's "reincarnation"; in Kocher's words, the "finger of Providence" [7] can be glimpsed: "All are filling roles written for them by the same great playwright." [7]

Adaptations

Merry and Pippin (left), in Ralph Bakshi's animated version of The Lord of the Rings BakshiMerryPippin.JPG
Merry and Pippin (left), in Ralph Bakshi's animated version of The Lord of the Rings
Billy Boyd as Pippin in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Pippinprintscreen.jpg
Billy Boyd as Pippin in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

In Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings, Pippin was voiced by Dominic Guard. In the live-action recordings Bakshi used for rotoscoping, Billy Barty was the model for several of the hobbits, but it is not clear whether Barty modelled for Pippin.

In the 1980 animated version of The Return of the King , made for television, the character was voiced by Sonny Melendrez.

In the 1981 BBC radio serial of The Lord of the Rings, Pippin was played by John McAndrew.

Jari Pehkonen played Peregrin Took in the 1993 Finnish miniseries Hobitit .

In Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Pippin is played by Scottish actor Billy Boyd. The filmmakers originally planned for Boyd to adopt an English accent for the role, in keeping with the other hobbits; however, Jackson found that Boyd's comic timing was not as keen when he was not using his native accent. Therefore, it was decided to allow Boyd to play the role with a Scottish accent; the decision was justified by the observation that the Took-land in which the Took clan lived was a very hilly region of the Shire and was therefore vaguely similar to Scotland, and that the Tooks invented the game of golf, just like the Scots. [8] Tolkien's own pronunciation of "Took" was more similar to "Tuck." Although Pippin is the youngest of the four hobbits in the novels, Boyd is the oldest of the four actors.

See also

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References

  1. ↑ "The Encyclopedia of Arda - Peregrin 'Pippin' Took I". www.glyphweb.com.
  2. ↑ Shippey 2005, pp. 188, 423-425.
  3. ↑ Nitzsche 1980, pp. 119-122.
  4. ↑ Shippey 2005, pp. 238-240.
  5. ↑ Shippey 2005, p. 151.
  6. ↑ Shippey 2005, p. 180.
  7. 1 2 3 Kocher 1974, pp. 44-45.
  8. ↑ Tolkien, J. R. R. (1937), Douglas A. Anderson (ed.), The Annotated Hobbit , Boston: Houghton Mifflin (published 2002), ISBN   0-618-13470-0

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