The Lord of the Rings Discussion Project: Chapter 5 and Chapter 6

[Earniel]

Originally Posted by Olmer

One of Frodo’s friends blithely volunteered to �play Frodo� for dodging the Riders from the right track, and all of them agreed that it is an excellent plan and, seems, Frodo agreed that it is sound enough.
It shows that even having such terrifying experience they still not fully comprehend of what terrible and deadly evil the Riders are, and being in the safe heaven of Shire the feeling of the danger became dull and kind like distant. Which , of course, was a deplorable mistake.

I think it mainly shows that's the nature of Hobbits and possibly one of the reasons for their typical resilliance to evil. Suppose you live in a quiet, peaceful community like Hobbiton. They have little clue what goes on in the world beyond the Shire. The only things that are remotely scary are stories of the Old Forest and the occasional 'big' ruffian that causes a bit of commotion. Hobbits seem to have developed this marvelous natural trait of thinking 'oh, it won't be that bad; if I don't think about it, it'll go away'. If you tell them something is terrible and deadly they probably don't really believe you.

And untill here in the book you don't yet get the idea that the riders are a terrible and deadly evil. Sure, they're creepy, they have a sinister dress code and little or no manners. Trying to run over Farmer Maggot wasn't very polite of them. But they hadn't gone chopping off heads of Hobbits that crossed their path at night just yet. But with what the Hobbits knew about them then, I doubt they considered a violent break-in by the riders in the Crickhollow-house possible.

Further I don't think Fatty had to 'play' Frodo himself. All he would have to do was to make the house look lived in and occupied. And if visitors came to see Frodo he could say that Frodo was unavailable for the moment because he was taking a nap, doing some important writing or taking a walk in the countryside, something like that. Fatty would be able to keep that up for a reasonable period of time before it came out, long enough to give Frodo time to put enough distance between him and the Shire. Fatty was quite safe in that role, although after the raid on the house I doubt he would have felt that way!