There are many concepts and ideas that Tolkien had that were never finalized or developed. Some of these can be found in the Lost Tales, and in the Unfinished Tales, compiled by J.R.R’s son Christopher Tolkien. Lots of these little snippets of information add layers and depth to the story, enriching the already complex history of the world and its people, and are enjoyed by fans, but there are a few that have garnered strong opposition, and the eventual fate of the hobbits is definitely one of them.
It is well known that hobbits are braver and more wondrous than their simple lifestyle would suggest. As Gandalf says, “You can learn all there is to know about a hobbit in one day, and yet after a year they can still surprise you.” The entire fate of Middle Earth, the One Ring of Power, and the people’s lives who hung in the balance were placed into the hands of these small and simple creatures, and in achieving their quest and vanquishing the evil Lord Sauron from Middle Earth, they did not disappoint.
First off comes Bilbo, the hobbit who first gets the ring in a game of riddles against Gollum. Bilbo is constantly underestimated by the dwarves, including Thorin who never wanted him to come on the quest, but despite being less than 3.5 ft tall, Bilbo saves the band several times, from the elven prisons of Mirkwood, where they were nearly eaten by spiders, from the Dragon, who is protecting the Arkenstone, and from themselves and their own greed, as he reminds them of the beauty and the friendship that they are fighting for in the first place.
When the ring passes to Frodo, and it is decided that it must be destroyed, each of the four hobbit members of the fellowship play a crucial part in the War of the Ring. Pippin helped the Ents reclaim Isengard, challenged the will of Sauron in the Palantir, and saved Faramir from a horrible fate of being burned alive. Merry also fought alongside the ents, and crucially used his sword to defeat the Witch King of Angmar, one of the most deadly foes at the Battle of Pelennor Fields. As for Sam and Frodo, their heroic deeds know no bounds. Sam is one of the bravest characters in the whole series, risking his life to protect Frodo over and over again. He bears the One Ring, challenges the orcs, stabs Shelob the spider demon, battles the overbearing power of the Silent Watchers, and wrestles with Gollum more times than can be counted, putting the fate of all that is good in the world above his own love of The Shire and the beautiful Garden he left there.
Frodo carries the ring, a literal weight dragging him down around his neck, all the way to Mordor, something that has never been attempted by the strongest men, elves or wizards of the world. He has incredible willpower to resist the ring for as long as he does, and although he becomes more and more like Sauron as he goes, giving in to the rings seductive allure, and struggles to actually throw it into the fires of Mount Doom in the end, that doesn’t undo the fact that he got it there in the first place, and lasted far longer than many of the others in the story ever could. These four hobbits are known throughout the Reunited Kingdom in the fourth ages as heroes, and go on to become Mayor’s, Thains, and decorated warriors. This is exactly who so many fans disagree with the concept that years after the War of the Rings, the entire race of hobbits is hunted by Men into extinction.
This is something that Tolkien only briefly conceptualized, and never fully developed, but the idea was that Middle Earth is an ancient part of real human history, and that the elves, dwarves and hobbits pass entirely out of the world by the time Earth becomes what we know it as today. Middle Earth is thought to be Europe, with its several countries and colonies rolled into one, and humans now are supposedly direct descendants of the kings of old.
However, in order to make this more feasible, Tolkien suggested that Men may have begun hunting hobbits for sport, until they dwindled and diminished, and disappeared from the world. This would be a truly cruel and twisted end to such a beautiful race of creatures, especially after all that they had done to save everyone. Most fans prefer the version that Tolkien wrote in the Introduction to the Lord of the Rings, that hobbits have ‘become rare and shy of the Big People, as they call us’ and that they do still exist somewhere on Earth, just in hiding.