# Exsqueezeme!?



## Ancalagon (Nov 8, 2009)

> I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.


_*Bilbo Baggins FoTR*_

For anyone who has played football, this seems to me to be Tolkien's equivalent of the 'Offside Rule', unfathomable Discuss.


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## Alcuin (Nov 8, 2009)

The statement is more intelligible if you break it in half. ( That’s appropriate, isn’t it?)

If Bilbo told someone, “I don’t know you half as well as I should like,” then a back-handed compliment emerges: _I’d like to know you better, but for one reason or another, I’m not going to have that opportunity._ He expresses a fondness for them and regret that he will no longer be with them. Append to the front of it, “I don’t know half of you…” and Bilbo splits his audience from the start: to that half, he declares his fondness and regret in leaving them.

I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve

“I like you half as well as you deserve,” is more difficult. The clear conveyance is, _I don’t really like you,_ but the statement might also be interpreted as, _I don’t like you as much as I should._ The first interpretation is, or borders on, either an insult or a put-down; the second, however, is much more humble, and must be understood almost as an apology. 

There are two interpretations of the second half, then. _I don’t like half of you very much_, an interpretation someone like Otho Sackville-Baggins was likely to render. On the other hand, consider Fredegar “Fatty” Bolger, whom Bilbo did like. Had Bilbo said, “Fatty, I like you, but I don’t like you as well as you deserve,” and added, “and I regret that,” it would be hard to fault Bilbo except with a kind of sin of omission. 

Still, it is hard to escape the idea that if the first half of the statement, “I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like,” is complimentary, the second half, “I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve,” is mildly uncomplimentary. 

Even so, this second half, “I like you half as well as you deserve,” is not accusatory. Bilbo doesn’t say he likes them better than they deserve, which would make Bilbo a roguish character; nor does he say that the don’t deserve to be liked, in which he would be condemning them. 

It _is_ a difficult statement, and intentionally so. But I think the more difficult part is the second half.


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