The Scouring of the Shire

The Scouring of the Shire signifies a form of death and rebirth for the hobbits. At the beginning of the books, the hobbits are timid and would probably not fight against Saruman, but after their adventure, they are battle-hardened and ready to fight for their home. It also signifies the death of the old world and the birth of the new world when Sam opens his box and new growth sprouts everywhere.
Tolkien described hobbits in The Hobbit as creatures that never go on adventures (except for the occasional Took), and when Gandalf and Bilbo are talking in the beginning of The Hobbit, Bilbo called them “mad adventures,” and said that Gandalf “Used to upset things badly…once upon a time.” Most hobbits also like to eat most of the day, and seem lazy, although they will work hard on their gardens. They aren’t the kind of folks that would go and fight. Sam, Frodo, Merry and Pippin’s adventures in the greater world change them. They learn how to fight for the places and hobbits they love, and how to defend their territory. It should be no surprise to the reader that they can fight Saruman and his “shirrifs” so easily.
After Saruman’s death, the Shire has been ruined for the most part. Sam, however, has his box full of magic elven dust. The hobbits rebuild the shire, and then on a windy day, Sam distributes his dust. The Shire regrows to even better than it was. This is symbolic of the changes in the rest of the world. The land of Mordor is no longer a dark wasteland (it is actually a light wasteland), and Gondor no longer needs to fight against it constantly. The Shire was destroyed, but then was purged of all the evil in it. Then the world was rebuilt to a better form than it was in, and the Shire was no exception.
The Scouring of the Shire also presents one of the many morals of this story. The moral is that trying to get revenge will fail. Saruman purposely ruined the Shire because he claimed the Hobbits ruined his home (Isengard). Saruman tried to get his revenge on all of the hobbits, but the whole campaign ends with his death. In this chapter, Saruman represents a new kind of evil: vengeance. The hobbits defeat vengeance and rebuild their home.
The scouring of the Shire has significance in many ways. It shows how many changes can occur in hobbits in a year’s time, as well as displaying a small scale version of the death of evil and the rebirth of the world without it. It also shows one of the many morals in the story, which is don’t be vengeful. Overall, this is a very important chapter in the book and should not have been left out of the movie, even though it would have added another half hour to an already three hour movie.