Merry Brandybuck
Meriadoc Brandybuck, usually called Merry, is a Hobbit, a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, featured throughout his most famous work, The Lord of the Rings.
Commentators have noted that his and Pippin's actions serve to throw light on the characters of the good and bad lords Théoden and Denethor, Steward of Gondor, while their simple humour acts as a foil for the higher romance involving kings and the heroic Aragorn.
[T 6] Arriving at Bree, Merry was not celebrating in the Prancing Pony when Frodo put on the Ring; he was outside taking a solitary walk, and was nearly overcome by a Nazgûl.
[T 8] Halted at the entrance to Moria, Merry asked Gandalf the meaning of the door inscription "Speak, friend, and enter".
[T 10] Escaping with Pippin into Fangorn forest, they were rescued by the leader of the Ents, Treebeard, and given an Ent-draught to drink: it made them both grow unnaturally tall for hobbits.
[T 11] Accompanying Treebeard to the Entmoot and later to the wizard Saruman's fortress of Isengard, which the Ents destroyed, they took up residence in a gate-house, meeting King Théoden of Rohan, and were reunited with the Fellowship.
During the resulting Scouring of the Shire, Merry commanded the hobbit forces, and killed the leader of Saruman's "ruffians" at the Battle of Bywater.
[T 24] In the prefaces and appendices to The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien employed the conceit that he was the modern translator of a unique manuscript, the Red Book of Westmarch, and that his stories of Middle-earth derived from that.
[4] The Tolkien scholar Jane Chance discusses the role of Merry and his friend Pippin in illuminating the contrast between the "good and bad Germanic lords Théoden and Denethor".
She writes that both leaders receive the allegiance of a hobbit, but very differently: Théoden, King of Rohan, treats Merry with love, which is reciprocated, whereas Denethor, Steward of Gondor, undervalues Pippin because he is small, and binds him with a harsh formal oath.
Tolkien Encyclopedia, writes that prophecy in Middle-earth depended on characters' understanding of the Music of the Ainur, the divine plan for Arda, and was often ambiguous.
[12] In the 1980 Rankin/Bass animated version of The Return of the King, made for television, the character was voiced by the radio personality Casey Kasem.
[14] He was portrayed by Sergey Shelgunov in the 1991 Russian television play Khraniteli,[15] and by Jarmo Hyttinen in the 1993 Finnish miniseries Hobitit.
[16] In Peter Jackson's 2001–2003 film trilogy adaptation of the books, Merry was portrayed by Dominic Monaghan as a cheerful prankster full of fun and practical jokes.
