Pippin's Sixth Sense

[Kalimac]

This is a spinoff of the discussion on Aragorn_the_King's "Pippin's foolish stone" thread. One thing that occurred to several of us was that Pippin has a rather strange affinity for what Sam would call "unnatural" things; he seems to be called by a sort of sixth sense that the others don't experience. Instances cited were, of course, the stone in the well and the Palantir (Tolkien uses almost exactly the same phraseology in both cases: "Pippin was curiously attracted to the...") and also the fact that in "Uruk-Hai" Pippin has what is almost a vision of Strider running along, bending down to look for their trail in the grass.

Pippin is also the one, who, back in the Old Forest, feels so strongly oppressed by the atmosphere that he actually starts shouting "Let us out! Just let us pass through!" They're all feeling the hostility of the forest, but it certainly looks like it's struck a real nerve with Pippin for some reason. And at last, when he meets with Denethor, Tolkien describes how their eyes meet and how there seems to be sort of connection or understanding between them - I would posit that this might be because Pippin has a touch of the weakness for the otherworldly which Denethor also possesses (they both have looked into Palantiri that weren't theirs, after all).

So what do you think? Maybe it's sheer coincidence and I'm reading far too much into this, but it does seem like the veil between the ordinary and the supernatural is much thinner for Pippin than it is for the other hobbits, even Frodo under ordinary circumstances.