Epic Tolkien Bookclub: Week Four

[sigridhr]

  Epic Tolkien Bookclub: Week Four (The Hobbit)
Chapter VII: Queer Lodgings 
Chapter VIII: Flies and Spiders

Rules

I very much doubt we'll require much in the way of formal rules, but just for the sake of formality and clarity:

• Discussion is welcome and encouraged, as is disagreement. Name-calling and personal attacks will be punished by forced attendance at the Vogon-Orcish Poetry Recitation Competition in Minas Morgul.  
  
• There is no spoiler policy in place. Although we're reading the Hobbit, please feel free to bring in things from other Tolkien works, any of the films, the History of Middle Earth, the Letters of JRR Tolkien, and, if you should like, other literary sources. 
• There is no such thing as too much geekery. Or taking the text too seriously.  
• If you have any concerns at any point, I'm the closest thing this gong show has to a mod, so feel free to get in touch. I can be reached either by PM through this site, or directly by email at sigridhr.lokidottir@gmail.com. 

Discussion on this post will officially run from Friday 1st February 2013 to Friday 8th February 2013. However, the post will remain open after that point, so you're more than welcome to continue discussions on. 

Comments

[j_quadrifrons]

Can I just talk about how much I love Beorn? Like Tom Bombadil, he doesn't seem to fit neatly into Tolkien's world, but he absolutely belongs there. He's a morally ambiguous character, frightening and bloodthirsty (I mean, he has an orc head and a warg skin on his door) but he is a good and loyal friend. (He kills Bolg in the BoFA.) And, of course, he's very much a literalization of the Nordic berzerker, in the same way that huorns are a literalization of "Birnam wood comes to Dunsinane."

The slow accumulation of Dwarves at Beorn's house is one of my very favorite things. That, and the fact that he doesn't know Gandalf. I do believe he's one of the only people in Middle Earth who doesn't know Gandalf.

"Flies and Spiders" always terrified me, not because of the spiders, but because of the dark. (In Tolkien, spiders and darkness are profoundly linked - Ungoliant creates a Darkness for Melkor to sneak around in, so probably these spiders, who are descendants of hers, do something similar.)

I also love the creepy Celtic fairy-tale-ness of Mirkwood. The sleeping river, the endless dreams, the fairy hunt, the black butterflies. Creepy and wonderful. I think this gets across the ethereal other-worldliness of the Elves much better than their ridiculous tra-la-la-lally in Rivendell, but of course Tolkien meant for both of them to be true.

This post is turning into an epic, so theorizing about Elves in a new comment.

[halberdier]

Gandalf knows how to work his audience - ad breaks every five minutes to build up tension and introduce people :P

Also, how does *anybody* in Middle Earth not know Gandalf? (Well, I suppose he knows him now for the next time, lol)

[j_quadrifrons]

It is rather delightful to realize that we're actually seeing someone meet Gandalf for the first time. It can't happen very often. (One imagines Beorn telling this story later to the Beornings.) (I don't know if the Beornings are meant to be bear cubs, but that's what I always think, so.)

[sigridhr]

And I love that his first response to that is "Gandalf? Never heard of him."

Just kills me.

[j_quadrifrons]

I have always had a glorious mental image of Gandalf's face at that point, and I have full faith in Sir Ian's ability to reproduce it on screen.

[sigridhr]

I love how once he's decided he likes the Dwarves, he really likes them - to the extent that they spill all the beans and he's happy to help them.

And - of course - there's Shelob, who is beaten back by the light of Eärendil. Like in Mirkwood it's the darkness that separates them and allows Frodo to be captured - like Ungoliant's darkness destroys the two trees and lets Morgoth take the Silmarils (I think? I hope I'm remembering that right). There's a lot of light/dark symbolism in Tolkien. There's Moria (which literally means 'black pit') when it gets its Balrog infestation - and then we have Gandalf the Grey falling literally into the black pit, but re-emerging from it as Gandalf the White and bringing hope. Not to mention the added symbolism of Moria being empty when we see it - as contrasted to Gimli's description of Moria as a place of light in Durin's time:

In many-pillared halls of stone
With golden roof and silver floor,
And runes of power upon the door.
The light of sun and star and moon
In shining lamps of crystal hewn
Undimmed by cloud or shade of night
There shone for ever fair and bright.

So you also have the darkness of Moria as an empty place, and the failure of Balin to reclaim it.

And of course the darkness of the dawnless day that begins the battle on the Pelennor, which is broken by the Rohirrim who literally bring the sunshine. I'm sure there are more, but I can't think of them right now.

I love how Mirkwood is described as being the most dangerous part of their journey (nevermind the dragon, shall we). I guess that says something about the profound psychological effect of darkness in Tolkien's work.

[j_quadrifrons]

That is a truly excellent catalog of the effects of darkness in Tolkien (entirely right on Ungoliant, too).

I always have to wrestle with my mental images of Dwarven cities, because my default assumption for caves = dark, and of course they aren't supposed to be. Hm. I feel like there's something to be said here for the way that Elves live in forests, which can also tend to be dark places but are for the most part out in the natural light (Elves are, of course, also strongly associated with starlight) while Dwarves obviously make their own light. I'm not sure where to go with it, but it's interesting.

You know, I'd forgotten that Mirkwood really is called the most dangerous part of the journey (I suppose the dragon doesn't count because it's technically the end-point, not the journey); I just remember that I was terrified of it as a child, and I loved it.

[sigridhr]

If only my memory were so good for the stuff I'm actually studying! ;)

I feel like there's something clever to say about forests in Tolkien's work, but I can't quite get it to form into an intelligent and coherent thought. There's definitely something odd about all of them - something that seems to mess with space and time, in a sense - but I can't quite put my finger on what it might mean.

I guess if we're talking about light - the Dwarfs are at heart craftsmen, so making their own light follows from that. Whereas the elves are transformers and embellishers of nature. Galadriel takes the already remarkable golden wood and makes it something extraordinary, in the same way, I think, that the glades where the elves hold their feasts in Mirkwood are transformed from the rest of the forest.

I hadn't thought of that. That makes sense because I kept thinking "but you're going to fight a dragon..." :P

[j_quadrifrons]

It's obviously not a source, but I keep thinking of the forest in Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood, where the forest is the actual portal through which myth is embodied. I think they're both working from the same source, though. England (does? did during Tolkien's life, anyway) still have forests that were older than human memory, after all, and fairy tales are always full of forests. (I, who grew up in the American Midwest, always longed for forests like that.)