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

[gallifaerie.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed these two chapters so much! So much happens in them, it's brilliant!

I quite liked the comparison between the dwarves, Beorn and the elves in terms of how they view treasure and things that they've crafted. The dwarves love their own handiwork, but they use it to make beautiful things made of precious metal and jewels. Beorn seems to make all of his own things, but using natural material, mostly wood, and for a purely practical purpose. And then it says that the elven-king had a treasure hoard that he's building up, but that his people don't actually make anything themselves. So you've got these three groups that all have different ideas about the value of handmade objects and what they're used for.

Another thing I noticed was that there seems to be some kind of connection between Bilbo and sleeping, or rather, the times when he's asleep. So far, there seems to be a recurring pattern that Bilbo is often awake at opportune times when the others are sleeping, then asleep or unconscious when the others are awake. Like when Bilbo awakes in the night when Gandalf and the dwarves are all asleep and hears scuffling at the door of Beorn’s hall; but in the morning, the dwarves are all up and having breakfast whilst he's still asleep. And earlier in the story, he's late setting out on the first day of the adventure because he wakes up late, and then there's the whole thing with waking up early in the goblin's front porch and realising what's happening before anyone else. And of course, he spends the final battle knocked out. I wonder if this is highlighting how different Bilbo is to the others, and also how useful this makes him to them – he ends up seeing things the others don’t see because he is conscious at different times (and he does literally have better eyesight than the dwarves as well).

Also, I didn't notice when reading The Hobbit before, but the spiders capturing the dwarves and binding them up in webs is basically a repeat of the trolls capturing them and putting them in sacks, with Bilbo being free in both situations. Only Gandalf was there to rescue them from the trolls, but this time Bilbo has to do it on his own. Which makes me so proud of how far he's come on this journey, because he's basically filling in for Gandalf. And the dwarves are so appreciative of him for that, and then I just get too many hobbit feelings and lose all coherence.

One of my favourite humorous parts of the book has got to be: ‘no spider has ever liked being called Attercop, and Tomnoddy of course is insulting to anybody.’

[sigridhr]

And Smaug, who is treated with some disdain in that he hoards precious things but has no regard at all for their value. So there's arguably a fourth category there.

I wonder if this is highlighting how different Bilbo is to the others, and also how useful this makes him to them – he ends up seeing things the others don’t see because he is conscious at different times (and he does literally have better eyesight than the dwarves as well).

I love this reading of it a lot.

The naming of Sting is, I think, one of Bilbo's major turning points (between the mirrored besting of Gollum in the riddle game, and his riddles with Smaug). It's also the point where the Dwarves start expecting him to have the answers - which he does manage, in the end. I second your Hobbit feels because agehagoehawl; Bilbo absolutely rocks in this chapter.

[j_quadrifrons]

Well, the narrator does say that Smaug knows the market value of all of his treasures; it's the hoarding that's the specific source of the disdain, I think.

One of the books I read recently - Olson? - pointed out that we're working from a Nordic frame of reference by now, and that the right and proper thing for someone to do with that much gold is to give it away. Which is exactly right: in the culture that produced those sagas, the king's job was not to acquire gold but to distribute it. (Poor Thorin. He fails utterly at being king.)

[sigridhr]

Arrgh, mea culpa. I should double-check things. :P

Mmm - yes.I remember from Beowulf, and there's a line in the Wanderer too, I think - about the king being the "giver of rings and filler of cups" or something like that.

I wrote a thing about Thorin's heroic journey, but I think I'm starting to seriously disagree with myself and I should probably go back and re-think it all through, tbh. I'm not sure I really know what to make of him anymore.

[j_quadrifrons]

Thorin is kind of a mess, isn't he? And it's hard to make sense of him in the book as we don't know very much about him before now, but what I tend to think is he's got an ideal of kingship that he's never had a model for, and a lot of experience of failure and ruin, and a very strong sense that the world is not the way it ought to be but no clear idea of how to put it back together again, which is why he fails so miserably when actually faced with a kingship decision, ie, Bard demanding a (perfectly justified) share in the treasure.

(I see why they put Thorin's more personal hatred for Elves in general and Thranduil in particular into the movie, but I do think it simplifies things in a way that makes them less interesting.)

[sigridhr]

That's very true. I'd forgotten that the only reason he didn't get fried when Smaug attacked is because he was out hooliganing (well, not really...) with his friends when the dragon attacked and was, for a dwarf, very young at the time.

He fails as a leader too, though, really even before Bard. He's defaulting to Bilbo already when they're outside the Lonely Mountain.

There's something really tragic about Thráin to me - who goes mad and essentially wanders off (I think it's implied this is at least in part due to his bearing of one of the seven?), leaving Thorin alone (with no knowledge of what had happened to him) and stripped of yet another heirloom of his family - and yet in all that time he'd never told Thorin of the backdoor to Erebor or the key.

I'm really really curious as to how Beorn knew Thorin's name and lineage but not Gandalf's. I suppose if his name proceeds him in that fashion it would contribute to his feeling like he had a greater purpose and life to fulfil than the one he'd been living.

[j_quadrifrons]

Thrain just kind of kills me. He goes off determined to retake Erebor alone (at least, given the direction they were heading, that's what I always assumed) and Balin and Dwalin go along, presumably to try to talk him out of it and get him to see sense, and then he up and disappears on them and no one ever knows what happened to him.

Except for Gandalf, who only figures it out years later, because it never occurred to him that the pathetic creature in the Necromancer's dungeons would be Thrain, son of Thror.

(I've always thought Gandalf very much redeemed of his frequent dick moves in The Hobbit simply for the fact that he never tells Thorin how he came by the map and key. Thorin does not need to know that.)

...I'd quite forgotten that, too. You're right, running across people who know his story like that can't be good for Thorin's ego. And since this is Tolkien, I do think that ego is a huge part of it. Thorin never succumbs to Tolkien's greatest sin, despair; his failure is much more like Boromir's, in that he has an idea of how the world is going to work and he doesn't let little things like the greater experience of wiser people get in his way. Both of them do learn, but they learn the hard way, and too late.

[sigridhr]

I really hope they put some of Thráin's arc in the films because OH GOD YES the fact that Gandalf can't get anything sensible out of him than his desperate desire for his son to have his heirlooms... geez.

Yeah, there are a lot of interesting parallels between Thorin and Boromir.

[j_quadrifrons]

PJ does love to start his movies off with flashbacks, so I have hopes that we'll get some of Thrain in the start of the second or third film.

(And by "hopes" I mean "oh god I already know I'm going to sob like a lost child at the end of the third movie, do they really have to do it to me more than once?" But y'know.)

[sigridhr]

Well, Thráin is listed on the IMDB page for the next film, so I'm really, really hoping we get something of his story. The thing is, since Gandalf hasn't been to Dol Goldur yet, I have a theory that Thrain is still there right now and Gandalf got the map and key somehow before he wound up in the clutches of Sauron. So it might not necessarily be a flashback.

Yeah. The waterworks will be out in full if they do include it, I think. And I'll probably just have a cardiac arrest in the theatre during the third film.

[gallifaerie.livejournal.com]

I think Smaug is definitely another category - he loves treasure, but he has no use for it (except possibly for sleeping on, and making himself a protective undercoating with a strategically-placed vulnerable spot). I suppose he exemplifies greed - just wanting more things for the sake of it.

Thank you!

Yes, Bilbo definitely seems more confident, and competent, in Mirkwood, despite the fact that he is finding their journey extremely difficult and he is still thinking about Bag End. I love that about him - as he progresses through the book and slowly grows in courage and skill, he still retains this realism and longing for home, and it's just so believable. I want a protagonist who's dreaming about bacon and eggs for breakfast one minute, that stabbing a spider between the eyes the next! It makes him the everyman's hero.

[sigridhr]

I want a protagonist who's dreaming about bacon and eggs for breakfast one minute, that stabbing a spider between the eyes the next! It makes him the everyman's hero.

THIS! Skadi-of-the-North pointed out in her review that in the film the narrative shifts from a focus on Bilbo's story, to a Thorin's, and I think we really lose that sense of dreaming of bacon and eggs and reluctant adventuring in the process, a little bit. Which is a pity, because Bilbo is much more relatable than Thorin, I think.

[j_quadrifrons]

Terrific catch on Bilbo's sleeping habits.

He also has a couple of relevant dreams, I think, but I'm afraid I find Tolkien's dream sequences so opaque that I forget them instantly, so I couldn't tell you what they are.

(I'm with you on the Attercop and Tomnoddy line - I always remember it, and I will be very sad if they don't put Bilbo's little spider-taunting poems into the movie.)

[gallifaerie.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

Yes, I've been noticing his dreams as I've been going along - he has a sort of dream-premonition about the goblins, and he dreamt of Bag End the night they spent at the eyrie. There's definitely something going on with the dreams, but I'm not sure what it is!

If that doesn't make it into the movie, I cannot be held responsible for the consequences of my actions.