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]

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.)