Epic Tolkien Bookclub: Week Five

[sigridhr]

 Epic Tolkien Bookclub: Week Five (The Hobbit)
Chapter IX: Barrels out of Bond
Chapter X: A Warm Welcome

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 forcing you to read Evil!Thranduil Badfic for the rest of eternity. 
  
• 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 8th February 2013 to Friday 15th February 2013. However, the post will remain open after that point, so you're more than welcome to continue discussions on. 

Comments

[sigridhr]

I'd love to hear your thoughts on luck. It was one of the things that struck me, re-reading this, is how ridiculously lucky they are. Not only does the narrative explicitly say so (luck of an usual kind, even) as regards Galion getting sloshed, but then it's ridiculously (borderline-implausibly) lucky to me that the elves don't check the barrels before tipping them out. As I'd imagine a barrel-full of mutinous dwarf feels very different than an empty one.

Plus there's the line about how they couldn't have made it through Mirkwood anyway, so, getting captured was, in and of itself, an act of luck. And, of course, the finding of the Ring.

Also regarding the interpersonal clusterfuck - which is a phrase I will now be using as often as I can possibly get away with it - I hadn't picked up on that. It's interesting, because I feel it almost contrasts directly in a way with Lothlorien in LotR. It's treated with suspicion by most of its neighbours, and by Boromir, if I remember correctly. The company is bound and blindfolded, which echoes the blindfolding of the dwarves here (especially given the brouhaha over Gimli being blindfolded, who probably remembered what happened to his father when the elves tried to pull that one) - but Galadriel tells them to remove it, which dissolves the imminent clusterfuck and leads to a reconciliation between Dwarves and Elves, of a sort.

[j_quadrifrons]

Comments on luck below, as multiple people have asked.

Good point on the Lothlorien/Galadriel parallel - and if you want to throw in Silmarillion history here (which, why not), Galadriel has just as much reason as Thranduil to be paranoid, if not of the Fellowship in particular. But she, unlike Thranduil, sees the big picture, that if the Fellowship are not helped then the whole of Middle-Earth is in danger, Lothlorien included. (One can see where Thranduil might not take this point very seriously, given that his kingdom has been under threat from Dol Guldur for quite some time, but.)

(Also, to be fair, if Thorin had told him "We're going to kill the dragon and retake Erebor," Thranduil would probably have laughed in his face, and rightly so. They aren't the most...competent company.)

[sigridhr]

Mirkwood strikes me as the awkward cousin of all the Third Age elven realms. Everyone else got nice magicky rings, and all Thranduil got was a nutty, evil Maia moving in and a neighbourly dragon.

I'd be grumpy too.

[j_quadrifrons]

It's so true. Also - caves! Who the fuck lives in caves nowadays!