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

[j_quadrifrons]

I find it hilarious that Tolkien had essentially created this entire universe to house his Elves, and yet, in this book, they're all utter bastards. I mean, it's great, but it is a little odd (and I think indicates that the Professor did not necessarily always take himself as seriously as one might think).

Olsen points out that the - he calls it a misunderstanding, I'd call it an interpersonal clusterfuck - that leads to all the Dwarves being imprisoned prefigures the disaster at the Mountain, when Bard and Thranduil come to sue for part of the hoard. They are both fundamentally misunderstandings, but they're based in a certain natural (and not unwarranted) suspicion that has a tendency to make things worse rather than better.

Olsen also calls Bilbo a "subsistence burglar," which I find unbelievably endearing. <3

Laketown is apparently based on archaeological evidence which, at the time Tolkien was writing, was taken to indicate that ancient German and Norse towns were sometimes built on lakes. Now we tend to assume they were built on shores. But I do have to point out crannogs, which are Irish dwellings that were built, not on top of lakes, but in them - man-made islands, kind of, just big enough for a household. (Not directly relevant, but crannogs are fucking awesome, so.)

Bilbo's increasing bitchiness is a source of constant joy to me.

A point which is not directly brought up in the book but which is striking on reflection: Smaug's attack is within the personal experience of some of these Dwarves, while many of the Men of Lake-town don't actually believe Smaug exists, he comes out so infrequently.

I've got a lot of notes about the role of luck in the story which I'd be willing type up if anybody wants to talk about it, but nothing particularly interesting to say at the moment.

[sigridhr]

I don't have time to respond properly, but can I just get really, really excited about the fact that Tolkien based Lake Town on crannogs?! Because I have a lot of feelings about crannogs and they are truly, truly awesome things. Aside from the fact that they're badass artificial islands, they're also a tremendously cool archaeological resource because there's generally excellent preservation - including that of textiles.

[j_quadrifrons]

CRANNOGS ARE SO COOL you get WOOD and CLOTH and FUCKING AWESOMENESS

in one crannog they found the best collection ever of royal jewelry (and some dice and some wine bottles and some deer bones, sounds like a great night)

basically the ancient Irish were all "fuck this bog, imma build my house here anyway" and then they DID

I have a lot of feelings about Irish archaeology apparently

[sigridhr]

Yessssss. I think I read about that one. I wanted to work them into an essay of some kind, but I never got the chance. But I remember we did one class on them and I spent the entire time scribbling notes furiously because YES THEY COMPLETELY WERE LIKE SCREW YOU MOTHER NATURE IMMA BUILD MY HOUSE WHERE I LIKE. Bog stuff is the coolest stuff. I mean, you have crannogs with this fantastic preservation, and then you have freaky possibly sacrificial burial sites in bogs with also fantastic and creepy preservation.

Bogs are wicked cool.

[j_quadrifrons]

I took a class from the guy who excavated that crannog, I say as though I'm namedropping the president or some shit, I don't care he was awesome. Crannogs are awesome. Bogs are awesome.

(Did you know they recently discovered that what they thought was two bog burials in Scotland turned out to be six people? OH MY GOD the ritual and religious implications of that are SO COOL I MIGHT EXPLODE)

[sigridhr]

gagheoa I am writhing in envy.

AND NO I HAD NOT SEEN THAT. OH MY GOD.THAT IS SO CREEPILY COOL. Could you imagine being in the lab when those DNA results came in?

[gallifaerie.livejournal.com]

I like that you pointed out the difference between the life spans of the dwarves and the men - the tale of Smaug and the King under the mountain all feels a lot like folklore and legend to the men, whereas the dwarves (and the elves) take it all a lot more seriously because they can actually remember it. That might be why the dwarves get a much better reception in Lake-town than in Thranduil's cave.

Ooh, your notes on luck sound interesting! It is a pretty important theme of the book.

[j_quadrifrons]

Oooh, good point - as far as the men of Lake-town are concerned, the Dwarves coming back is a great mythological event, the fulfillment of prophecies out of legend; it's hard not to be at least a little impressed by that. Whereas Thranduil...yeah, not so impressed with them.

Comments on luck below, as multiple people have asked.

[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!