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]

On luck:

Olson goes on for quite a bit about luck at this point in his book, and I took some very vague notes that I cannot entirely decipher any more, so I'm not sure how much of this is him and how much of it is me.

It seems to me that there are two kinds of luck in The Hobbit. First off there's luck that creates an opportunity, like the lucky coincidences of, say, the butler being drunk at just the right time, or Bilbo managing to find the Dwarves in the forest after they've been taken by the spiders. These are opportunities that have to be seized: if Bilbo hadn't come up with the barrel plan, or if he hadn't been willing to attack the spiders, nothing would have come of it. (Interestingly enough, some of this was actually added in later - Tolkien originally had Bilbo tracking the Dwarves in Mirkwood, only to change it in later drafts to a lucky guess that sent him in the right direction. What this means I'm not sure, but it is interesting.)

The second kind of luck is the kind that turns disaster into good fortune - like when they stumble off the path in Mirkwood only to find out later that the end of the path they were on would only have gotten them killed. I'm even less sure of what this means than the first kind of luck. I keep wanting to put some kind of "dark cloud/silver lining" interpretation on it and then that sounds too saccharine. I am reminded, though, of what Gandalf says in the end - "You don't really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit?" This almost implies a higher power putting a hand in, whether that higher power is Gandalf or someone else, but I hesitate to read too much into that one either. So.

(And then, of course, there's the thrush. He's a little bit of both kinds of luck at once, but I think he's largely a flying plot device. I'm willing to entertain arguments to the contrary, though.)

[sigridhr]

I think regarding the second one, Tolkien's coining of the term eucatastrophe is pretty relevant as well. I'd consider the thrush falling into this category – Bilbo and the Dwarves are trapped in the mountain, and Lake Town is done for, but Bilbo's eucatastrophic discovery and the thrush's overhearing it is what saves the day.

I feel like there's an interesting distinction between eucatastrophic and catastrophic knowledge. Eucatastrophic knowledge strikes me as the sort of ace in the hole kind of knowledge - Bilbo's learning of Smaug's one weakness is arguably pretty useless to him personally because he hasn't a snowflake's chance in hell of actually slaying the dragon, but does enable Bard to kill Smaug. Conversely, you have Denethor gaining catastrophic knowledge via the Palantir, and coming to the (erroneous) conclusion that Gondor is done for, driving him to suicide. People like Gandalf and Bilbo don't pretend to know how things will turn out, and, inevitably, they turn out alright through a great deal of luck and bravery. One is closed and the other open-ended, I guess.

[j_quadrifrons]

Hm. Fair enough. I do think the thrush is a little *much* for a eucatastrophe - he's just so out of left field. But structurally it is very much a Tolkien-esque eucatastrophic moment (though I find it miles less satisfying than, say, the Eagles coming to Mount Doom).