sigridhr | Epic Tolkien Bookclub: Week Six

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Epic Tolkien Bookclub: Week Six

Epic Tolkien Bookclub: Week Six (The Hobbit)
Chapter XI: On the Doorstep
Chapter XII: Inside Information

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 live in an AU where Tolkien was never born.
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 15th February 2013 to Friday 22nd February 2013. However, the post will remain open after that point, so you're more than welcome to continue discussions on.

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I keep not posting on these, but I am loving the discussion. :D

I love how facetious the chapter titles continue to be, even as the story gets more and more serious. (Inside Information, indeed.)

On the Doorstep is very possibly the bleakest thing in Middle Earth until you finally get to Mordor. They clearly don't know what to do. They stop and check out the front gate first - which, god, is an entirely heartbreaking mental image. Bilbo refuses to sneak in by the front gate because he doesn't want to see the ruins of Dale again (well, and because that's a shitty plan). Desolation of the Dragon indeed.

The image of them taking their axes to the door and being terrified away by the echoes reminds me of Moria, and is also deeply creepy. It's gotta be bad to scare Dwarves.

No matter how hard I try, I cannot make the key-hole and the moon-runes prophecy make sense in any kind of logical way, so I have given up trying.

Inside Information, on the other hand, is a chapter full of sass. "You are familiar with Thorin's style on important occasions," the narrator says. "O Thorin Thrain's son Oakenshield, may your beard grow ever longer," says Bilbo when he starts to get irritated. And then there's Smaug! No matter how smug he gets, Olson points out, Bilbo is still, in that scene, only the second-most proud and overconfident person in the room. Oh, Smaug.

I love, love, love, that Balin is the only Dwarf who will go into the tunnel with Bilbo, and even then only within sight of the door. I love Balin entirely. (This is probably why I developed such an attachment to him as a child, and was so heartbroken when I finally read what happened to him in LotR.)

The whole episode of stealing the cup from the dragon's hoard is straight out of Beowulf, which Tolkien says was unconscious. (I don't doubt it.) Consciously, Tolkien gave the dragon a pun for a name - "the past tense of the primitive Germanic verb Smugan, to squeeze through a hole." And the riddling with Smaug is from the Lay of Fafnir, one of Tolkien's very favorite stories (he borrowed heavily from it for Turin Turambar).

I have all kinds of Leadership Feels when Thorin splits up the company during the dragon's attack, so that "The dragon shan't have all of us." (Of course, Olson points out that this is the first real leadership Thorin's shown in the book. I am glad they changed that for the movie, for all it shifts some things around.)

I think the writing might be at its very best in this chapter. The tension as Bilbo goes down into the hoard - it's incredible.

I'm so unbelievably proud of everything Bilbo does in Chapter 12.

Already he was a very different hobbit from the one that had run out without a pocket-handkerchief from Bag-End long ago

Bilbo has grown so much on this journey. Also, the fact that the line after this one is about his dagger really emphasises how much Bilbo's life has changed - he'd never even wielded a sword before setting out on this adventure.

One of my favourite bits in the whole book is this line:

He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait

It seems to me that the point where Bilbo stops, but decides to go on instead of turning back is another pivotal moment for him. It's the most terrifying part of the journey so far - the part he's been preparing for this whole time - and he's all on his own, and I think it's the last point where he could just decide that this was all actually a terrible idea and decide to forget it, but he carries on anyway. He has no idea what's going to happen or what he's going to do, but he displays bravery in the face of the unknown and decides to go ahead.

I'm going to comment on the use of dreams again here, because I noticed that Bilbo wishes that he was dreaming and really at home in Bad-End, and that Smaug is dreaming about greed and violence, and apparently about Bilbo. And the fact that Bilbo sneaks into the lair when Smaug is asleep might be the most significant case of Bilbo being awake when others are asleep and vice versa, because that obviously enables him to get a look at Smaug and steal the cup.

Luck is mentioned a lot in this chapter, and Bilbo actually 'bless[es] the luck of his ring' when he creeps in and sees that Smaug is actually awake. I completely understand why it's lucky for Bilbo to be invisible at this point, but just the fact that he's thinking 'oh, it's lucky I found this ring' I just can't deal with. Fast forward sixty years and let's see how lucky it feels then Bilbo.

I admit that I really feel for Thorin at the part where it says that Bilbo 'had become the real leader in their adventure.' I just feel so sad for Thorin because this is supposed to be his big quest to reclaim Erebor and his throne, and the amount of actual leading he does seems to diminish somewhat as the journey goes on. I feel like this has something to with what happens between him and Bilbo with the Arkenstone after Smaug is slain, but I shall see how I feel about it all then.

At the very end of chapter 12, Smaug refers to himself as ‘the real King under the Mountain’, which I found striking because I really thought he didn't care at all about prestige or power, just about hoarding as much treasure as possible and isolating himself with it. I really didn't think of Smaug as a king until this line.

No matter how hard I try, I cannot make the key-hole and the moon-runes prophecy make sense in any kind of logical way, so I have given up trying
IKR, I really can't get my head around the significance of all that. Only that they all seemed to have forgotten what Elrond told them about Durin’s day until the last minute. You think you'd remember the only advice you got about to how to open the secret door when you in fact trying to open said door, but apparently not.

I love how Tolkien won't recount all of Thorin’s lengthy rambling to Bilbo when they finally get the door open. You have to love pompous!Thorin.

Smaug is so sassy though. I love how he's described as having 'rather an overwhelming personality.' I am sincerely looking forward to seeing what Benedict Cumberbatch is going to do with that in the movie.

I love, love, love, that Balin is the only Dwarf who will go into the tunnel with Bilbo
Yes, so much love for Balin! And even when Bilbo is beating himself him for telling Smaug too much about their journey so far, Balin reassures him that it's not his fault. Aww.

Completely off-topic but semi-relevant comment:

Guys, guys! Come quick! A friend gave me a link to one of Tolkien's fab essays on Fantasy writing! A public domain pdf file :D

http://public.callutheran.edu/~brint/Arts/Tolkien.pdf

Crap is starting to get real in these chapters basically.

I LOVE the titles Bilbo gives himself. 'I am he that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them alive again from the water.' It's just so clever. Like, it makes him sound like some amazing magical wizard when in reality he literally crammed some dwarves into barrels and then they all just fell into a lake and nearly died.

I totally agree with

gallifaerie I love this part;

'He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait'

It's like, a lot of people say bravery is being fearless, but surely true bravery is being terrified, but carrying on anyway? I think it takes a lot more bravery to do something you're scared of, than to do something without fear.

Also I thought it was interesting that no one offered to take Bilbo's ring and go in themselves?? Would that be ~allowed~? I guess no one was particularly keen about going to see a dragon though, invisible or not...

Like, it makes him sound like some amazing magical wizard when in reality he literally crammed some dwarves into barrels and then they all just fell into a lake and nearly died.
OMG yes, I never thought of it in that way, that's brilliant! I like that Bilbo feels proud of enough of his achievements so far that he can make up such riddles about them though. But Smaug is so much less naive than Gollum here - Smaug sees through Bilbo pretty quickly whereas Gollum actually wants to play the game. Although to give them both credit, they both go from innocent riddling to intense rage and wanting to kill Bilbo pretty quickly.

None of the dwarves really seems that curious about Bilbo's ring, once they find out about it. None of them ever ask him to try it on and I wonder why that is. I wonder how Bilbo would have reacted at this stage to someone trying to take the ring away from him like that. Is he already getting possessive of it?

Yup, nothing about the moon-runes and the door makes sense. It's very fairy-tale-esque; possibly Tolkien felt it was obligatory somehow?

Smaug is the greatest, and I also cannot wait to see what Cumperdink does with it. <3

"He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone" - this was the point where I stopped and wrote down in my notes, "This is a very adult book in some ways," because I think that conception of courage is very adult, or perhaps I should say very mature, and is possibly one of the reasons why teenagers reading The Hobbit for the first time tend to bounce off of it so hard. And yet, that one sentence puts a lump in my throat, and makes me love Bilbo all the more for it. (I suspect there's a quote from The Last Unicorn that I could tie in here, but I'm sick and I can't think.)

Oooh, I like that interpretation re: Thorin and Bilbo's conflict later. And by "like," I mean "it hurts me in all the soft and tender places in my heart." But y'know.

*happyflail* That is one of my very favorite Tolkien pieces. I highly recommend reading it along with "Leaf By Niggle," if you can find it.

Well, Thror did have one of Sauron's Rings at one point; possibly all the Dwarves were all, Oh, a magic ring, how handy, and just didn't care beyond that.

Ok I finally have comments to post. Replying to myself is totally kosher, right? I mean I walk around the house and do it all the time...

I am fascinated by the imagery of greed in these two chapters. The Hubs and I had a conversation during a long drive the other day about how interesting it is that you can almost read Smaug as a metaphor—as if Thorin's grandfather and father actually became the dragon, in a way, because of the greed for gold. Obviously Bilbo has a conversation with him and the whole riddling thing/naming thing is lovely and fun to read, but the idea that that they have to defeat more than a dragon, but the actual weight of their ancestry... I could be just a little drunk right now, but that was kinda neat.

TRYING FOR THE THIRD TIME. Dreamwidth keeps eating my posts.

Just regarding it taking a lot to scare the Dwarves - I'm reminded of that bit from the Nírnaeth Arnoediad where the Dwarves wear battle masks so scary they freak out the dragons, and when Azaghâl is killed they just all stop fighting and carry his body out on their shoulders singing a durge, and everyone just gets the fuck out of their way because you do not mess with the Dwarves.

And seconding the Balin love. So. Much. Balin love.

You think you'd remember the only advice you got about to how to open the secret door when you in fact trying to open said door, but apparently not.

Hahahahaha. Bless them, they're such morons.

Oh, bless your nerdy heart. Thank you. <3

Okay, it's been a million years since I read Nirneath Arnoediad, but that is fucking metal. I love it.

Bilbo had already lied twice regarding the Ring, which I think is pretty out of character for him, so I'd say he probably wouldn't react overly well to letting someone borrow it. Doesn't Gandalf say something to Frodo in LotR along the lines of Bilbo's lies echoing Gollum's in that they were both trying to justify ownership of the Ring?

I KNOW RIGHT?

To say I was overjoyed when I came across that in my re-read would be a serious understatement.

I am seconding everyone's hilarity at pompous!Thorin. I have this hilarious mental image of Bilbo leaving out the endless, self-important prattle of Thorin the whole way there. Like he'd be the sort to tell those stories that go on and on with all these self-indulgent tangents and meanwhile Fili and Kili are all "Yes, we've heard this one before" and he just tells the same couple stories over and over on their trip.

There is something so evocative about the description of Smaug before we actually see him – just the light of the heat that radiates off him, and the sound of him breathing echoing in the deep halls... so delightfully creepy.

I love that Smaug's chiefest power in this scene is that of manipulation. Evil as the whisper that plants suspicious thoughts seems to be a theme of Tolkien's - it's certainly acted out through Morgoth, Sauron and Glaurung. I think that's probably the main reason why this is one of my favourite chapters – because Smaug pulls the same trick that lead to the oath of Fëanor, the ruin of Túrin, the forging of the nine and the seven, the downfall of Númenor...

And Bilbo essentially goes fuck you very much and laughs in his face.

You can really tell Tolkien's love of dragons in the description of Smaug's attack, though. It's terrifyingly vivid.

It's interesting too how you have the two enchantments, that of greed for the gold and the thrall of Smaug - both of which Bilbo is briefly subject to (he does entertain doubts about the dwarves) but gets over pretty damn quickly. I guess this is just hobbit natural resilience showing through.

I LOVE the titles Bilbo gives himself. 'I am he that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them alive again from the water.' It's just so clever. Like, it makes him sound like some amazing magical wizard when in reality he literally crammed some dwarves into barrels and then they all just fell into a lake and nearly died.

LOL!

I suppose it's interesting as well that the things that set Smaug off - Bilbo's theft of the cup and his pride in the riddle game leading him to call himself 'Barrel-rider', in turn implicating Laketown, are precisely the same faults that lead to Smaug's demise through the flaunting of his underbelly to Bilbo.

And, of course, it turns out that greed itself is perhaps more perilous than any dragon. :P

Well, yeah. I mean, there's kind of a recurrent theme in both this book and later in LOTR (and in the Silmarillion, too, now that I think of it) of the battle with the 'Shadow Self.'

Smaug and Thorin have this, in a sense, and more obviously, Bilbo with Gollum. I loved the line: "Dwarves are not heroes, but a calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money." Although truth be told that (and other descriptions) stray into the Unfortunate Implications territory when you read that Tolkien was modeling them on the Jews...

Other lines I marked:

"His heart was filled and pierced with enchantment and with the desire of the dwarves; and he gazed motionless, almost forgetting the frightful guardian, at the gold beyond price and count."

And, just a bit later:

"It does not do to leave a dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." Heh.

But my favorite:

"His rage passes description—the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before used or wanted."

I love that one not only because it's completely the kind of description you instantly understand, but also because I love the little moments where Tolkien just can't help himself. If it truly passes description then why did he go an describe it? Hah.

And, finally:

"They shall see me and remember who is the real King under the Mountain!" Ooooo...

*runs off to find it*

I love this image of Thror (in a way) becoming the dragon. I think it's more supported by the movie than the book, but Peter Jackson definitely didn't invent the dragon-sickness. I think in a much more important way, Thorin becomes the dragon, after the dragon is removed.

That was me. Forgot I wasn't logged in.

Yes, I completely agree with you about it being an adult book. I don't think I've ever read a book that juxtaposes childish joy with dark, serious subject matter as much as The Hobbit does, and I love it for that. Because that's what real life feels like - the two do belong together.

Ahh, The Last Unicorn! It's been in my reread pile for about three years now!

Yeah, that is a good point, because they really don't seem that fussed by the ring at all.

Yes, Gandalf says that to Bilbo at the very start of Fellowship. It's strange to think just how quickly the ring has its effects on the wearer - it's kind of like, once you touch it, you're deeply involved it with it, which may explain why there's no casual trying on of it, because I'm sure that would lead to all sorts of complicated situations.

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Epic Tolkien Bookclub: Week Six

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