Fair points, Chronos. I’m not trying to say that I think Bilbo was in the wrong, either contractually or as a friend trying to prevent harm. All I mean to say is that I don’t think he is contractually justified in his laying a claim to the Arkenstone either.
Granted, the contract says he should get 1/14 of all treasure (if any), but it doesn’t say that he gets to pick it for himself, or that his choices can’t be contested.
So I agree that he has done the right thing, I just don’t think it’s fair to say:
Here we go: the famous Battle of Five Armies. Whee!
It must be terribly hard to write a battle scene; I’m sure I couldn’t. I would think a common trap for writers would be to reduce the armies to forces of nature: wind or waves lapping over each other, forgetting that individuals are making decisions about tactics and strategy.
I think Tolkien does well enough at this here, with his detail about the goblins being led into a crotch between flanks of the Mountain and then assaulted from the higher ground.
It’s interesting to imagine this chapter without the goblins and wargs conveniently arriving when they did. If they’d been only a day late, there would already have been a battle: Dwarves vs. Elves and Men, and whichever armies survived that would be easy pickings for the bad guys, despite the help of the Eagles. Providence plays a big role in Tolkien’s work, doesn’t it?
Which exactly are the 5 armies we’re talking about? There’s dwarves, men, elves, orcs and wargs. Why don’t the eagles count as an army too (the wolves count)?
“Many a fair elf that should have lived yet long ages merrily in the wood” lay dead.
“I have heard songs of many battles, and I have always understood that defeat may be glorious. It seems very uncomfortable, not to say distressing.”
This is pretty good pathos–many cut-rate fantasies ignore the horror of death and war or apply it only to the bad guys.
And Fiver’s right again about having to remember that people make decisions in battle–despite providence/forces of nature, a combo of human action and chance are almost always necessary; or, even if fate controls, that doesn’t excuse humans (and non-humans too) from acting.
Even in the midst of misery, Tolkien doesn’t forget humor. The use of the words “uncomfortable” and “distressing” are terrific understatements, and I can just see the little Hobbit dancing around ridiculously before he gets conked in his thick little skull. Life’s just a mixed-up bag of a bunch of different emotions all at once, isn’t it?
Also, just what was Gandalf thinking about as he sat there on the ground?
This just occurred to me last night: if we held to a strict legal interpretation of “right” and “wrong,” then not only would we have to return the Ring to Sauron, but he might even have grounds for a lawsuit against Isildur’s estate for cutting off his hand and stealing the Ring.
(Yes, I know there was a war on when the Ring was taken. Work with me here.)
At this point I’ll go on and 'fess up that not only have I finished reading The Hobbit, but I’ve even reread The Fellowship of the Ring besides. I bring this up because I’ve been thinking about Gloin’s long conversation with Frodo at Elrond’s house. Gloin has more dialogue there than he ever got in The Hobbit, right? I’m not sure Gloin had any lines at all in the first book.
Of course, the dwarves are painted in broad strokes, almost as broad as Snow White’s dwarfs who were named after their dominant personality traits:
Thorin’s regal and irascible.
Gloin and Oin are good firemakers.
Fili and Kili are young.
Balin is friendly to Bilbo.
Bombur is fat.
Hmm. We don’t really learn much at all about Bifur, Bofur, Dori, Nori, Ori or Dwalin, do we? Beyond some basic family relationships (and even there, I think Bifur, Bofur and Bombur were some combination of brothers/cousins, but I don’t know how exactly they’re attached to each other).
Well, if you really want all the family details, it’s all laid out in one of the appendices, but that might be in LotR, rather than The Hobbit. I don’t think it adds much, though. That was one of the advantages to LotR: Even though there were almost as many main characters (9, as compared to 15), they all had at least a few identifying features. Granted, a lot of that was due to the racial diversity: Legolas was the elf, Gimli was the dwarf, etc. In The Hobbit, it’s more a matter of Gloin was the dwarf, Bofur was the dwarf, Dwalin was the dwarf…
As far as the Five or Six armies go, Beorn was also there, and was almost an army unto himself. Ironically, he was, in a sense, a Force of Nature, though not one as unthinking as wind or waves.
Alas, poor Thorin! For some reason, reading his death scene and his farewell words to Bilbo make me think of Harlan Ellison. Yes, I know I’m a freak.
And I can admit I got a little teary-eyed at that scene. Less for the loss of Thorin, but more for the warm sentiment Bilbo seems able to inspire in the hardest of creatures. There is more about him than anyone knows, to paraphrase Gandalf.
I wonder where the female goblins are? Tolkien doesn’t mention any, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re absent. I’m asking in this chapter because I wonder if any fought in the Battle of Five Armies.
I just realized that Bilbo’s treasure was given to him, not by Dain and the other dwarves, but out of the fourteenth share given to Bard. Given that these “small chests, one filled with silver, and the other with gold” (plus the trolls’ treasure) were still enough to fund a comfortable life for Bilbo (and later Frodo) for the next eighty years, then the treasure of the King Under the Mountain must have been vast and fabulous indeed.
And so we come back at long last to the Last (or the First) Homely House.
I get the impression that Bilbo’s trip home took almost as long as his outward journey. And there were more adventures too, we just weren’t told about them.
Bilbo and Gandalf had a long stay with Beorn, then another long stay with Elrond. I like to imagine they also stopped at Bree, and even took rooms at the Prancing Pony for a while, before they headed on back to the Shire.
Isn’t it ironic, that after Bilbo’s short career as a burglar, he arrived home only to find his hole essentially being burgled itself? That just now occurred to me.
Then, in the last couple of pages, we have a very nice visit from Balin years later. It’s sort of sad to read this with foreknowledge of events to come; we know Balin is probably on his way to re-establish the Mines of Moria, where he’ll meet a bad end within just a few years.
“Surely you don’t disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don’t suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit?”
So, volitional acts and mere chance do not dictate or negate preordained events. Exactly what force is driving events in JRRT’s world? Who made the prophecies? JRRT, of course–and none better for to have done it.
Y’know, I never made the connection that it was the same dwarf who visits in the end, and died in Moria. I guess it’s the same thing I mentioned earlier, about all the dwarves looking the same: I had previously read it as “One of the thirteen visits Bilbo. One of the thirteen dies in Moria”.
Yeah, it took me a while to pick up on that – and yes, it’s very depressing. As is the part where we learn of his companions’ fates in Moria, because some of those were our friends from TH, too.
Fiver, I always loved Thorin’s dying words to Bilbo: “Farewell, child of the kindly West. There is more good in you than you know. If more of us valued food and cheer above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. But sad or merry, I must leave it now.” (Apologies if I left something out – I’m quoting from memory.)
You came pretty close, Katisha, and yes, it’s a great bit of dialogue. Thorin ended well, no matter his poor choices in the last couple of days of his life.
Chronos, I always knew it was Balin in both places, but this was the first time I realized Balin’s visit to Bilbo must have been on his way to Moria: the distance between the Shire and the Lonely Mountain is so great that Balin probably wouldn’t have crossed it for any lesser reason, notwithstanding his fondness for Bilbo.
I like it. It shows that Tolkien was thinking of that scene in The Hobbit when choosing his cast for the failed retaking of Moria. He knew Balin needed to be part of it.
Having events and characters tie everything together like that helps us to view the four books as one story over a great scale of time.
And with that in mind, here’s something I noticed for the first time in my most recent rereading of The Fellowship of the Ring. At the Council of Elrond, Gandalf reveals that Isildur didn’t die and lose the Ring right after taking it from Sauron. First he went back to Gondor and wrote a scroll about it.
In that scroll, Isildur described the Ring as precious. Chilling, isn’t it?
Yes, and Bilbo called it “precious” as well. Gollum, Bilbo, Frodo…I’d just never noticed Isildur used it too. That Tolkien guy knew what he was doing, didn’t he?
No, I don’t think this should turn into a Lord of the Rings thread; isn’t it long enough already? We should start a new one.
But thank you all for participating. I’ve enjoyed it.
I don’t know, Fiver. The chronology in the back of LOTR says the visit took place in 2949, or seven years after Bilbo returns home. Balin doesn’t leave Erebor for Moria until 2989. The Fellowship doesn’t get to Moria for another thirty years after that. Its easy to forget that a fairly big chunk of time takes place between “The Hobbit” and the quest for Mount Doom, basically a normal human lifespan. Also, going from Erebor to Moria by way of the Shire is a huge detour!